One of my favorite hobbies/pastimes is playing video games. And I play a lot of 'em. Some of the reviews here are old favorites of mine while others are titles I'm currently playing. So if you're interested in my opinions on games, read on.
I am a sucker for a good local multiplayer game. Local multiplayer is one of my favorite experiences in games growing up with a Nintendo 64 and playing titles like Mario Party, GoldenEye and Mario Kart 64. It's an experience that's been getting more and more rare in recent AAA games especially since the advent of the internet and online multiplayer. I'm happy to see that indies and other small studios have noticed this absense and have picked up the mantle of developing awesome local multiplayer experiences. Duck Game is one such title, although it also has an online component. It's an arena combat game much like Towerfall: Ascension, another game I really loved.
Duck Game takes those short and fast rounds from Towerfall and makes them even faster. For those not familiar with Towerfall, Duck Game is a 2D arena combat game. Think Super Smash Bros, but all weapons are a one hit kill. Levels are small and weapons are deadly, so rounds go really fast. Often times you're not even done laughing about the crazy thing that happened in the previous round by the time the next round starts.
Another way Duck Game distinguishes itself from other games of its ilk is through its wacky sense of humor. It's a game published by Adult Swim games and I can't think of a more fitting publisher for this game's sense of humor. I mean you're controlling Ducks shooting each other with automatic weapons. There is a button on the controller mapped to "quack". That's it. That's all it does is make a quacking noise. That's the type of wacky humor that is on display here.
The soundtrack, which strongly channels the sounds of the Sega Genesis, is another highlight. Like its gameplay, the tracks are short but sweet and pack a lot of punch. My favorites are Synth Rock, Steelmill Sunset and Butt Spin. Great stuff if you like the iconic electronic buzz of the Genesis sound chip.
Summary
If you're looking for an awesome and wacky time with some friends on the couch, you're looking for Duck Game. If you have no one to play with, it also features an online mode and a pretty fun single player challenge mode as well. Sometimes I just want to have a stupid and goofy time when I sit down to play a video game. And when I do, I'll be looking at Duck Game
Inside is the follow up to Playdead studio's 2010 critical success Limbo. Playing Inside will feel very familiar if you've played Limbo previously. Even though their gameplay is nearly identical, the two game's universes are not related in any way that is expressed explicitly by the game and you don't need to have played Limbo before Inside or anything like that. Inside begins, like its predecessor, with no narrative or explanation as you control a boy in a highly stylized world who runs to the right and tries to avoid the many dangers along the path of right-running. Inside never really deviates from the formula laid out by Limbo. Instead, Inside seems more interested in being the most highly polished version of what Limbo was.
Immediately noticeable is Inside's distinct art style. It's not strictly the same style as Limbo's, but I had the same response to gorgeous and striking visuals as I did when playing Playdead's first title. Not only is the art style highly polished, but the animations are noticeably very smooth. Every animation seamlessly flows into the next in a way that is both very impressive and also makes me wonder exactly how much time it took the animators and programmers to accomplish what they did.
If you haven't played Limbo, Inside is a puzzle platformer at its core. Most puzzles involve manipulating background physics objects or buttons or switches in such a way that will open a blocked path and allow you to progress. There is death in the game, but your character immediately respawns in nearly the same location you were before, except maybe the puzzle room is reset. Dying is included in the game for the most part to just serve the functional purpose of informing the player that they got the solution to the puzzle wrong. It's more about puzzles than platforming and I'd even say, especially in the case of Inside, it's more about experiencing the strange game world and the story than it is about solving puzzles
It's a little difficult to talk about the story and themes of Inside without spoiling anything, but there is absolutely no dialogue and no cutscenes. All of the story is communicated through the gameplay, the background elements and artwork and also through environmental storytelling. This is something I really appreciate since it's so much more difficult to tell an interesting story in a non-traditional fashion such as this one.
Summary
Just like Limbo, Inside is a short-ish puzzle platformer in a visually striking world. Your opinion of Inside will likely be the same as Limbo, but if you've never experienced a Playdead game before, I'd recommend giving Inside a shot. It's a dark and beautiful game world that's worth checking out
Aaaaand we're back after a nice two month break. Strange to think that this is pretty much the first extended break I've taken from this since starting writing games reviews and criticism since like 2013. This week I want to talk about Christine Love's Digital: A Love Story. Yes, it's another visual novel. I know I've posted several of these recently, but if you're not into visual novels, check back soon for more reviews of "real games". But you should know that there will be a review up in the next few months for Zero Time Dilemma which is another visual novel and a game that I am highly anticipating since it will finally resolve the cliffhanger ending of Virtue's Last Reward. Anyway, back to being on topic...
Digital: A Love Story is developer/writer Christine Love's first successful game. It started picking up traction and gaining attention after being released on the internet for free in 2010. Digital is a mystery/romance story set in the late 80s where you, the player character, purchase a PC and connect it to the internet for the first time. The game can kind of be considered a desktop simulator as the entirety of the story is communicated to you by logging in to early era electronic bulletin board systems and reading message posts. The game clearly has a nostalgia for this early era of the internet and wants you to feel that nostalgia too as it plays the entirety of the old dial-up modem sound while you wait for your computer to connect to the message board. It even has you type out the entire phone number for your modem and makes you keep track of your logins and names of different bulletin boards.
One of the most interesting creative choices Digital makes is that you only see the messages and replies of other people, but never what your character types. It's a neat way of engaging the player and your creativity when you read a response message and then try to infer what your character must have typed. In order to keep up with the story, you also need to pay close attention to the names of the people you're chatting with in various message board forums and any information they give you as you may need this to progress further in the game. Thankfully, the game keeps an archive of all messages you received so you can go back and re-read any important information if you find yourself stuck. And you WILL find yourself stuff in this game, which I feel was one of my biggest frustrations with Digital. It's an interesting story and I felt the pacing kept being slowed by repeated nostalgia trips which eventually become annoyances when listening to the modem connecting sound effect and typing out usernames and passwords to various forums over and over. The peak of my annoyance with this weird pacing came when I downloaded a virus in the game that obscured the text on my screen and made it nearly impossible to tell what I was doing. I couldn't really tell what the point of this part of the game was, it really just seemed like Digital was getting in the way of itself
Summary
Digital is a quirky visual novel with a lot of nostalgia for the late 80s. It has some self imposed pacing issues in an otherwise interesting and and novel form of story presentation. I'm not sure if this game really has a good soundtrack, but "Paper Dolls" is one of the most catchy tunes you will hear in a video game. I'm not even sure where this plays in game. Anyway, your mileage with Digital will likely depend on whether you find this game's constant throwbacks to the technology of the late 80s charming or tedious. I think I fall into the latter camp, but this is still worth a look if visual novels are your thing
You can download Digital: A Love Story for free here
I just finished Thirty Flights of Loving and I'm not sure what I just played. I do know that it's a roughly 10-15 minute experience telling a story about spies... carrying out a heist? ...I think? What I do know is that it was created by Brendon Chung, the one-man team behind Blendo Games who is also responsible for Flotilla, Atom Zombie Smasher and the upcoming Quadrilateral Cowboy. Thirty Flights of Loving (TFOL) was created as part of a Kickstarter campaign to support the Idle Thumbs podcast, of which I am a frequent listener. According to Chung, TFOL was an excercise in creating a game that tells a story without any dialogue. TFOL is certinaly a realization of that concept, but I don't think it's very successful in telling a clear and understandable story
Part of the problem here is that in order to get the whole picture of what's going on in TFOL, you had to have played some of Chung's previous games. TFOL opens by announcing that it's the sequel to a game called Gravity Bone, which is jarring to anyone (myself included) who wasn't aware of Gravity Bone and was expecting TFOL to be a standalone experience. I found TFOL to be a pretty hard and confusing game to parse through. Part of it is the lack of any dialogue, part of it is the smash cuts and non-linear presentation of the story, and part of it is the expectation that the audience has also played Gravity Bone. By doing a bit of research and also watching an excellent video by Errant Signal, I was able to find out that Gravity Bone is part of Chung's long running series of games called "Citizen Abel". Now I'm not sure if playing all of the other Citizen Abel games helps TFOL make more sense, but that's a lot to expect your audience to do espiecially considering some of the older Citizen Abel games are Quake II and Half Life II mods. And if having played those games doesn't contribute anything to the understanding of TFOL, why brand it as the sequel to Gravity Bone? I acknowledge that some my confusion with the story may be my own fault for not having played the other games, but this was one of several nits I had to pick with this game.
As I mentioned earlier, the story in TFOL is told non-linearly and without any dialogue at all. As you might guess, it makes the story a bit hard to follow. Even though I played through the game twice to try to piece it together, I still can't come up with a reading on this game that isn't jumbled nonsense. I'd love to hear someone else's interpretation of the story though, if someone can actually manage to follow it and come up with an understanding.
Summary
I'm all for smaller games made for a specific audience, so I feel bad picking on the little guy here. Nevertheless, I found TFOL to be a short and confusing experiment in weird and nonsensical storytelling. I've now written quite a few words about a game that has none.
Firewatch is a game made, in part, by some of the awesome folks over at the Idle Thumbs network who host a bunch of gaming podcasts that I frequently listen to. So being somewhat familiar with some of the folks who made this game had be very excited to see this game released. Director Jake Rodkin and writer Sean Vanaman previously worked at Telltale on The Walking Dead game, so that's the kind of high caliber writing I was expecting from Firewatch. And it delivers - kind of. Firewatch is a narrative heavy exploration game where you the player character take a summer job as a park ranger to escape and diconnect from your own life for a while.
For most intents and purposes, Firewatch is another Walking Simulator, except for when choosing dialogue responses when talking to Deliliah, a fellow park ranger who keeps in contact with you via radio. The dialogue interactions between Henry, the player character, and Delilah are very well written, charming and geniuine in a way that sells the evolution of the relationship between two middle aged people who don't know each other and whose relationship grows only through conversations over a radio. Picking up or looking at certain objects in the game will sometimes generate a prompt to question Delilah about what you're looking at which can be informative or humorous or reveal aspects of Henry or Delilah's characters. Firewatch can hit a range of emotions from quiet and metitative to tense and suspenseful. It's a game that has you pondering events of the plot, or mulling over things Deliliah is saying all while exploring the wilderness.
The excellent characters and writing had me hooked and this seemed like it would be a game I would fall in love with up until I got to the ending. The ending to the game comes rather abruptly and leaves a lot of plot threads unaddressed or explained unsatisfactorily. It appears as though Campo Santo ran out of time during development and possibly weren't able to include some of the content that would have neatly wrapped up these story threads. But as it stands, these threads don't end up connecting or leading anywhere and the ending of the game feels abrupt and unsatisfying. Still, the first two thirds of the game are engaging and well written, so if you're up for a walk in the woods that you know won't take you anywhere, check out Firewatch
As I've written before, I prefer my sports games to be fantastical as opposed to realistic. If I want to play a "realistic" sport, I'll just go outside and actually play it. But when I want to play a game of soccer with flying rocket powered RC cars, I'm coming to Rocket League
Really all you need to know about Rocket League is "soccer with flying rocket powered RC cars". And that's what's brilliant about Rocket League's design: simplicity. It's easy to grasp the mechanics and understand what you need to do to win the game. But there's still an incredible amount of depth and skill required in mastering these mechanics. Controlling your car is easy, but learning how to manipulate the ball can be difficult. The ball is essentially a large, low gravity physics object and learning how to strike the ball so it goes where you want it to can be a bit frustrating for new players. After learning how to strike the ball, the next challenge in the Rocket League meta game is learning where to position your car in different situations so you can be prepared when your teammate crosses the ball over to you and you can take that game winning shot on goal.
Learning when to use your rocket fuel is also crucial step on the way to becoming a Rocket League master. Newer players may be tempted to constantly burn through their fuel in order to get to the ball first - which in my experience can be a valid strategy. There are several glowing powerup pads scattered throughout the field that will refill your rocket fuel when you drive over them, so it's often tempting to use your fuel very aggressively. But I've also found having some spare fuel to intercept an opponent's shot on goal or to take a shot of your own when the ball bounces your way can be the difference between victory and defeat.
After playing several hours against the CPU just trying to get the hang of the game, playing against others online was initially a little intimidating. But the Rocket League matchmaking system seemed to work pretty well and I found that I was being pared with and against players of similar skill level pretty often. Playing online even supports local split screen, so you and a friend in the same room can join a team together and take on the internet. Rocket League supports 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 matches. I've mostly only palyed 2v2 and 3v3 and I think 3v3 is my favorite. 4v4 can feel crowded, 2v2 can feel empty, and although I haven't tried it, I'd imagine 1v1 would just feel gimmicky. Although it's not something I'm personally interested in, there's also a decent infrastructure with tiered rankings in place for those who want to play this game competitively as well
Rocket League Video Review
Summary
Rocket League is a great execution of an awesome idea. It reminds me what's great about my favorite competitive games: it's easy to pick up and play, anyone can learn it. But it takes time and practice to really master this game.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is the mouthful of a title given to developer Asteroid Base's inaugural game. I actually got to preview this at PAX Prime earlier this year and it was one of the most popular titles in the indie area and with good reason. Lovers is a cooperative space exploration game where two players must cooperate to man various stations on a spaceship to navigate through space and rescue little space critters. In order to complete a level, a certain number of little space critters has to be rescued for the exit to be unlocked but if you and your partner are feeling like completionists, you can collect all of the critters in each stage to get access to different model ships and unlock other powerups faster. The locations of the critters and the entire world as a whole are totally differently systematically generated on each run, giving every playthrough a fresh feel. Once you find a critter, usually some small challenge has to be completed before you can rescue them. For example, you may have to fight several waves of enemies, escape an explosion or fight a mini boss.
There are various stations to man on each ship including weapons, shields, engines and a powerful yamato cannon weapon. There are several campaigns that are made up of 4 levels and a final boss fight. Each level offers upgrade crystals that you can install in your systems that will persist throughout the campaign. Deciding which crystals to place in which systems is initially a fun experimental learning process, but I've found once you know what the crystal combinations do, you usually fall into a pattern of upgrading that results in a familiar ship layout each time. But there are also several ship layouts to unlock in the game, each with their own stats and quirky gameplay rules. For instance, there's one unlockable ship that constantly rotates around while you play, making locating and controlling your character within the ship quite a challenge, but as a tradeoff, the ship is also immune to terrain damage. I'm a sucker for these kinds of unlockable gameplay variations and this game reminded me a bit of my favorite FTL from the space exploration and battles right down to the unlockable ships. Obviously the gameplay is nowhere close to the same, but there are similarities to be drawn between the two roguelike space exploration games
There are only two crew members, making coordination and teamwork a key to success in this game. Communication with your partner is necessary and coming up with a good strategy is vital so that you and your teammate aren't running to the same stations to man the same systems. Once you get that strategy established and you and your partner know how to run the ship like seasoned space travelers, it's a really neat feeling. But it's also just as fun to yell and scream at your partner when things are going horribly wrong and your ship is about to explode
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime Video Review
Summary
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime offers the best experiences for couch co-op play. It's conceptually simple to learn and easy to pick up and play. But there's still a decent amount of strategy, skill and depth to be found here as well, and applying these strategies skill and depth of understanding of the game is especially necessary in the later levels where the difficulty gets ratcheted up quite a bit. I really enjoyed this game; it's one of the best couch cooperative experiences I've had. If you and a friend are looking for something to play, you can't go wrong with Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
I like the Mother series well enough. I actually preferred Mother 3 over Mother 2 (a.k.a. Earthbound in the U.S.). Both of those games construct a fun and wacky world populated with lovably silly enemies but despite the goofy nature of their settings, they still both manage to pull off well written characters in an emotionally charged story. Underneath the layers of American culture parody and just general wackiness, there's still direct messages from the game's authors commenting on human life and friendships and other similar topics. Experiencing the wackiness and interesting stories of those games was my favorite thing about them. My least favorite part was the combat. Aside from the often humorous in-battle text, these games featured pretty standard and simple RPG combat systems. Mother 3 tried to mix this up a bit by awarding players bonus damage for attacking with the rhythm of the music (think Crypt of the Necrodancer), but I still didn't really find the combat system that interesting. Especially with the amount of grinding that these games practically require you to do before being able to advance to the next area. It felt like the combat was getting in the way of the excellent story, rather than complimenting it.
So now fast forward 10 years from Mother 3 to Toby Fox's Undertale which strongly evokes the Mother series visually, musically, thematically, and even directly at some points in the game. Like the Mother games, you play as a young kid wearing a striped shirt exploring a weird and dangerous world filled with wacky monsters. Thankfully, one of the big deviations from the Mother games is the unique combat system found in Undertale. Undertale's combat presents the player with an interesting twist which is that you actually don't have to kill any of the monsters in the game. If you choose to fight monsters, you'll be faced with a timing mechanic similar to something you might find in one of the Paper Mario games. But an alternative to fighting is using the "act" menu which allows you to talk to or interact with the monsters to finish the encounter without killing them. This usually plays out as a bit of a puzzle where you meed figure out the right combination of actions to pacify the enemy. Regardless of which of these two actions you choose, you'll be faced with a "bullet hell"-like system when you defend and the monster attacks. Different monsters have different attack patterns, so memorizing how to dodge them is it's own fun mini-game
Also created by Toby Fox, Undertale's soundtrack is an absolute delight. It's a mix of chiptunes, synths and the occasional live instrument and echoes various other RPG soundtracks from Final Fantasy to Earthbound. My favorites are Ruins which sounds like it could fit in any RPG ever, Another Medium which at times sounds like it's trying to evoke Thousand Year Door's X-Naut Fortress, Snowy, which perfectly sets the mood for walking through a winter forest, CORE which is a rockin' electronic dance tune, Death by Glamour which is a variation on the aforementioned CORE track, and ASGORE which sounds like appropriate epic RPG final boss music. For more examples of what I believe to be music references to other games, listen to Dummy! (which I believe to be an "Off" reference) Alphys' Theme (which I believe to be another Paper Mario reference), Amalgam (which sounds very Earthbound-y to me) and Oh! One True Love (which is undoubtedly a reference to Final Fantasy VI's opera scene). The whole soundtrack is really, really solid and I fell in love with it almost instantly
As neat as the combat is an even as lovingly crafted as the soundtrack is, the real star of Undertale is the story. The characters are very memorable and endearing and the quality of writing here is top notch. The way Undertale builds expectation and then throws you a twist just when you think you've got things figured out is masterful. It's rare when games can make me laugh, and I usually count it as a success if a game can tell a joke and even get me to crack a smile. Undertale had me laughing out loud on several occasions. It handles the serious, somber, relaxing, strange and horrifying moments in the story just as well as the humor. It's so rare when a game can hit all these narrative notes as well as Undertale.
Undertale Video Review
Summary
Undertale is one of the best and RPGs I've played in years. I found it to be not only an homage to, but an evolution and improvement on blueprint established by the Mother series. It's not a systematically deep RPG with layers of strategy or anything like that. But what it does do is use game systems to tell a well written story with endearing characters full of memorable moments. It also has a soundtrack that leaves a lasting impact almost as big as its characters. Undertale's unique battle system keeps players engaged dodging various projectiles in a bullet-hell like frenzy on defense while giving the player an option of a timing based fighting system, or a non-violent puzzle to resolve combat. Depending on your actions in battle, Undertale adapts acknowledges your actions in the story as well, which gives real weight to the decisions you make in the game. It's such a smart game and I enjoyed every second I played of it. I finished my first playthough in one sitting and am currently halfway through a second. I'll likely play through this a third time as well since there's just so many cool easter eggs and little things to learn about the game's story that you inevitably miss in one single playthrough. All fans of RPGs and good storytelling need to play this game. This was one of my absolute favorites of 2015 so far this year.
Davey Wreden (Everything Unlimited Ltd.) - 2015 - PC
Davey Wreden, who co-created The Stanley Parable, a game which I absolutely adored for its smart deconstruction and examination of game design, has a new game out. His new game, The Beginner's Guide, seems very similar to The Stanley Parable at first glace. Both fall under the sometimes derogatory genre of "walking simulator". Both begin by dropping the player in a foreign environment with little or no context or introductory story elements. And both have a narrator who serves as the main storyteller and provides some context to what you're doing in the game. And that's about where the similarities end. Players who enjoyed The Stanley Parable's quirky sense of humor should know that The Beginner's Guide has a very different tone and there's not many jokes or things that will make you laugh in the game. It's a more serious and thought provoking experience that invites its players to think analytically not only about the games they play, but the creators that make the games they play.
The Beginner's Guide begins on a custom Counterstrike map where Davey Wreden, the game's creator, introduces himself as the narrator. He explains that the custom Counterstrike map, and every level other and short game that appears in The Beginner's Guide were all created by a developer named CODA who retired a few years ago from making games. Wreden, who claims he was influenced and inspired by CODA's work has complied many of his short games together into one mega-game - The Beginner's Guide - and has shared them on the internet in order to pique interest in CODA's work and hopefully coax him back into making games.
CODA's levels and games start simple, beginning with a basic custom Counterstrike map and then progress to more thematically complex games that explore conveying emotion through level design and dialogue with NPCs. Wreden accompanies your exploration with narrative commenting on the level design, CODA's design intentions and development process and also continuously elaborates on the nature of the relationship between CODA and himself. The Beginner's Guide is a fascinating game to play if you have any interest at all in game design and it really gets you to think a lot about the design process and the fact that developers themselves are human beings and how their emotional state can affect a game's design and also vice versa.
The Beginner's Guide Video Review
Summary
The Beginner's Guide is a solid follow-up to The Stanley Parable. Although it's tonally and thematically different, it's still just as interesting as The Stanley Parable and I found it to be even more thought provoking. Check this out if you want to experience a more "mature" version of the Stanley Parable, or to see some really neat level design and emotional storytelling
I don't like jumpscares. At least not the ones in movies, television or games. Strangely, I enjoy events like Universal's Halloween Horror Nights which are entirely predicated jumpscares, but there's at least a high production value and good spooky atmosphere present in the many scare houses and other attractions at the park. And that, to me, is the key. I think jumpscares are at their most effective when a good atmosphere is constructed that makes you a little nervous and on edge. Then just when you least suspect it - BAM! Something pops out and scares you. And that's it, now you've got your audience terrified. It's tempting to keep going back to the well and get more jumpscares over and over, but each subsequent jumpscare loses some effectiveness as they become more frequent and expected - especially in the case of Halloween Horror Nights where something pops out at you every 5 seconds. Which now that I think of it is probably why that event doesn't get to me. But most games/movies/TV shows know how to use jumpscares effectively, which is when I start not to like them. I just don't enjoy being scared that way... Which is why I've been hesitant to play Five Nights at Freddy's for a while. It's a game entirely predicated on jumpscares and it uses them effectively
The premise of this game is that you are a security guard who takes a night shift at a restaurant known as Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria. During your shift, it's revealed that the establishment's mascot animatronics have come to life and of course are trying to murder you. Your job is to last from midnight to 6am which is approximately 8 minutes of real time. In order to complete the game, you have to survive five consecutive nights, hence the name of the game. My question is: after surviving one night and knowing the animatronics are homicidal, why would you ever come back? Anyway, you're instructed that the animatronics only move in the dark when you're not watching them, so you're safe as long as you keep an eye on their locations. Your player is stuck at their guard post so your only defenses are checking security cameras, turning the lights on in the dark hallways adjacent to your guard post and closing the electronic doors, but each of these actions consumes electrical power, of which you have limited supply. If you run out of power, you're totally defenseless and more than likely are going to get jumpscared. This game is particularly effective at using audio, or more specifically the lack thereof, to create atmosphere. It's really unnerving to only hear the quiet humming of the security cameras or the buzzing of the florescent lights while your're waiting for what seems like an inevitable loud and disruptive jumpscare.
Since people love to watch other people get scared, this game got a huge boost in popularity from "let's play" videos on YouTube. This first game in the series was relatively critically and commercially successful and has spawned 3 sequels with an upcoming RPG spinoff as well as a movie adaptation from Warner Brothers pictures coming soon. All of this is a little much for me, especially considering the game came out only a little more than a year ago. Don't get me wrong, I liked the game well enough, but having 3 sequels and a movie deal in less than a year seems a bit excessive, no?
Summary
Five Nights at Freddy's is a game that knows how to use jumpscares effectively. It creates a tense atmosphere and keeps the player busy tracking the locations of multiple homicidal animatronics which pop out to scare the player when least expected. I think it's a good enough game, but this game's relative popularity has always been a little confusing to me... I suppose most other people a good jumpscare a lot more than I do.
If you've been reading these reviews for a while now, you've likely realized that I'm a bit of a video game music nerd. I stumbled across this game when I learned that one of my all-time favorite composers, Tim Follin, had returned to the video games industry since "retiring" from it in 2005 after his amazing talents had been wasted on mostly unknown or poorly received games. It was quite to my surprise that Follin was returning to the industry to work on a game not only as a composer, but as a designer and writer as well. So how does a game made by someone with no design experience who's been absent from the industry for 10 years play? It plays about how you'd expect, for better or for worse. It's not all bad though, Contradiction is charming in a unique way that I think can only be accomplished by a first-time designer who, as far as I can tell, has been isolated from the popular design trends, progressions and philosophies that have developed in the last decade or two.
Contradiction is a full FMV murder mystery game straight out of the 90s which I admit would have been way more eye-rolling if I hadn't just played the excellent "Her Story". You play as Fredrick Jenks, a British detective who is tasked with investigating a murder in a small fictional village. All locations in the village are essentially still frames, even though some are animated, and you can move between the frames by clicking on UI arrows displayed on the screen which always triggers a short movie of Jenks strolling to where you guided him. While interviewing suspects, Jenks has a list of topics he can ask about which when selected, loads an an FMV scene where Jenks grills the suspect about whatever you selected which often then reveals more topics to ask about. The main gameplay mechanic in Contradiction is to find pieces of the suspect's story that don't quite add up or are downright contradictions, hence the title. Most of the contradictions are pretty logical, but some are a little more of a stretch or are otherwise debatable. Thankfully, this game is pretty generous with hints and gives them to you in a way that doesn't make you feel stupid or like you're cheating. Jenks can go to the phone booth and call his chief who will generally point you in the correct direction to progress the game or also may hint at contradictions suspects have made.
Follin, whose composing career work dates all the way back to the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum days, also composed the music in Contradiction. It's not quite as in-your-face as some of my other favorites of his like this or this or this. It's more appropriately subtle and blends in perfectly as Jenks traverses the village looking for clues and interviewing suspects. Aside from the music, the extremely cheesy acting is another standout in Contradiction, especially with the actor portraying Jenks who loves to smirk at his suspects with his trademark goofy deductive grin. In fact, Jenks is so excitably overanimated and the acting in general is so cheesy that it makes me wonder if it was an intentional directorial choice or if Follin actually thought his actors were delivering believable performances. In any case, I'm happy about it. The delightfully cheesy acting seems to fit the style of this game perfectly as does the music.
But in addition to the cheesy acting, there are several other strange design choices and signs of low budget production you should be at least aware of before playing this game, especially if that sort of thing bothers you. I've heard this game was riddled with UI problems at launch that have since been corrected, but one holdover is the strange combination of topics Jenks can ask about with the physical items he's carrying into one functional grouping. Your items and your topics appear together, but you can't use a topic like an item and most items you can't bring up in conversation, making this a puzzling design choice. I've also encountered a bug a few times where none of the suspect's answers were selectable as contradictions and I had to leave and re-enter the scene in order to fix it. (Minor spoilers ahead). The budgetary constraints this game was made were apparent in the poor sound quality in the FMV scenes but especially obvious in the ending to this game. The latter half of the game really seems as though its building up to something as the plot starts sprinkling in elements of the occult and mysticism. But it's all thrown away at the last second when the murderer is revealed and the game just ends quickly and unceremoniously - but not before strangely setting itself up for a sequel. I later read that this abrupt ending was apparently due to financial constraints and a sequel would only be possible with enough support of the first game
Summary
It has design problems, bugs, obvious budget problems and wonderfully cheesy acting but I really enjoyed Contradiction in spite of itself. It was a flashback to the old puzzle games I played as a kid. All things considered, Contradiction is a pretty good first attempt at making a game for someone who has no experience doing this sort of thing. At the very least, I'm glad Follin is back doing things in the games industry and I hope he gets the funding and support to make a sequel so we can see what lessons were learned and what improvements can be made
I've returned from my very first Pax Prime and it was amazing. I demoed Dark Souls 3, Final Fantasy XV, Mario Maker, Rock Band 4 and played many other indie games and met some of their developers. It was a really cool convention and I'd recommend it to anyone who's really interested in games as long as you don't mind long lines. One of the things I did to pass the time in these long lines, plane trips and other downtime was download and play a game called 80 Days.
80 Days is a game that re-imagines Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel "Around the World in 80 Days" as a choose your own adventure style video game. For those unfamiliar with the novel, the book tells the story of an Englishman named Phileas Fogg who makes a wager to the tune of 20,000 pounds that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. In the game, you play the role of Phileas Fogg's valet, Passepartout, and you manage finances and make decisions on how to plot your route around the globe. The setting still takes place in the 1870s, but now everything is steampunk for some reason. It was kind of an odd creative choice to rewrite the world this way. It didn't do anything for me, but then again I've never understood the appeal of steampunk.
From a gameplay standpoint, this game is sort of like a cross between the Oregon Trail and maybe FTL, but it's more narrative focused than either of those games. It's really more of an interactive novel and it never really gets too "gamey". Most of your interaction will come through picking your character's dialogue from a few choices. It's probably the largest, most involved example of a choose your own adventure book. You can pick your destinations from a map kind of FTL style, but you have to weigh the pros and cons of each decision. Each route has a monetary cost, a time cost, and a "comfortability" cost. In addition to managing finances, you also have to keep an eye on Fogg's health which may start to decrease if you take wearisome routes, or don't stop to rest enough. You can also chat up strangers in each town which may unlock new routes or faster/cheaper routes on your map. Some conversations may even extend the narrative in a surprising way. Events in the game occur randomly as well, so each playthough is guaranteed to be different, even if you take the same routes through the same cities. This is perhaps 80 Days' most interesting feature, as it grants this game a high amount of replayability.
I can remember reading the novel in middle school, I think, and little bits and pieces of it came back to me as I was playing through the game. Most of the story is entirely new, and totally random and also based on the decisions you make, but there are lots of little winks and nods to the novel like the characters being very aware that traveling eastward with the sun vs. westward against the sun will gain them extra time (Spoiler alert for a 150 year old novel). It's a fairly well written game, which is good because there really isn't too much else about this game. The "gamey" parts of 80 Days feel somewhat ancillary to the story; they exist in more of a supporting role. The spotlight of 80 Days is on the story, not the gameplay
80 Days is a well written interactive novel, but it's a game that expects its players to draw enjoyment from its plot, so you might not care for this game if you come into it expecting a strong gameplay hook. At the very least, it's an interesting example of the concept of a choose your own adventure book taken to its absolute farthest point. I personally accomplished my journey around the globe in 68 days, easily winning Fogg's wager with ample time to spare. Check this game out if you'd like to experience your own version of Jules Verne's classic novel.
I've played a few of the games that are sometimes referred to dismissively as "walking simulators" by some. Journey and Proteus totally didn't connect with me while Gone Home came close. I thought The Stanley Parable was absolutely brilliant. Dear Esther, which probably can be credited with popularizing this genre, is no Stanley Parable but it did resonate more strongly with me than most of the other similar games I've played that fall into this grouping.
Dear Esther is a game about exploration. You explore an island by yourself and are occasionally accompanied by voiceover dialogue that elaborates on bits of the story. The story that is presented in the voiceovers is somewhat vague, and I'm pretty sure that was an intentional design decision. I later found out that on subsequent replays of Dear Ester, the bits of dialogue that play are actually randomly chosen, so you might hear one voiceover on one given playthough, but not on the next. Or vice versa. I'm okay with this decision to deliberately obfuscate the story, because I think you can piece together enough information from whatever dialogue is randomly chosen and combine that with the knowledge you gain by observing and exploring to come up with the gist of the story, even if some of its details are fuzzy. It's a game I found narratively similar to Dark Souls, of all games. While there may or may not be an absolute truth to Dear Esther's story, I found myself filling in the deliberate vagaries of the story with my own imagination, similar to what I had done in Dark Souls.
Dear Esther got its start in 2008 as a Half Life 2 mod, and was later re-released as a standalone game in 2012. I played the 2012 remake and found the audiovisuals to be top notch. Both hearing and seeing the wind rustling through the grass and the waves crashing on the shore really helped immerse me in this world in a way that none of the other "walking simulators" had done previously. I let my mind wander with the strange details of the story and tried to piece it together while simultaneously drinking in the high fidelity audiovisual presentation
Dear Esther Video Review
Summary
"Walking Simulators" are a pretty niche appeal. I think this game does it right though. High quality graphics and an interesting story were enough to keep me engaged throughout the experience, though I can definitely see those not used to this sort of thing finding it boring, or the vagueness of its story frustrating. It's definitely not one of my favorite games ever, but it's a neat experience if you're up for something different
Lethal League is what would happen if you crossed baseball and dodgeball and then sprinkled in a little bit of Super Smash Bros. Sound crazy? It is a little bit. Allow me to elaborate: The point of Lethal League is to hit the opposing player(s) with the ball without getting hit yourself. The ball starts off slowly, then gains speed through continuous hits and bouncing off of the walls like in Pong or Arkanoid. You can alter the trajectory of your hits by holding the corresponding direction on the joystick when you hit the ball. You can greatly accelerate the ball's speed by jumping in the air and performing a "slam" which rockets the ball back down to the ground. Each of the 6 playable characters in the game have special traits and abilities that can alter the ball's velocity, timing or trajectory to fake out opposing players. The game can be played 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2 or free for all style, similar to Smash Bros.
This game also reminds me somewhat of Divekick. The game is very accessible, fun and easy to pick up and play, but I'm a little skeptical about it's long term playerbase retention. I confess I haven't played too much of this game, but I'm suspicious that Lethal League may not have the mechanical depth to keep players coming back for more. Even if it may be somewhat lacking in staying power, Lethal League is still a fun and fast-paced game to pick up and compete with friends or strangers online.
Also of note is the game's awesome soundtrack which falls musically somewhere between Hotline Miami and Jet Set Radio. Like Hotline Miami, the soundtrack is a compilation from several artists that still manages to have a unified sound. Of note is "Scream" by Bignic, "Ordinary Days" by Klaus Veen and "Urabon" by Grillo. I know I've said this before, but I love when game soundtracks have a unique sound like this. Not enough games do that.
Lethal League Video Review
Summary
Lethal League is a fun, fast-paced and accessible spin on the fighting game genre. I'm a little skeptical about this game's lasting depth, but you should play it yourself to decide where this falls on the scale between novelty and legitimate deep competition. At least I hope you'll be able to agree it has an awesome soundtrack
Her Story is a very unusual in that it's a full motion video game that was released in 2015. Don't worry, the FMV aspect of this game works really well, it's totally not cheesy and the actress in the game does a fairly decent job selling her performance. After you complete this game, it's hard to imagine Her Story not being a FMV game, I'm not sure it would have worked any other way. Her Story was made independently by Sam Barlow, who was previously the writer and designer of both Silent Hill Origins and Silent Hill Shattered Memories. This game, if you can even call it a game, shares a lot of the interesting ideas and creativity found in those Silent Hill titles
The premise of Her Story is that you are digging through a corrupted database of video interviews from a murder case in the early nineties. The database has been corrupted and fragmented, so you can't watch the interview clips in chronological order, but each video clip has been completely text transcribed, so you can search each clip by any word that occurs in the clip. So for instance, if you search "murder", all of the video clips that contain the word "murder" are returned to you. The other catch is that you can only see the first 5 results that are returned to you, so you'll quickly learn to be clever with your searches.
The story opens up pretty quickly, giving you some names of important characters or important events to search, but the interesting thing here is that the story is presented totally non-linearly. Somehow though, through that I'm sure was many hours of playtesting and clever organization of what words occur in what clips, the story seems to unfold in just the right way, even if you watch the clips out of order. There's many cool twists and turns in the plot and figuring out whodunnit, how they did it and why they did it is really interesting and rewarding. There's no central gameplay mechanics here, only tracking the mystery in your head and coming up with terms to search then watching the video clips. So if you're looking for a gamey game, Her Story probably won't be your thing. But if you like a clever murder mystery presented in an unconventional fashion, you should totally check this game out
Her Story Video Review:
Summary
I really enjoyed Her Story, it was one of those experiences that keeps you thinking about it long after it's over. The story and its twists are clever and I enjoyed the unconventional presentation. If searching and watching video clips doesn't sound fun to you, you may want to steer clear of Her Story. But if you can let yourself get engrossed in the story and sorting out its mysteries, you'll have a fun time with this game
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
You may remember this game from its brief demo at E3 last year (2014) where a white squirrel thing was shown jumping through beautiful scenery. It was one of the most visually memorable trailers I saw at E3 last year. And I'm happy to report the game is just as strikingly beautiful as its trailer. Ori and the Blind forest is a Metroidvania style platformer and is the first game from indie developer Moon Studios. I suspect Moon Studios is comprised of at least a couple industry veterans as this game is beautiful, very well designed and oozes quality.
Before being published by Microsoft, Ori and the Blind Forest was developed in the Unity engine over the course of four years. Moon Studios cited the Rayman and Metroid franchises as influences for these games, and that's immediately obvious in both the high quality artwork (Rayman) and gameplay (Metroid). I'm personally a big fan of Metroidvania style gameplay, but since the Metroid series is somewhat MIA right now and Castlevania seems to be content making God of War clones, I've had to turn to other games like Ori to get my Metroidvania fix
If you've never played a Metoidvania style game before, the game is usually set in a large, non-linear game world with an emphasis on exploration and finding secrets. They often feature some sort of blend of platforming and combat, and often have light RPG elements where you can progress and improve your player character. Ori chooses to go somewhat light on the combat aspect (most enemies can be defeated by simply mashing the attack button), but instead focus most of the difficulty in the game around platforming. I didn't find the combat in this game that engaging or challenging at all, but there were a few segments that demanded perfect execution of precision platforming in a limited amount of time and messing up required repeating the entire platforming segment. It never felt TOO frustrating, but it was close.
Aside from this game's striking visuals, the first unique thing I noticed about it is that Ori will let you save nearly anywhere you like and at any time you like, provided there are no enemies nearby and you also have enough "spirit energy", which this game uses as currency for saving. Since the player can save anywhere and anytime they wish, Ori is free to ramp up the difficulty of the platforming to a pretty high level and also introduce enemies and hazards that can kill you in one hit. But it never feels unfair because you only lose as much progress since you last saved. I found I had enough spirit energy to comfortably save about every 30 seconds. It's kind of the Super Meat Boy effect. The game is quite difficult and you'll die often, but it never becomes too frustrating or feels too unfair because you only lose about 5-10 seconds of progress and then the game immediately brings you right back to try again.
Ori and the Blind Forest Video Review
Summary
If you like Metroid or Castlevania styled games, or games like Guacamelee!, for instance, you may want to give Ori a try. Or if you dig really artsy and visually striking games, Ori also applies. I really enjoyed my time with Ori and the Blind Forest and am looking forward to see what's next from Moon Studios
Enemy Mind is an interesting take on the arcade style space shooter games like Galaga. In most arcade style space shoot-'em ups, you'll pilot your ship through a level, all the while collecting powerups or weapons that may make your craft stronger. In Enemy Mind, your ship has the ability to take over and "transfer consciousnesses" into any other enemy ship. Each craft also has a limited ammo supply, so you'll usually want to expend your entire ammo clip before transferring over to another ship. This creates a gameplay style where the optimal strategy is also the most fun one: blow all your ammo trying to kill everything on the screen, transfer to another ship, rinse and repeat
The playstyles and designs of the enemy ships are varied and interesting enough to make it exciting each time you encounter a new type of enemy craft. It makes the player want to take it over immediately and experiment around with how much armor the craft has and how its weapon systems work. Some craft are agile with fast firing, low damage weapons. Some craft are slower with huge area of effect damage style explosions. Some craft are themselves weapons and are designed to be torpedoed into other craft to drill through their hulls. There's also an accompanying story that is played after each stage in the single player campaign, but I almost entirely ignored it. It was doled out in little text lines one at a time and it seemed mostly forgettable and inconsequential.
Summary
Enemy Mind isn't a revolutionary arcade style shooter, but it's a lot of fun. If you like games like Galaga, you'll have a good time with Enemy Mind. Navigating the bullet hell that the enemies throw at you while throwing back a bullet storm of your own while simultaneously possessing and experimenting with new craft and different playstyles felt really good. The boss battles are challenging and unique. There's also a couch co-op multiplayer mode, but I unfortunately haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet. This seems like the kind of game that would be fun to screw around in for a little while with another friend. I wouldn't go out of your way to buy it immediately, but it's worth a look if you find it discounted on a Steam sale or something like that
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
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
