South Park: The Stick of Truth

Obsidian/South Park Digital Studios - 2014 - PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox360/XboxOne

I think the best thing I could tell anyone about this game is not to play it unless you have at least some idea of what South Park is. South Park's patented "did they really just say that?" sense of humor is on display here - only dialed up to 11 because I assume the censorship guidelines for video games are much less strict than network television. So if you're easily offended by, well, anything really, you probably shouldn't play this game. However if you're a fan of South Park and know what you're getting yourself into, you're in for a treat

South Park: The Stick of Truth (TSOT), just like any episode of the television show, is a parody. Whereas the TV show picks a current topic or event or celebrity to parody, The Stick of Truth is a parody of video games while also obviously being one. Specifically, TSOT invokes The Elder Scolls: Skyrim quite a lot between making fart jokes out of dragonshouts and also emulating Skyrim's soundtrack surprisingly well. A few of the characters in the game, especially Cartman, are quite aware of the fact that they are characters in a video game and break the fourth wall frequently to point out that fact to humorous effect. There are several call outs to South Park's most popular episodes and reoccurring characters that will resonate for the fans of the TV show. Without spoiling anything, this game contains some of the most outrageous scenes I've ever played in a video game that may even surprise hardcore fans of the show.

The closest touchstone for the battle system is the Paper Mario series which requires you to perform short mini game-like quick time events to boost your attack power or partially block damage from an enemy. Just as in Paper Mario, I find this type of battle system compliments traditional turn based RPG combat very well as it keeps players a little more engaged since you have to play a little timing mini game while also making strategic decisions on which enemies to target with which attacks at the same time. Even if the mini games are mostly easy and trivial, it's one extra layer of interaction with the combat system that keeps the player engaged and creates the illusion of player skill. In addition to this, you still need to keep track of what enemies are weak to what attacks in the glorified game of rock paper scissors that is the same RPG combat tropes in TSOT as the games it's parodying. 

Summary

TSOT is fairly standard RPG faire with a pretty solid battle system. But the reason you'll play this game is for South Park's patented outrageous and irreverant sense of humor which is executed in TSOT just as good as any episode of the TV show. It's a must play for South Park fans. If you're not a South Park follower, I'd reccommend watching a few episodes of the show before playing TSOT to see if the game is your sort of thing

The Jackbox Party Pack 2

Jackbox Games - 2015 - PS3/PS4/XboxOne/PC

As I did when I reviewed the original Jackbox Party Pack, I'm going to divide this review into several little mini-sections: one for each game in the pack. The Jackbox Party Pack 2 is at its core, the same concept as its predecessor - a bunch of multiplayer mini-games where your cell phones are the input devices. The novelty here is that because your phones are the input devices, no one knows who typed or drew what except for the author. So now on with the review:

Fibbage 2
This is exactly the same game as the first time around, but with new questions. The game presents you with a weird fact, and you have to fill in the blank to try to trick your opponents into guessing your answer. Still pretty much Balderdash if you've ever played that.

Earwax
In earwax, you're presented with a category or an event or some similar thing and you have to choose a sound effect to match what's presented.  Then two player's selections go head to head and a judge votes on which is the most appropriate sound effect. I thought this game was pretty weak and the selectable sound effects started to repeat with just two or three rounds of play. Disappointing.

Bidiots
This was the strangest game in the pack. It seemed like an attempt to evolve on Drawful, which I believe to be the strongest game in the previous pack. In Bidiots, each player draws several art pieces based on several prompts. The pieces are assigned random monetary values, then players bid on each piece. Sometimes you'll be given clues to what a piece is worth based on the prompt that was used to draw it, but it's not always clear what prompt matches with what piece. And sometimes, you're not given a prompt at all. It turns one of the best games in the previous pack into one of the most unsatisfying experiences in Jackbox Party Pack 2. The rules are unclear and the games take way too long. The fun and silliness of drawing and guessing other's drawings turns into a boring bidding game. Bidiots was also a huge disappointment.

Quiplash XL
This is pretty much Earwax but without the sound effects. Players type in responses to the game's prompts to fill in the blank, then a judge votes on the best one. Quiplash still seemed somewhat lazy to me but was slightly more enjoyable than Earwax, only because a freeform response seemed more creatively satisfying to me than picking from pre-defined sound effects.

Bomb Corp.
I'm not sure who worked on this game whether it be a different group internally or a secret different studio altogether or something, but this game is so different from the others in the pack, both in visual aesthetic and gameplay quality. This is definitely the highlight of Jackbox Party Pack 2. In Bomb Corp. , each player is given a crucial step to disarming a bomb on their phone, but all steps need to be followed in order to diffuse the bomb correctly. It's a really fun excersise in communication and cooperation as all players need to work together to diffuse the bomb properly. This game was pretty cool

Summary
Even with the inclusion of the excellent Bomb Corp., The Jackbox Party Pack 2 was still a disappointment to me. Other than Bomb Corp., the pack felt like a rushed package with incomplete or creatively dull ideas resulting in unsatisfying gameplay experiences. The absense of the well-known "You Don't Know Jack" mini-game was puzzling as well. I'm not sure if they tried to rush this package out in order to capitalize on the success of the first game or what, but that's what it felt like. If you haven't played the games from the first Jackbox Party Pack, I'd strongly reccommend giving those a look first. But if you have, prepare yourself for a disappointment

Dark Souls II

FromSoftware - 2014 - PS3\PS4\X360\XboxOne\PC

I started playing Dark Souls 2 immediately after completing the first Dark Souls game as I couldn't get enough of the first game. It's tough but fair action RPG combat system had taught me to pay attention to enemy attack patterns, be wary of traps and to frequently praise the sun. I needed more. On the surface, Dark Souls 2 appears to be a very safe "more of the same" sequel to the first game. However, there are some notable departures from the original formula once you dig in to the game.

Firstly humanity and hollowing are no longer a boolean "yes" or "no", you're either human or you're partially hollow. The more you die, the more hollow you become and the more your maximum health decreases. This can be reversed by using a consumable "human effigy", which are thankfully quite plentiful in this game. But if you're human or close to being human, the more susceptible to invasions you are. But you can still only summon a friendly companion to battle if you're 100% human.

I know Hidetaka Miyazaki, who directed both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls was busy making Bloodborne during Dark Souls 2's development. I think the lack of his presence is felt when examining some of the details of Dark Souls 2 up close. For example the level design of the first Dark Souls game was something I really loved. All of the levels looped back on each other so that as you progressed, you would unlock natural paths and shortcuts back to earlier levels in the game. Not so much with Dark Souls 2. The level design is much more linear and you'll need to just keep progressing in a certain direction until you can't progress any more, then warp back to another bonfire, which is an ability you have from the get-go in this game. Another really strange design decision is that you can only level up in one particular bonfire by talking to a nearby NPC as opposed to leveling up at any bonfire as was the case in the first game. In practice this becomes rather annoying as you have to warp back and forth to level up and suffer through loading screens each time which seems unnecessary.

Another place where Miyazaki's absence is felt is with the story. Yes, the first Dark Souls game had a sparse and cryptic story as is the case with the second game, but there were memorable characters and bosses and locations. They were made memorable through repeated mentions and given weight by the way they the characters referred to them. Even though the story was sparse and cryptic, it felt plausibly real. Dark Souls 2's story is just simply sparse and cryptic. New locations are discovered and conquered without fanfare or reaction by the game's story. Fighting a boss in Dark Souls 2 is not an epic clash with the legendary creature you've heard so much about. It's just another boss. Even the "greater soul" bosses seem unremarkable from both a story and gameplay perspective.

Speaking of gameplay, the combat is still pretty solid. It's a bit more balanced and polished, and there seems to be more a few more valid builds now. However, I will say that the difficulty curve does seem especially wonky. There are a few pain points in the beginning and middle of the game, but everything else including the end of the game is a relative cakewalk. I've talked with a few friends who have played this game about their experience with the difficulty curve and have had some conflicting reports, so which parts of the game you find challenging may partially depend on your character build and playstyle.

Summary
It may not have the brilliance of its predecessor, but Dark Souls 2 is still a solid game for those people looking for more masochistic fun. Story and level design aren't quite what they were in the first Dark Souls game, but this game is still solid enough to warrant a recommendation. I've now moved on to Bloodborne to satiate my love of these games and have so far been enjoying this same style of game with a fresh setting.

BioShock

2K - 2007 - PC/X360/PS3

Wooo!! 100 reviews! I figured it would be appropriate to cap off #100 with the original Bioshock since I started back in 2013 reviewing the same franchise with my very first review of BioShock Infinite. I still don't think I'm a great games critic or reviewer and I still have a lot to work on, but in re-reading my first review from two years ago, I can see how far I've come. In addition to more comprehensive and insightful writing, I've started including video reviews with my posts as well, in case you hadn't noticed. Of course having 100+ reviews and a ton of content introduces a problem of content discovery, which I'm attempting to remedy with new features like my games of the year list and my top 10 lists - both of which I intend to add to and update often, so keep an eye on those. Anyway, enough with the housekeeping, let's get on to talking about Bioshock.

I remember seeing Bioshock for the first time at E3 2006 before it was released later in 2007. It was by far the most interesting game trailer I saw at E3 that year. The underwater city setting, strange combat powers and gruesome violence were so unlike anything I had seen in a game before. When I eventually got my hands on the game it also played unlike anything I had experienced before, having at that time never played its spiritual predecessors, the System Shock games. Bioshock's combination of shooting mechanics, light RPG and puzzle solving elements, and high level of audiovisual presentation were unlike anything else around at that time. I remember being struck by how cinematic and directed the game felt. It felt like a movie. It felt like an amusement park ride where you're barraged by an overwhelming presentation of audiovisual effects that all spring to life as you pass by them. Bioshock's atmosphere was so unique and refreshing and it absolutely captivated me.

Bioshock takes place in the 1960s and follows the story of a man named Jack who, at the beginning of the game survives a plane crash that leaves him swimming in the middle of the ocean. You guide Jack away from the burning plane and to a lighthouse, the only structure visible in the vast ocean other than the flaming, sinking wreckage. Investigating the interior of the lighthouse reveals a bathysphere which takes you deep underwater and eventually reveals the massive underwater city of Rapture, where the remainder of the game takes place. The trip to Rapture is accompanied by a voiceover from a man named Andrew Ryan, who introduces himself as the creator of Rapture and conveys that he built the city as a haven free from external social, political or religious influences. But of course upon entering the city, it's immediately obvious that something has gone very wrong in Ryan's utopia and now masked and bandaged psychotic murderers known as splicers roam the remains of Rapture. You're contacted via radio by a man named Atlas who urges you to assist him in rescuing his family who he claims has been trapped in the bathysphere dock by Ryan. Atlas warns you to be wary of splicers who were previously Rapture's human residents, driven insane from abuse of a drug called ADAM.

When processed, ADAM becomes something called a plasmid, which when injected into a user's bloodstram can rewrite genetic code and grant its users dangerous and powerful new abilities. In addition to traditional firearms and melee weapons, pasmids serve as your main defense against splicers and Rapture's other many dangerous inhabitants. The use of plasmids also rewards players for their environmental awareness. For example, the electro-bolt plasmid is extra effective when targets are standing in water. Similarly, the incinerate plasmid is effective when used on oil spills that can be found throughout Rapture.

Experimentation with Bioshock's many plasmid powers is one of the most rewarding parts about the game. In fact, the game seems to reward experimentation and clever planning in general. For instance, when splicers are hurt, they often seek out a nearby health station to heal themselves. In addition to being used by the player to heal themselves, these health stations can be hacked to yield cheaper healing prices and to damage any enemies that tries to use it for themselves. Or the player can choose to simply destroy the station which yields several consumable first aid kits. Rapture's hostile security robots can be simply destroyed (they're weak vs. electro-bolt or armor-piercing rounds) or they can be hacked to aid the player in battle. There's a multitude of options available to the player on how to dispatch enemies and it's fun and rewarding to experiment with the game's many systems to find a playstyle and strategy that best suits you.

There's also a moral choice element to Bioshock. "Little Sisters" human girls who have been inplanted with a parasite and mentally conditioned to hunt for and gather ADAM are plentiful throughout Rapture. They and their powerful "Big Daddy" protectors are neutral to the player upon encounter, but Big Daddies will go hostile if they or the Little Sister are attacked. Dispatching a Big Daddy leaves the player with a choice: rescuing or harvesting the Little Sisters. Harvesting kills the Little Sister and grants the player a wealth of ADAM which can be used to purchase new plasmids and other useful upgrades. Rescuing the Little Sisters yields very little ADAM and gives few immediate bonuses, but rescuing multiple Little Sisters can unlock powerful plasmids later in the game.

BioShock Video Review:

Summary
Bioshock is a wonderful blend of an immersive and atmospheric environment, a memorable story, and well designed game systems that reward the player for experimentation. While Bioshock's sequels improved on some mechanics, I don't think they ever recaptured the brilliance of the original game and its great blend of atmosphere, story and game mechanics.

Rock Band 3

Harmonix/Backbone Entertainment - 2010 - X360/PS3/Wii/DS

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

I'm a big fan of the rhythm game genre and in particular the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Now there hasn't been a release in either of these franchises since 2010. This fact, coupled with the decreasing sales and popularity of these franchises caused many people to speculate that these types of games were "dead". Then out of the blue, Harmonix announced Rock Band 4 and Activision followed suit with an announcement of Guitar Hero Live. Obviously neither of these franchises are dead (at least at the time of writing) and both have new games launching in the coming weeks, but I do think there are a few reasons we haven't heard from these games in five years. First and probably foremost was oversaturation. If you include the DJ Hero games and the various portable releases from each franchise, Harmonix and Activision combined to release thirty five Rock Band and Guitar Hero titles between 2005 and 2010. I'm serious. Check Wikipedia. The American economic downturn that occurred at the end of last decade certainly didn't do any good to either of these franchises that require players to buy relatively expensive accessories. Plus I think some players decided they didn't want to have ridiculous Fisher Price-looking plastic instruments cluttering their living space anymore. I think that last point still holds true in 2015, but there obviously hasn't been any oversaturation in a while and the U.S. economy is doing better which is why I think we're now seeing releases from these franchises. So what do I want to see from either Rock Band 4 or Guitar Hero Live? Let's take a dive into one of my all-time favorite rhythm games, Rock Band 3, and examine some of the things I think it does well and some of the things it does not so well.

Let's get the bad things with Rock Band 3 out of the way first. The game has obsession with realism and wanting the player to learn real instruments. This is fine when done well, and a game like Rocksmith really shows how this concept can be pulled off successfully. But Rockband 3's execution of this was way too complicated. Rock Band 3 introduced "Pro Mode" for guitar, drums, and its new keyboard accessory. Mad Catz partnered with Harmonix to sell a "pro guitar" with 102 plastic buttons. There wasn't really a great tutorial for this instrument, and the strange chord notation was almost impossible to interpret at the speed Rock Band throws notes at you. Especially for someone who has no actual experience playing guitar (me). This was the same problem with the "pro keyboard" which expected the player to play a 25 button mini-keyboard at full song speed. I actually liked the "pro drums", which added 3 cymbals to Rock Band's normal drumkit of 4 pads. I found it to be a welcomed challenge as opposed to an impossible one. But aside from the drums, I think the whole "pro mode" experiment was a failure, especially when you consider that none of the older DLC or other imported songs supported the pro guitar, and most didn't support the keyboard at all. They strangely did however, support pro drums. My speculation is that the songs were always encoded to differentiate between cymbals and drums, even though the original drum kits only had 4 pads. I think Harmonix has recognized this failure and has removed support for pro instruments and the keyboard peripheral entirely for Rock Band 4 although they will continue to support pro drums. 

The most awesome thing about Rock Band 3 is the massive library of DLC songs you have access to. If you include importable tracks from previous entries in the series, the total of playable songs is upwards of 4,000 which is pretty awesome especially assuming Harmonix makes this library available again for Rock Band 4. You can be practically guaranteed to find something you'll like when browsing the online store. Rock Band 3 also introduces vocal harmonies, allowing there to be more than one vocalist, provided you have more than one microphone. Tracks that support vocal harmonies will show separate vocal tracks with separate lyrics for each singer. Another new feature is the ability for players to drop in and out of songs on the fly without restarting a track. This, combined with the ability to make song playlists and enable "no-fail mode" made it very accessible as a casual party game. Rock Band 3 also features an expanded career mode and a more in depth character creator. All of these features combine to make Rock Band 3 a very full featured and well polished game

Rock Band 3 Video Review

Summary

Despite it's faults and it's misguided attempt to integrate playing "real" instruments, Rock Band 3 is still the most fun I've had playing rhythm party game. I've actually already played a pre-release build of Rock Band 4 at Pax and I think it captures all of the great things that Rock Band 3 did well. If people are willing to dust off their plastic instruments and hook them up to their next-gen consoles, I think Rock Band 4 should do just fine. I probably won't buy it initially as I don't even own a next-gen console yet, but I'm glad these franchises have been resurrected and I'm looking forward to eventually playing more fake plastic instruments.

Dark Souls

FromSoftware - 2011 - PS3/PC/X360

I did it! Praise the sun! I've finished Dark Souls! Good Lord this game is mercilessly difficult. And also one of the best designed games I've ever played. If you've heard people tell you how good this game is, it's true. It's also no exaggeration how difficult this game is, so this is definitely not a game for everyone. I think if you're an seasoned gamer who's up for a challenge and you approach this game with patience and an open mind, you'll be able to discover the fun in building your character, experimenting with the game's systems, exploring the masterfully designed levels and discovering this game's hidden lore.

This game simultaneously does the best and worst job teaching mechanics I've seen in a video game recently.The Northern Undead Asylum where you begin the game serves as the game's tutorial. It teaches you how to move your character, to read messages on the floor, and that shiny things and bonfires are good. It teaches you how to defend with a shield by forcing you to walk down a narrow corridor with a guy on the far end shooting arrows at you. The only way you'll make it is learning to use the shield. It then throws a fairly difficult boss at you, teaching you that Dark Souls will be hard and that running away is a valid option and is sometimes the best one. You eventually have to kill the boss to complete the tutorial, but if you manage to scramble across the boss room before he kills you, a better weapon can be found and the game also gives you some hints for dealing more damage. The tutorial also teaches you what is probably Dark Souls' most important lesson which is that you cannot hack and slash your way through this game. You must pay attention to enemy attack animations, learn their tells, and understand when it's safe to attack them. It's an excellent tutorial for the game and teaches you all of Dark Souls' basic mechanics... but it doesn't address or teach its more complex mechanics at all. It's also easy to be overwhelmed by the spreadsheet of statistics presented to you on the player stats page, which isn't explained in detail. Dark Souls is a game that expects its players to learn its more complicated systems by experimentation or trial and error. Or just google everything, which is probably what most people do.

After completing the tutorial level, Dark Souls opens up quite a bit and becomes very non-linear for the rest of the game. You can take any path in any order you want, some paths are easier and intended to be taken first, some paths are harder and intended to be done later in the game, and some paths are completely optional and never required to finish the game. But you don't know which paths are which until you take them. Trial and error is another one of the design themes found throughout Dark Souls. Yes, it's frustrating at times, but the joy of exploring and discovering new paths or new secrets offsets the frustration of accidentally taking a path intended for later in the game and getting your butt kicked.

You can level up your character by spending the souls of the enemies you killed on upgrades while at a bonfire. If you die, you lose all of your accumulated souls, so you're encouraged to spend them often. Mercifully, if you can make it back to where you died, you can recover your lost souls, but dying twice in a row without recovery will see your unspent souls lost forever. It creates a sort of system where even when you're dying over and over again, you feel like you're making progress both through leveling up, and also by learning from deaths, memorizing enemy patterns and remembering level layouts. Progress in Dark Souls can be marked by killing bosses or discovering shortcuts that lead back to previously explored areas in the game, giving the game a bit of a metroidvania feel. You'll find that a lot of the weapons and armor in Dark Souls are not really statistically better or worse, just different. Some weapons may have comparable stats, but differing swing arcs or varying ranges. It's not so much a matter of finding the best weapons and armor in Dark Souls, but finding the ones that best suit your playstyle

There's also an ever-present multiplayer component to Dark Souls. You basically always play the game online, seeing ghostly glimpses of other players and reading the sometimes helpful, sometimes trolling messages left by them. You can also optionally opt-in to a cooperative multiplayer component to get assistance from another player to take down a difficult boss. The thing is, when you opt-in to the cooperative multiplayer, it also makes you susceptible to hostile PvP invasions from other players. It's a really cool mechanical tradeoff and another really smart design decision

The story of Dark Souls is communicated very unconventionally. Often NPCs will reveal very little about themselves or the world around them, so most of the narrative is communicated through environmental storytelling and also reading the item descriptions on new things you pick up. Don't be mistaken, there really is a lot of lore in Dark Souls, it's just hard to find and it's very open ended. The story purposely poses a lot of interesting unanswered questions and leaves it up to the player to fill in the gaps with their own imagination and interpretation of what happened.

Dark Souls Video Review

Summary
Dark Souls is probably the hardest game I've completed. It's also one of the best designed games I've played recently. If you can approach this game with a certain amount of patience and endurance, you'll really enjoy it. The feeling of finally killing that boss you've been stuck on is a feeling of reward that is unmatched in any other game. Even the little rewarding moments of finding a new weapon, or discovering a new shortcut or learning something new about the game's mechanics you didn't know before feels awesome. It's not for everyone, but the people who it IS for will find Dark Souls very enjoyable.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Dennaton Games - 2015 - PC/PS3/PS4/Vita

I was waiting until after I finished this game to review it - which I had intended to be a few weeks or so after its release, but that obviously didn't happen. So I've been playing this game on and off trying to get past the part I'm stuck on and you know what? This game is really freaking hard and I don't think I can finish it. At least not right now. So disclaimer: I'm reviewing a game I didn't complete

I could probably be super lazy with this review and just say "It's more Hotline Miami" and in most ways, that's very true. But I'm going to try to be just a bit more insightful and try to highlight some of the differences between this game and its predecessor. First off, the gameplay. It plays largely very similarly to the first game, but you'll notice some differences in level design. Some of Hotline Miami 2's levels are a lot more wide open, which was something that was not really present in the first game. Because of this, I found it much more important to use the camera to look around to see if an enemy is lurking off screen. This becomes kind of annoying, especially when off-screen enemies start shooting you from unseen locations. Nearly every level in Hotline Miami 2 features a different playable character with slightly different abilities, similar to the mask system in the first game. But the player can't change out and experiment with abilities and playstyles when they want to, like in the first game. Levels in Hotline Miami 2 are also generally much longer than the first game. This makes an already hard game that much harder and that much more frustrating when you're killed near the end of the level and forced to start again. It wasn't that big of a deal in the first game, as it was more about the thrill of memorizing relatively short levels and then executing them perfectly. The longer levels in the second game greatly slow it down and make it feel like more of a chore.

(Mild spoilers in this paragraph) The narrative in the first Hotline Miami game was definitely a little open to interpretation. The first half of Hotline Miami saw the player character, "Jacket" slaughtering buildings full of people because a voice on his telephone told him to. The second half of the game (if you follow Jacket's storyline) saw Jacket killing with a purpose instead, tracking down and killing off the people who killed his girlfriend. Many people viewed the story as a commentary on violence in video games, and discussed how killing for no reason vs. the player character killing with a purpose felt the same/different. I admired how Hotline Miami's story could be viewed through many lenses and how the vagueness of the story left it open for the players' imaginations to fill in the gaps. Hotline Miami 2's story has a similar vagueness, but it's compounded by each level being played by a different character and then each level also being told chronologically out of order. I just couldn't even follow what was supposed to be happening. The story seemed like some crazy blur of violence, neon lights, pounding music and confusion. Maybe that's what the developers were going for?

The soundtrack in Hotline Miami 2 is still very much on point. It's still a collaboration of many different artists, even more than the first game, that have somehow banded together to make a unified sound. Most of the first game's musical authors have returned to contribute fresh tracks, but I loved contributions from new artists as well. A few of my favorites are "Divide" by Magna, "Blizzard" by Light Club, and "The Way Home" by Magic Sword. The entire soundtrack is solid from top to bottom and is worth a listen if you like this sort of electronic/techno music.

Summary
I didn't care for the minor changes in gameplay and story but despite all of my above griping, Hotline Miami 2 is still a solid game. Fans of the first game should still enjoy its sequel, but if you haven't played Hotline Miami before, start with the first one. It's the superior game

Rayman Legends

Ubisoft - 2013 - PC/PS3/PS4/Vita/WiiU/X360/XboxOne

If you're looking for excellent platformers, or great couch co-op experiences, the WiiU is the next-gen console you want. To me, what sets the WiiU apart from any of the other next gen consoles are its tablet and its first-party games. The first-party games for WiiIU are the high level of quality you'd expect from Nintendo. Mario Kart 8 and Smash 4 are great and Super Mario 3D world is the best Mario game I've played to date. But I've noticed Nintendo doesn't really know how to implement its own tablet into its own first-party games. Mario Kart 8 simply maps the touch screen to a horn, Smash 4 only uses it to duplicate what's on the TV screen while Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze opts to turn the tablet screen completely off. None of these are inherently bad designs, but it's curios to see Nintendo stumped about what to do with its own hardware. Sure, Mario 3D World does have some light uses of the tablet where occasionally the game will require you to touch some block or something. But nothing like Rayman Legends. I know this game is on a plethora of other platforms, but you NEED to play the WiiU version of this game that utilizes all of the functionality of the WiiU tablet. I'm sure the developers would agree. I also hope Nintendo developers have played this game and are taking notes on how to properly utilize the gamepad.

The beauty of playing this game with the WiiU gamepad comes into play when there's at least more than one player playing the game. One player can play with a Wii Remote or Pro controller and plays through the platforming in a traditional fashion while the other player plays with the tablet screen and is tasked with helping the platforming player progress through levels. This is accomplished by touching to move and slide walls or platforms on the tablet screen or by keeping the platforming player safe by tapping to tickle monsters or by deflecting projectiles away from hitting the platforming player. It seems like each level has a new and inventive use of the tablet's touch screen that made playing each level fun and fresh. Neither the tablet player nor the platforming player are performing the same set of actions either, but both sets of actions are necessary for the level to be completed. This type of asynchronous gameplay experience is especially well implemented in Rayman Legends and requires both the tablet player and the platforming player to work together as a team to solve puzzles and complete the level. This, to me, is also why the definitive version of Rayman Legends can only be played on the WiiU and is probably best played with a partner.

Another thing that sets Rayman Legends apart from other platformers is its use of music. I've seen it before in other games where some background elements will move or dance in time with the music, but Rayman Legends takes this to another level. A lot of Rayman Legends levels require you to actually do platforming actions in time with music. If what I'm describing doesn't make sense, check out this video. But if you do, it may detract from the joy of discovering Rayman Legend's musical levels for yourself for the first time. The musical levels were so cool and I'd love to see this concept implemented in other platformers or even other game genres

Rayman Legends Video Review

Summary
Rayman Legends is one of the best platformers I've played in a long time and I'm enjoying seeing this resurgence of platformers and couch co-op experiences on the WiiU. The WiiU version of Rayman Legends also makes great use of the WiiU gamepad to implement a fun asynchronous co-op experience for both players. The music levels are wonderful and the game does have a great soundtrack in its own right too. Oh and it even features some of the best levels taken from Rayman Origins too! This is a great game and a must-play if you like platformers, co-op play, excellent music and art direction, or creative implementation of asynchronous gameplay

The Jackbox Party Pack

 Jackbox Games - 2014 - PC/PS3/PS4/XboxOne

Being the giant trivia nerd that I am (I attend trivia at a local bar nearly every week), I was eager to try the video game version of the You Don't Know Jack party game. I had heard positive buzz about the game and that it combined good trivia questions with excellent writing and a silly sense of humor, which I found to be true. I saw the 2015 edition of the You Don't Know Jack game on a steep sale in the Steam store, but it came bundled with a bunch of other games from the You Don't Know Jack developers. I wanted to play You Don't Know Jack and figured the other games were probably just throw away titles that the developers shoved in with You Don't Know Jack, but I was pleasantly surprised to be mostly wrong. This will be a bit of an unusual review since I'll be covering five games at once, but I'll try to give my opinion on the package of games as a whole and then some quick thoughts on each game in the package.

Each of the games in the Jackbox Party Pack assumes that all players in the room have either a smartphone or tablet or laptop or some other internet-enabled device. Each player uses their internet device, usually a smartphone, to connect to a web app and enter a "room code" which links the game together with the other devices and players in the room. Depending on which game in the pack you're playing, each player will submit either answers to questions, or drawings or whatever data is required for the game through their smartphone. I was actually quite surprised and impressed with how responsive the web app was when submitting data from my phone. There was almost no delay at all. It's a kind of neat strategy of utilizing the smartphones people likely already have as input devices and displaying the other game information on the main TV screen. I hope to see more party games integrate with smartphones since it's often hard to play video games with really large groups of people since controllers are usually limited.

You Don't Know Jack 2015 Edition

Likely the most recognizable game in the pack, You Don't Know Jack 2015 edition was the first game I played. It was pretty much exactly what I was expecting: good trivia questions delivered with silly humor. I thought the humor was a little hit and miss. When the writing was funny, it was funny. But when the jokes didn't land, they definitely did not land. The trivia questions were difficult, but still fair. If you weren't too familiar with the question category, I found it kind of hard to contribute since the game penalizes you for wrong answers. But if you like trivia and enjoy questions delivered with a crude sense of humor, you'll enjoy You Don't Know Jack

Fibbage

If you've ever played the party game Balderdash, you'll find Fibbage very familiar. In Fibbage, you're presented an incomplete sentence about weird fact and it's up to you to fill in the blank. Then everyone's answers are displayed on screen and you have to guess which is the actual true answer. You usually want to try to be as tricky as possible answer submissions, since points are awarded if your opponents guess your false answer as the correct one.

Drawful

Probably my favorite game in the pack, Drawful is pretty much the same concept as Fibbage, but with drawings. You'll be given a wacky subject that you'll have to make a drawing of. Once your drawing is complete, it's displayed on screen for all to see. Your opponents have to come up with fake answers for the title of your drawing while also trying to figure out what your drawing is actually about. There's a lot of fun to be had with this one, since the names of the drawings given to you are often crazy. Then add in the fact that all players are drawing on their phones with their fingers. This results in the drawings usually ending up being totally ridiculous. Then guessing who made what with your friends and figuring out what the real titles are while sifting out the hilarious fake title submissions is a great recipe for fun.

Word Spud

This one's fun, but you'll probably only play it once or twice. You'll be given a starting word, then a randomly selected player has to make a compound word or phrase from the initial word by adding another word. For example, the starting word might be "Video", to which a player might add "Game". Then another random player would be given "Game" and be expected to add another word to it. After each submission, all players can vote on whether to accept or reject the new word. If the word is accepted, the chain continues, otherwise a new random word is generated. The fun here is thinking quickly to come up with words to complete a clever or funny phrase. At the end of the game, which usually lasts a few minutes or so, Word Spud will show you your entire word chain which when read out loud is usually worth a few laughs. 

Lie Swatter

Probably the weakest game in the pack, lie swatter presents a true/false trivia question and awards points for the most correct answers. This is probably the most simple and least creative game in the pack, but it's also playable by up to 100 people at a time, so this might be the way to go if you have a really large group of people. 

Summary

I've been having a really great time with the Jackbox Party Pack. It's great to put up on the TV when I have more people over than I do controllers for traditional video games. You Don't Know Jack is fun for when you want to show off your random knowledge while being amused with crude jokes. Drawful was the surprise hit of the pack for me, easily providing hours of hilarious entertainment. Fibbage and Word Spud are midly enteraining, while Lie Swatter felt like a shoe-in. But if you often host large-ish groups of people (5-8) and are looking for video games to play, I would still highly recommend the Jackbox Party Pack

Shatter

Sidhe Interactive - 2009 - PS3/PC/Mobile

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

I had already been listening to Shatter's excellent soundtrack for about a year before I actually tried playing the game. I actually found this game through its soundtrack and bought it during the Steam winter sale when it was super cheap. Shatter is an Arkanoid clone made in 2009 originally for the PlayStation network. If you think you've never played the original Arkanoid before, you missed a classic. Or if you're like me, you played Arkanoid, but never realized it had a name. Other than looking and sounding gorgeous, Shatter separates itself from Arkanoid by implementing a slightly more complex physics engine where the player can manipulate the ball via "blow" and "suck" mechanics. This seems like an easy spot for a lewd joke, but I'm gonna try to be mature here and just keep going.

Shatter has several game modes including a couch co-op mode, but the only one I've played as of this review is Shatter's "story move". In story move, you play through 7 or so stages of Arkanoid-like gameplay before being confronted with a boss fight. The boss fights usually consist of trying to guide the ball into the bosses' glowy weak point using the blow and suck mechanic. It was these boss fights which highlighted what I thought was the primary problem with Shatter. I found I was hitting the bosses' weak points accidently through luck or random chance just as often as I was while intentionally trying to guide the ball with the blow and suck mechanics. The developers presumably included the blow and suck mechanics to give the player more control over the ball and add more skill and precision to Arkanoid. But it really doesn't matter. The blow and suck mechanics are implemented in such a way that it's still pretty hard to tell where the ball is going to go after you incluence it. Plus the screen is so chaotic and the balls bounce off of objects so randomly that you hit your intended target just as often through accident as on purpose. In fact, I felt the levels that required the most skill and control were the bonus levels where the blow and suck mechanics were taken away from you and there were no other objects on the screen

Shatter's somewhat mindless gameplay is given a boost by its impressive futuristic abstract graphics and hypnotic neon bloom particle effects. But what Shatter really stands on is its soundtrack. Oh my God the soundtrack. Standout tracks are Amethyst Caverns, Freon World and Granular Extractor, but the whole soundtrack is top to bottom amazing. It's the kind of hypnotic electronic trancey sound that is a perfect compliment to Shatter's gameplay. It's also great to work to or to fall asleep to. I mentioned in the introduction I actually listened to the soundtrack years before playing the game and probably would never even have given it a chance if not for the incredible music. The entire soundtrack was composed by Jeremiah Ross (a.k.a. "Module") who, to my knowledge, had never composed a game soundtrack before working on Shatter. I'd love to see him get more work; the Shatter soundtrack is truly awesome.

Shatter Video Review

Summary:

As I said before, Shatter's gameplay is kind of mindless, but I don't mean that in a negative way in this instance. It's can be a nice experience to put on the game, watch the pretty lights and colors and zone out to the amazing soundtrack with minimal interaction. If this sounds like it might be your thing, give Shatter a try. Or if you'd like to see a modern take of the classic Arkanoid, Shatter is your game

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

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.

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

Proteus

Ed Key, David Kanaga - 2013 - PC/PS3/Vita

This week, I played through Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and also the XCOM expansion, Enemy Within. Both are fantastic games, and I'd highly recommend either of them, but Aria of Sorrow is great for the exact same reason Symphony of the Night is great and Enemy within is great for the exact same reason XCOM: Enemy Unknown is great. I considered writing a more fleshed out review for XCOM since I did that one so long ago, but Enemy Within is essentially the same game as Enemy Unknown and I don't want to review the same game twice. Also Aria of Sorrow is pretty much the exact same game as Symphony of the Night, they just changed some of the character names and the castle is laid out differently. Just know that these games are totally fantastic and worth checking out. However this week, I think I'd like to talk about a little indie game I picked up for free on PlayStation Plus called Proteus.

I'm actually not even sure if I should be writing about Proteus on this blog, only because I'm not sure if Proteus qualifies as a game. This really raised the question of "What is a game?" for me even more than Journey did. At least with Journey, there was a definite end to the game. While the goal of the game wasn't directly stated, it was implied that you were progressing towards something by the various scenes and events in Journey. But Proteus has no end, no goals, no progress, no events or story of any kind. Now I'm not sure how you exactly define what a game is, or even if it matters whether or not Proteus is one, but for the sake of not being misleading, you might want to consider Proteus as an "audiovisual experience" rather than a game.

Proteus was created by just two dudes, Ed Key and David Kanaga. Development started in 2008 when David had the vision of making a unconventional and completely non-violent video game. Proteus was finally released last year and David certainly realized his vision. It's a very unusual game and there's certainly no violence. You begin the game standing offshore while staring at a very pixelated island. As you move toward the island, you'll realize that nearly everything on the island makes some sort of unusual synthesized sounds that all sort of meld together to make the game's soundtrack. The game will sound different depending on where you are on the island and what you're standing next to. For instance, in a forest, you'll hear the electronic purrs of all of the pixelated trees. Or on top of a tall mountain, the soundtrack may dim a bit and you'll hear only the quiet sound of the wind blowing. It's another game that you can just watch a YouTube video of and probably get the gist of it. Everything is procedurally generated, so the island is different each time, and everything is very pixelated and musical. It kind of feels like something that would belong at one of those "games of tomorrow" places at Disney World.

I hate to sound like I'm picking on the little guys, but Proteus is totally not my kind of game. The two things I love to look for in games are either a strong gameplay hook or excellent narrative. Most of my favorite games combine both of these elements to make a fun game that also tells an interesting story. Proteus has neither of these elements. There's absolutely no story, and there's really no gameplay either, at least not in the traditional sense of that word. I really did try to give Proteus a chance though, I tried to explore the island with no expectations and just enjoy the whimsical electronic music. But I just couldn't get into it. Sorry, Proteus.

Summary:
Proteus offers a very unusual and non-violent audiovisual experience. If that sentence sounded interesting to you, maybe Proteus will be your game. It certainly wasn't mine, but that's okay. If you're like me and you know that Proteus won't be your thing, Aria of Sorrow and/or XCOM: Enemy Unknown are excellently designed games that are boatloads of fun. Both are worth a look if you like Metroidvania style games or turn based strategy games.