Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Holy crap. It’s been so long since I’ve played an FPS that wasn’t poisoned by Call of Duty that I’d forgotten that FPS’s could actually be fun. Enter Castle Wolfenstein.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein may be one of the last 3-D shooters before all the sins of modern FPS’s damned the genre to eternal suffrage in Hell. This came from an age where the single player mode of an FPS is actually fun in addition to the multiplayer. You’ll find no recharging health bars, no one-hit-KO-melee-attacks, and no self-absorbed heroics. Instead, the game features things that are, oh I don’t know, actually fun. How does it do this? Easy. 4 steps.

Eat.

Sleep.

Reload.

Repeat.

This is a magic rhythm that 9 times out of 10 makes a good FPS. It’s kind of like what they say about percussion–if the you can chant, “Makin’ money, makin’ money,” then your beat is probably good. The same goes with FPS’s.

Step 1: Eat. Grab all the powerups you can.

Step 2: Sleep. Give your enemies the eternal rest they deserve.

Step 3: Reload. Put more gun in your gun. Gun is good.

Step 4: Do it again.

Any time you are not doing this in an FPS it is generally a bad time. Running around aimlessly because the level design is confusing? Bad time. Standing around listening to NPCs talk? Bad time. Shooting a man in the face? Awesome.

“But you can soak up more bullets than a Shamwow! In realistic modern-day shooters, death happens in the blink of an eye because it’s a man’s game.”

Cool. You enjoy playing half of your game on the loading screen. I’ll enjoy twice the action.

“Where are the epic cutscenes? Where are are the heroics?”

Well, while you’re watching the game play itself trying to make you feel like a hero, I’ll be out be playing the game actually being a hero.

“It’s unrealistic how quickly you run around and kill dozens of soldiers. You can’t do that in real life.”

That’s what makes it a game. Its departure from reality is part of what makes it fun. If I wanted the experience of what it actually felt like to run around and shoot people I’d go out and do it. …Wait. What did I just say?

“But the graphics are as ugly as sin.”

*ahem* well you see, back in 2002… actually you’re right about that one.

The graphics strike uncanny valley hard; the inevitable fate of every game whose visual design tries to emulate reality. Frankly though, you’ll be moving so fast through the levels that you’ll never care. The music isn’t anything fantastic either. It’s probably best if you mute it and go with “Bad Motherfucker” from Biting Elbows, or “Bang The Drum All Day” from Todd Rundgren or something along those lines. It’ll definitely improve the experience; otherwise, tons of fun.

Don’t be fooled by me putting this in Tier 2–it only goes here because in spite of being a strong title, it is essentially nothing new, putting the priority of other more unique games above this one. However, you might just find me putting this one in again later, mix-tape blaring on a day when I just feel like gunning people down. In the streets. While they run. Wait, what did I just say again?

Steam Link

Gauntlet™ Slayer Edition

by Chezni

Gauntlet… just… “Gauntlet”… actually, I think it’s Gauntlet™? That’s dumb. You’re dumb WB Games/Arrowhead. Wait. WB Games made this? Why the crap is WB Games making Gauntlet?

Gauntlet™ is the newest product of the Gauntlet series assembly line, a game series dating back to 1985. The game has always been about two things–slaying hordes and hordes of monsters and grabbing tons of treasure. I guess Gauntlet™ more or less lives up to that standard. You choose one of 4 classes (5 if you’re a sucker and bought the DLC like me) and jump into a series of dungeons with monsters spawners, gold piled to the ceiling and the occasional guest appearance by death.

Apparently the game is in its “Slayer Edition” now. I gave a good 2 or 3 hours to the game with 3 other friends back when it came out. We really weren’t that impressed. The Slayer Edition is an enhancement from where I last left it, so it’s good to see that the company in charge of its creation cared enough to improve upon it. The most notable difference to me that I appreciated was the introduction of a map that not only showed you your progression through the campaign but made it easy to jump back to the old levels and even complete a few optional levels.

While this game may be more in lines with the original 1985 Gauntlet, I grew up playing Gauntlet Legends and Gauntlet Dark Legacy. I have to say that I miss so many things that were in those titles not the least of which was the booming announcer narrating simple aspects of the game.

“YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE VALLEY OF FIRE.”

“THE THUNDER HAMMER!”

“BLUE WIZARD NEEDS FOOD BADLY.”

It was corny, but I really liked the way it blew everything you were doing over the top. In line with this, the adventure itself was very Conanic, taking you to locations that were built to feel larger than life. You fought off hordes of goblins on steep peaks, dove into volcanic mountains filled with lava, scaled massive medieval castles and fought bosses that felt like they were 100 times bigger than you were. Gauntlet™ by comparison is sort of drab and doesn’t contain the same energy. My memories of dynamic camera angles while traveling through slimy dungons, metallic armories and broken down villages are now replaced with dull temple-like square rooms in a non-changing top-down view.

Gone too are the slew of wacky treasures you could find from the older series–your only pickups are gold, food and potions (and some dumb crown that I can’t figure out). I mean, I guess there are keys but they’re just part of the dungeon; you can’t stockpile them and you don’t use them on chests like in previous titles. Where’s my phoenix? Or Light Amulet? Or Triple Shot? Rapid Fire? Thunder Hammer? Levitation Boots? Time Stop? Shrink Potion? The list went on and on in Legends/Dark Legacy. Half the fun wasn’t just leveling up and getting more stats, it was raiding the treasure stores and hoarding powerups. Loot was piled to the sky and it was fun to swim through it and pick out the ones you liked best. Speaking of leveling up, that too has been removed from Gauntlet™ replacing the usual feeling of gain from slaying a monster with a feeling of “okay, let’s move on to the next one.”

The game still has very tight controls and smooth gameplay though. As always, I chose the wizard–and I have to say that the Wizard himself is perfectly designed. He has a beautiful balance of simplicity and speed while maintaining distinct strategical elements. Basically, he has 3 runes that he can combine on the fly to create 9 spells. The spells diversify the wizard’s repertoire allowing a smart wizard to have the tool to handle any situation. It’s very well balanced to boot–clever and careful use of all the spells is rewarded much more than trying figure out which one is OP and then spamming it. Before the Slayer Edition, I think that this may have been a Tier 3 game, but with the introduction of an endless mode, a rework of the way skills are purchased and its overall decent design puts in Tier 2. It doesn’t capture what I love about the Gauntlet games I grew up playing, but it’s still a decent play.

Steam Link

Might and Magic X – Legacy

by Chezni

Oh mah goodnyess. What is this.

Nostolgia is not a factor for me when I look at the Might & Magic series since I played my first MM only a year ago. Therefore, I would posit that my review of games from the franchise may be less biased than a die-hard fan’s. For the record, I’ve played in its entirety MMVI, which was a whopping 108 hour adventure that while I can’t say was even close to being a perfect game, it was at least a game that I could find certain aspects which held value. MMX on the other hand is a perplexing mess–a failed growth of the franchise that comprises a stagnation of poor choices that pile up on top of each other to create a pointless experience.

Now, often the opening of a game doesnt’ make total sense to the player. Dark Souls 1 and 3 (and to some extent 2) all actually do this purposefully. Watch any of these game’s openings without playing the game, and you’ll have no idea what you just saw. Watch the opening after playing the entire game (and possibly reading a few pages on a wiki) and it will make perfect sense. The thing is though, is that even without making sense, the openings are fun to watch. You don’t need to know who “Nito, First of the Dead” is to enjoy watching a giant skeleton monster with a scythe walk around spreading corruption. You don’t need to know who “Yhorm the Giant” is when he pops up and Kindles himself because he just looks awesome and the mood of the cinematic makes the scene feel exciting. The opening of MMX makes no sense… but lacks any sort of interest or excitement whatsoever. It’s a confusing malaise of a tired narrator bleating out line after line of dialogue concerning the history of a dozen characters that are all introduced and swept away so quickly that you can’t keep track of them and whatever exploit the narrator describes of them is meaningless. It got to a point where I actually started laughing at how ridiculous the opening was becoming–I kept expecting it to end but the moment they wrapped up the 20 second exploit of one character, the narrator switched gears and started talking about another. I have no idea what mood or plot or setting the developers were trying to create with this kickoff to the game but whatever it was it only created a profound sense of boredom and confusion within me.

The best part of the game was creating the characters but even that really wasn’t that great. Traditional to the old MM’s, you set up a party of 4 and stat them up for adventure. For a game where you can only use 4 party members total, there are almost too many classes–12. You can only choose 2 voices for each race’s gender as well, which makes the idea of role-playing a party kind of difficult. Honestly though, this is the least of our worries. Where the game goes South is that they seemed to have kept all the bad things from the older games and got rid of all the good. First off, you move on a grid. This was surprising to me, since one of the interesting parts of MMVI was that you in fact moved free-form. This meant that to a certain degree, platforming became a part of the game, which really made the dungeons and terrain feel open. It also allowed for some interesting puzzle solving that forced you to adapt to a 3-D environment in order to find secret levers, switches, etc. It’s not that a party-based 3-D grid-based RPG is a bad idea–far from it. It’s just that as far as I can tell, the MM games moved away from grids in order to create a more diverse and unique game. A step back to it just feels confining now. No longer can you fly, or swim, or jump up on top of buildings–you’re just stuck on your little grid, moving along at a snail’s pace.

Gone is real-time combat as well. If you didn’t know, in MMVI you had the option of playing the game in a take-turn fashion or fighting in real-time. Typically, this meant that if you were fighting enemies that you knew you could beat easily, you fought them in real-time because it was faster and in some ways a little more fun. If the enemies were strong, you played in take-turn mode so that you could carefully and precisely guide the actions of each of your characters. Back to MMX, you are restricted to take-turn combat only which is just dull. It’s exactly like Grimrock in that the enemies move around in the world on the grid with you, but unlike Grimrock you are forced to freeze in place while they move and vice verse for them.

Quests were a big part of MMVI, but oftentimes if you stumbled upon a dungeon early, you could explore it without needing to have received its quest. In contrast, in MMX I was wandering around clueless in first city where I found a well. The well looked suspicious. I tried to click on the well. I tried to move into the well. I even noticed that the mini-map was telling me that there was something interesting in the square with the well. Turns out, I wasn’t allowed to go into the well until I’d talked to the right guard who was all like, “Hey, let’s go kill spiders in the well.” That’s just stupid, coming from a franchise that previously was comfortable with letting adventurers explore to a large degree at their own will.

Part of the fun of MMVI was seeking out teachers to buff up the skills of all your party members, and eventually training your characters’ abilities up to the Master level which got you some really cool spells and abilities. Characters were limited on what skills they could learn by class but as long as you could learn it, you could achieve master level. Back once again to MMX, your characters are still limited by what skills they can learn but they can only achieve master in a few areas. This means that you’re pretty much locked into what you’ll be doing in the game right when you pick your classes. After that, there will be no free-will in skill growth, no exploratory skill combinations, and no sense of great power at the end of the game. Yes, in some ways by the time I got to the end of MMVI it was a bit silly that everyone was a Master in almost all of their useful skills–but I stress almost. For starters, my characters were level 90 dammit, so I felt justified that they had become masters in their crafts but secondly, in spite of being level 90, there were so many skills available in the game, that there were still plenty of abilities that I was only an Expert in and some still that I was just simply trained in with no title. By confining the player’s skill choice right at the beginning of the game before they’ve had a chance to understand what skills are good for their party, what skills are bad, and what skills are even interesting to them, chances are they are going to end up with skills and abilities that they don’t want or that are bad. Essentially, the only way for them to know which classes they should pick, they will either have to have played your game before, or look it up online–neither of which are an acceptable solution to the problem.

And don’t get me started on the insane number of tutorial pop-up windows that treat you like a moron. I guess it’s my fault for not clicking the “Don’t Show Hints” button earlier, but I kept expecting them to teach me something useful. I guess they thought “rest to regain your HP” was the most useful thing they could tell players.

The last roast is on the combat itself. To be fair, MMVI didn’t really have complicated combat. This would actually be one of my main complaints about the game. Sure there were a lot of spells and things to equip and skills to learn, but combat usually consisted of telling fighters to swing their weapons, and loading up the best spell your mages could cast that wouldn’t immediately drain their entire MP pool and then letting it all rip with the same button push for each character (the “s” key). So, I’ll say it again–intricacies of combat were not MMVI’s strong suite. That being said, if you encountered a stronger foe, you always had a few limited forms of counterplay (run away and shoot, run away and shoot) and unless you got teleported to a room without an exit, you could always run away to fight another day. Both of these things are severely limited in MMX. You can no longer run away from an enemy once it has engaged you in melee combat. While I understand maybe imposing some sort of penalty for leaving a melee attacker’s range makes sense thematically and mechanically (i.e. attacks of opportunity in DnD), but completely removing your ability to escape from a more powerful foe says just one thing to the player “Why didn’t you know exactly the strength of the monsters that you were going to encounter in the dungeon beforehand?” I’ll tell you why. Because I’m not freaking psychic you stupid developer. This creates an illusion of difficulty, since you can and will suddenly will die when you encounter a monster that no matter how intelligently you use your skills and healing consumables you have no chance of winning against. The reason it is an illusion is because there is no counterplay or forgiveness for this “mistake” (at which it is more the mistake of the developer for giving you the option to encounter the monster and then slapping you on the wrist for doing so). You simply have to die, hope that you saved recently and move on. Ultimately, the way that movement has been completely removed from combat makes me feel like I belong to the British army from the colonial era and I long so bad for the guerrilla warfare tactics that the Americans are using.

There’s so much more as well. Theses pictures you see may *look* nice, but don’t be fooled. The textures are of a very low resolution. While I’ve never let graphics get in the way of enjoying a good game, well, this isn’t a good game, and so when I can barely read a town sign because the words on it are all blurry I tend to be a bit cross. I mean, this game came out in 2014–these graphics are practically a generation behind where they should be. I wouldn’t be so hard on this point if the game didn’t A. Come from Ubisoft, a AAA company that is fully capable of better. B. The play-testing time saved by dumbing the game down to a grid should have freed up internal resources in the game company to make the other parts of the game better. C. Legend of Grimrock, a game made by a FOUR man team from FINLAND made a game that was better graphically (and mechanically for that matter). How is that even possible? Music is dull. NPCs are dull. The world is dull. You’re railroaded the moment you start the game by being here on some dumb quest for your master, but in spite of this the only thing you can do at the beginning of the game is wander around, trapped in a dull city forced to take a slew of pointless side-quests simply so you can kill something in an attempt to assuage the tirade of boredom from not being allowed to explore the world you find yourself in. MMX is simply a time-wasting Tier 3 sesspool that Ubisoft crapped out in an attempt to make money off the MM crowd, while completely missing the point and soul of the original franchise, which is actually a pity.

Steam Link

Magicite

by Chezni

Magicite (Completed) Review

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if a crafting game is good or not before you buy it. Ever since the exploding popularity of a certain java-based cube mining game, there has been a splurge of copycat titles desperately trying to ride its coattails of success–whether their game was good or not. Now don’t get me wrong, crafting in video games was a thing long before Minecraft came to the scene–but Minecraft’s viral acclaim created a heavy hand that guided how many of us viewed the nature of crafting in games. After many poor imitations, eventually Terraria would enter the scene, being a strong enough game to stand on its own alongside a world where Minecraft existed–and for several years following its release, the game-designing industry had yet another crafting title that they could mimic, much to the disappointment of many gamers who would go on to purchase these equally cheap knockoffs. Now, it’s not fair to say that Minecraft and Terraria have exclusive rights to 3-D and 2-D crafting games exclusively. After all, certain things about each game naturally lend themselves to logical conclusions that result from the design of a realistic way to obtain the most basic of crafting materials–wood and stone. To say that any other game that has you gathering both these resources is a knockoff of Minecraft or Terraria would be untrue. The problem lies in the simple question of game design: “Are you gathering wood and stones because that is the most logical and satisfying method that the designers structured their game around, or are you gathering wood and stones because that’s the way Minecraft and Terraria did it?” Thus the trial today, is finding a way to sort out the good from the bad–the wheat from the chaff–in a genre where so much refuse is readily available. Magicite, mercifully, genially, is actually good.

To say that this game is unlike Terraria, would be false. You have an axe. You cut down trees to make more axes. You craft a sword. You kill things and hit rocks with pickaxes to get better swords. This is where many of the similarities depart however, as Magicite is actually a scored roguelike, whereupon all your actions are graded and rewarded at the inevitable end of your life, accordingly. The game is incredibly easy to learn but rewards increased player skill. My first life lasted 17 seconds. I got trampled by a boar. Now I can make it about 10 minutes in, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but makes me feel like a damn hero. Even though the game is difficult, it’s the good kind of difficult. Each time you die you understand that it was a consequence of your own actions. It’s easy to understand why you died, and what you could have probably done to avoid it. With each death, you can dive right back in better prepared–not because your character is a higher level, but because you as a player are wiser to the world that you encounter.

In spite of being a roguelike, crafting is a staple of the gameplay–and much to my awe, Magicite handles crafting in a manner that is sweet and simple like Terraria while still remaining distinct. Simply by mushing two items together, you can check to see if they create a new item. It sounds too simple at first, but it works really well–it makes crafting quick (which you’ll want since every time you die you’ll need to re-craft all your items) but contains enough possibilities that the excitement of discovering a new recipe is always around the corner. I still have no idea what a “Tribal Drum” does, but my curiosity compels me even now to find out. I suppose I could just look up the recipes, but I haven’t felt a need to yet; I feel it would ruin my fun.

So far the mechanics have been as simple as just swinging a stick or a sword or if I’m lucky shooting a bow, but there’s enough customization to allow different approaches to your adventure. For starters, your core 4 stats are randomized and can be pushed into your favor if you’re willing to reroll them a few times. You also start off with the ability to choose 2 traits–they aren’t profound, but can give you an edge in one area or another. Later on as you level up, you can choose one of three skill paths to travel down–and if you are deemed to be worthy by the achievement gods, you might just get a piece of equipment, a race or companion after you die that you can take with you the next time you set out. All these simple customization options create enough of a choice that it’s fun to tailor your character to your wishes but they aren’t so complicated that they drag you down.

I look forward to getting deeper into the world of Magicite. So far, the farthest I’ve managed to get is a town with NPCs willing to trade with me. I should have taken a leaf out of Link’s book though and left the chickens alone. Killing a few of the town fowl summoned a Giant chicken that ended my day. Regrettably I wasn’t able to quite get a screenshot of that one. Oh well; your imagination may suit you better than a picture would. All in all, Magicite goes in Tier 1 resolutely; it’s a great pickup for those who love quick character creation, crafting, side-scrolling and roguelikes.

Steam Link

Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies

by Chezni

Nope. Noope. Nooooope.

I’ve played this game already. I’ve written this review already.

Please see: Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol (the original)

Seriously. It’s the same game.

It’s just as bad.

… Why are you still here? You desire something more convincing?

You still fly planes around by clicking blue arrows until you get the green arrows that let you do damage to the bad planes.

All the pilots still make you want to punch them in the face. Repeatedly.

It still doesn’t matter which skills you pick, and you’ll just end up clicking through on random ones.

The only thing resembling an improvement is the ability to choose a nation. Don’t be fooled though–there’s only two to choose from. They’re just listed twice with a Navy/Army variant of each.

Tier 3 all the way.

Steam Link

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

by Chezni

MM:CoH is puzzling… in more ways than one. On the one hand, it is strategy-based game involving mythical creatures, magical beings and so on–par for the course for the MM series. On the other hand… it is also literally a puzzle game, which leaves me sitting here bewilderingly playing a goofy “match 3 colors” game from a franchise that under normal circumstances, I tend to respect as being one of the anchors in PC fantasy gaming history. At a first glance, there is something extremely appealing about this game. I’m not sure if it’s the design, the neatly organized and brightly colored units, or polished UI, but I feel that a gamer would just be naturally compelled to see what this game is all about. That being said, something about this game is… wrong. Terribly wrong. It’s difficult to explain, so let’s take it piece-by-piece.

For starters, the game’s story sucks. It’s basically along the lines of “something-something, big magical world, something-something, giant kingdoms, something–oh yeah, and then demons attack.” It’s lazy, cliche and even without playing more than an hour of the game, I already know what kind of plot I’m in store for: bland and generic heroes fight off demons and win. Riveting. To be fair though, it’s got the same plot as almost every single Fire Emblem game and those games are pretty good–admittedly for numerous reasons outside their plot though. Even so, my biggest problem when a game opens up like this is that I’m always screaming in my head at the lethargic narrator, describing these supposedly mighty kingdoms, “Why should I care? What does it mean to me? For all I know, these kingdoms deserve to get overrun by demons!” Narrations like this anger me, because the presupposition is that the player will immediately identify the kingdoms as valuable, simply because they are mighty. It presupposes that the player wants these nations to survive, simply because they contain magical creatures and races that are generically appealing to the conformist norms of a fantasy universe. It presupposes that things are simply black and white; that good will always be good and deserve to kill, plunder and pillage as much as they want, as long as it is in the name of their people group. It’s aggravating.

The plot boringly moves along this route and we are exposed to several young heroes whose families are attacked an murdered by demons. It’s not really exciting in the slightest, and just feels like it drags. The characters are generic and lack any kind of personality beyond the shallow stereotypes that they’ve been built around. You take control of a young elf girl and manage her escape and later investigation into the matters of why demons have attacked. I get the feeling that eventually you would get to choose to play as the other heroes and control their race’s units, but even that carrot wasn’t enough to motivate my progression through the game.

However, sometimes plot and setting are merely a vehicle to transport the player to a very fun game–some of the best games out there have crappy stories. I’m not sure if I can say that this is the case with CoH. The game has a lot of little pieces for you to learn, which is a good part of any healthy game. Combat consists of building armies through units that are available to you, and each unit is noticeably distinct from one another. There’s a lot of little twists and techniques you can use in combat to sway the tide of battle to your favor–you can synchronize your units by “Linking” them, build walls to play defensively, and plan out your moves in a chess-like manner. The problem is, that even though the rules are decent and possess enough strategic options for the player that they feel like they can make a difference in the battle’s outcome, it’s still just a match 3 game. The concept just feels childish in a world that I’m supposed to take (I assume) seriously. Battles have a lot going on in them, but they feel sluggish. It’s impossible to know what an enemy unit does until you meet it, so new units sort of broad-side you until you figure them out. Inherently from a gaming perspective this is not bad, but it is in this kind of game. Because the game plays out in a chess-like manner, it would be akin to your opponent pulling out random made-up pieces in the middle of a chess match and then not telling you what they do. Additionally, the tutorial of the game drags on and on, and is an annoying series of pop-up windows that is about as exciting as reading a pictureless instruction manual.

The best part of the game by far is the art. For the most part, it is clean, bright and very appealing. All of the army units have a slew of animations that are smooth and fun to watch. One that made me laugh was the skeletons–when they attack, they pull off their head and use it as a bludgeoning weapon as they charge. Character portraits have a range of stances and emotions, and they look smooth and appealing. Don’t get me wrong–they aren’t hyper-realistic or ultra-detailed, but they don’t have to be. They’re fun to look at and watch move around.

Ultimately though, I can’t personally support the game. It is clear that time and effort were put into the game’s visuals, and even though it is a low-octane puzzle game, the designers did add as many rules as they could to spice up gameplay to the best of their abilities. In the end though, I’m still just matching 3 colors together in a manner that feels off. At times the game feels like a Flash game on Kongregate–or at worst a micro-transaction army-based game on the Android Market. In my mind, it teeters on the edge of T3 and T2, but I do think that this would be a great game for casual gamers looking for a lot of time to waste, and so I submit that this game belongs to Tier 2. For me though, I desire something a bit more challenging.

Steam Link

Sonic CD (Completed)

by Chezni

When I was little, it took a few weeks of effort to finally crush Sonic CD into the dust. Robotnik defeated, Amy Rose saved, Metal Sonic destroyed–it was a moment of triumph. Put to the wayside, memories of Sonic CD warped and twisted with countless other Sonic titles, to the point where I began to think that my memories of time traveling and racing Metal Sonic were simply a fabrication I had created. When I happened to see “Sonic CD” available on Steam, it finally clicked. This was the Sonic game, my first Sonic game, that I had played 20 years ago. I hadn’t made it up after all. Today, I loaded it up to see just how much my “adult skill” matched up to my 2nd grade form. What took me weeks as a child took me 70 minutes in my living room with an X-Box controller. It was still fun though.

Sonic CD is much like any other game in the series. You run through loops, collect rings, move too fast to know where the heck you are going; the normal stuff. Being no stranger to the 2D Sonic platformers, I think this one is nearer to the top than others. As far as the staple principles of a Sonic platformer, it moves quickly, the levels are relatively interesting and open, and the pace of the game is, well, fast which is good. There are some interesting facets that set it apart though, the biggest of which is time travel. Scattered throughout the levels are signs that point to the future or past. Running by one and picking up enough speed will shoot you through time in the respective direction indicated. This means that each and every level in the game was designed both graphically and mechanically 3 different times, and at many places in the level you can swap between all three (past, present and future). Unfortunately, I’m not sure exactly what my motive for doing so is. Maybe if I was very familiar with the game I would have a preference for which time-period I enjoyed traveling through in a particular level, but because I have no idea what any of the time periods have in store, I just swapped them at random so I could see the different graphics and listen to the changed music.

The music, oddly, is worth mentioning. Sonic has always had pretty decent music, but Sonic CD stands apart in that its music is of a higher quality. Probably having something to do with the fact that it was on a CD and not a cartridge, the music widely ranges from calming to techno to funky. It doesn’t quite have that retro charm that say Sonics 1-3 have, but considering that each of the 3 time periods for each stage have their own music, it’s really interesting to hear how it is remixed to fit the new settings.

Collectively, Sonic CD is a good game and I would recommend it to any Sonic fan. It doesn’t take too long to beat, and even if the game doesn’t click entirely with you, the music is fun to listen to and there are even some nostalgic 90’s Sonic cartoon animations unique to the game that you get to watch. That being said though, the purpose of the time-traveling is a little confusing, and like most Sonic games, if you want the “good” ending, you have to collect the Chaos Emeralds–something that is equally unclear as to how to achieve. While I may not be particularly motivated to uncover all the game’s secrets, I believe the game has merit and belongs in Tier 2.

Steam Link

Breath of Death VII

by Chezni

Breath of Death VII (Completed) Review

Stuck are we, in a never-ending world in which we are attuned to needing, nay, desiring the next earth-shattering cataclysmic story that we can hop into the hot-seat for and become the heroic fulcrum of universal dependence. We long to be the badass hero, wildly large sword in hand clashing blade-to-blade with our equally met adversary–the cosmos spinning, fluctuating and exploding around us as the whole world watches and points at our every move. We want the innocent, well-endowed child-hood sweetheart to have nothing more than her hero’s arms wrapped tight around her after the colossal apocalypse of all existence is narrowly avoided. In the face of all this–in the face of one grasping gaming company after another, desperately trying to deliver this narrative bigger, better and badder over and over again–I have only one thing to say…

SCREW THAT.

Breath of Death VII is an amazing game, and it has nothing in common with what so many mainstream RPGs have become today.

BoDVII is a tongue-in-cheek parody of RPGs from the NES/SNES era. It features numerous throwbacks to old game concepts, references to many older RPGs and overall captures a whimsical parallel of what it was like to play console games back in the 90’s. Play just a little while and you’ll immediately start picking up the connections. The world was blown up in the year 20XX, a reference to Megaman. The first town in the game has the same layout as the first town in Dragon Warrior–right down to the locked doors requiring the special keys sold in Rimuldar. The game’s world is even divided into sections named after a combination of iconic RPGs’ American and Japanes names. Motherbound references Earthbound/Mother, Lufestopolis references Lufia/Estopolis and very close to the heart of your dear old author Chezni, Palad-Lennus is a reference to Paladin’s Quest/Lennus.

That being said though, let me be clear–this game is not simply a wank-fest that kids from the 90’s can brainlessly herald claiming things like, “This game hearkens back to a time when video games were good,” or “Get off my gaming lawn you casuals, back in my day our games meant something.” BoDVII is actually a lot of fun, even in the modern day era of gaming. It throws just enough of what 90’s RGPs were to put a good taste in your mouth, but knows when to cut back into the modern day of convenience before the taste grows dull or sour.

For instance–random battles are plentiful and filled with a variety of sprite-based enemies; this is a necessary feature of a game referencing 90’s RPGs. But lets be real here, eventually old RPGs at some point became an exercise of running around aimlessly, grinding through battle after battle against enemies that were far weaker than you, all the while you hoped to pick up on the next plot point so you could move on with the story. BoDVII avoids this with a simple mechanic. After a certain number of battles are won in each area, the game simply ceases random battles altogether, instead offering you the option to seek combat in the menu, should you wish to fill up your EXP further. Traditional to old tile-based RPGs, you move relatively slowly, one tile at a time. BoDVII mercifully gives you a run button that makes the party book it at quite a fast pace. Most of the time in NES/SNES RPGs, you didn’t have much control over the way a character leveled up–they just filled up their EXP meter and got a set type of stats for it. While this created simplicity and straight-forwardness, sometimes it left you wishing you could tailor your characters a bit more. BoDVII keeps things simple, yet customizable–after every level, you get a choice between two bonuses (two sets of stat boosts or two skills) that can greatly alter the way your characters fight over the course of the game as all the decisions add up. It’s not a complicated skill tree, so it doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to make the choice, but it gives enough customization that you feel like you own the characters.

These modern-day conveniences mixed with old-school style creates a really fun game–and I haven’t even touched on the story or characters yet. For the sake of limiting my rant-ability, let me just sum it up like this: characters can be awesome without super HD 40,000 polygonal models, angsty backstories and constant character-built-in drama. The main character of BoDVII is a skeleton. His name is DEM. He can’t talk, because he’s a skeleton. He’s funny, because we can hear his thoughts, but no one else can. He considers himself a hero. I like DEM. It’s that simple, and it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Your second party member is Sara. She’s an energetic mage who can read DEM’s thoughts. She often “translates” for DEM, completely changing what DEM is thinking in his head when she relays it to other people. She’s a ghost. That’s awesome. Lita is a freaking techno-vampire with a pension for sunglasses and shotguns. Do I even need to keep going?

Sometimes a thing can be great, simply because it’s great. It doesn’t need over-complicated drama. It doesn’t need earth-shattering consequences. It doesn’t need another two damn star-crossed lovers who are perfect in every way and fall in love with each other at the end. Sometimes, a thing can be great because it just is–whether it’s made of polygons or pixels. BoDVII is a reminder of this, in addition to being a great parody. I will definitely be finishing this one and as such it belongs in Tier 1.

Steam Link

A Bird Story (Completed)

by Chezni

Caw Caw. A Bird Story took me by surprise in that… it is literally a story about a bird. To help you understand, consider this: To the Moon (made by the same guy) was much more than just “going to the moon.” It was a rather emotional ride that made the player face the issue of loss–loss of memories, loss of self, loss of a lifelong love–it was heartbreaking, but it created a real feeling in the player that is not really found or explored that much in the gaming genre. In short, the moon ended up being a much deeper symbol that represented something real. Looking once more back to A Bird Story, it’s a bit of a let down that there was no deeper meaning. You can just take the title at face value–there’s nothing deep or profound here.

The entire story of the game is not completely awful (it helps that the game is only about an hour and a half long) and its told entirely without words, which is interesting. A boy, whose parents are never home lives a lonely sad life–his schoolwork is failing, no one plays with him on the playground–it’s a bit depressing. One day after school, he saves a bird from being attacked by an animal (giant badger?) and nurses it back to health. The bird sort of solves all the boy’s problems–he’s popular on the playground because suddenly he’s “the kid with the bird,” the boy isn’t lonely at home, and he’s motivated in his schoolwork by using the bird as the focus of his studies… but nothing really comes from any of this.

There’s a heavy motif of imagination where you’re not entirely sure if everything you see is real or in the boy’s head. He jumps off a building with an umbrella and floats safely to the ground. He builds a giant paper airplane and sails around the world to floating islands. He’s struck by lightning and crashes. The game never offers the barest hint of an explanation concerning any of these things; you have to make of it what you will through a sheer imagination of your own. I imagined that the bird was a representation of zest for life–a symbol of the boy’s choice to live on in the face of depression in spite of the gloomy circumstances around him. The game deserves non of my theories or explanations though, since it makes no effort on its own to throw any hints or clues to the player.

In a point of strange conflict, a school teacher and veterinarian try to take the bird away from the boy (presumably to nurse it back to health properly) and the boy escapes from them on a giant paper airplane into a storm, where he is struck down by lightning and the bird disappears. Then, with no substantial tension, the bird just reappears. There’s a bit more, but after that the game sort of ends, teasing at the sequel for To the Moon. It’s almost as if the developer was like “Yeah, sorry, I know this kind of had no point… uh, I’ll make the sequel to To The Moon at… some… point.”

In the end, the game had good music, and even though it was kind of a waste of time, it was pleasant enough to not be a total failure, and so I put it in Tier 2. Is it a game? No, not really. It feels more like it should be one of those shorts at the beginning of a Pixar film. You never really play the game; about 80% of the game is just watching sprite-art cutscenes. However, if you’re someone who is very low-key, and just sort of wants to watch a slightly interactive short-story about a boy and his pet, then go for it–in regards to that criteria, even though it’s a bit bland, it’s certainly well done.

Steam Link

Two Worlds: Epic Edition

by Chezni

Sometimes you can play a game that’s garbage, but it ends up being one of your favorite games that you’ve ever played. Aidyn Chronicles for the N64 has horrible graphics, awkward dialogue, a confusing interface and awful controls–but I can’t get enough of it. This is because hidden beneath the aforementioned rubbish is a world riddled with secrets, extensive game mechanics, freedom of tactics and a compelling storyline that asks the question “what if the universe forgot to name someone?” It’s these treasures deep beneath the game’s surface that will bring me back to this game again and again, willing to completely overlook the game’s other faults. There are many games out there like this–you probably have a few of these kinds of games in your personal favorites list as well. Two Worlds pretends to be one of these games. Two worlds is pure utter excrement.

In some ways, I am edging over the line of cheating. When Lepcis and I set out to work out our Steam libraries, we agreed to give most games about an hour–as a general rule. We admitted that some games would need more than that (even in a good RPG you might still be in the tutorial after an hour) and some games deserved far less (see Lepcis’s Plankton Review). The idea was to give the game “a fair shake.” Now, I’ll admit that 5 minutes of a Two Worlds cutscene followed by 5 minutes of Two World’s gameplay is hardly a “fair shake.” I don’t care. I can’t stomach another minute playing the game because I know what’s coming. I’ve played Two Worlds II–a sesspool of a game that I devoted 20 hours to before I finally broke down and admitted that it was a lost-cause-piece-of-garbage that I would pay money to not have to play. It is (if I may coin a phrase) an Antigame. A game that is not just bad–it’s offensively bad. It does the exact opposite of what a game is supposed to do. Instead of providing relief, enjoyment, fun or satisfaction, it creates anger, frustration, a sense of loss and stress. The latter is exactly how I would describe Two Worlds II, and I gave 20 damn hours to that game that I’ll never get back. Two Worlds: Epic Edition is somehow, miraculously worse than its sequel. It’s fascinating. It should be studied if it weren’t for the fact that you would have to actually play the game to do so. The only shred of thankfulness that I can muster from the experience is that because I played the sequel first, it only took me the 10 aforementioned minutes to recognize the all too familiar ruts that the original shared with it.

And frankly, that is where the complexity of my review will end. The game is not worth being clever, creative or funny with. It’s simply not worth anything. In line with this, the rest of the review will simply be a pro’s and cons list–for if I were to truly break down the cons, this review would be several paragraphs long and what little time I’ve devoted to the origin game of this franchise is already far more than it deserves. The Two Words games are well beyond an insult to gamers and move right down into being an insult to the history of human invention itself. Never waste your time with this series.

Pros

The world is big.

Cons

The graphics are an eyesore.
The voice acting is some of the worst I’ve ever heard. The game is full of it. 50% of the game is listening to people talk.
Melee combat consists of you hitting one button.
Hit detection is atrocious, requiring repetitive swinging, sacrificing a goat to Juniper and sleeping with the game producer in order to get any of your attacks to land, even when enemies are standing directly in front of you.
There is no substantial reward for exploration, and the world is huge.
There are more random pointless NPC sidequests in this game than in a lot of MMORPGS.
In spite of clearly being dressed as a Fighter or a Ranger at best, your character is every fantasy class mashed together.
Questing involves going from point A to point B over and over and over again.
The storyline is absolute trash.
The main character is annoying and comments stupidly on the most mundane things.
The character creator might as well not exist. Non of the sliders change the character in a meaningful way. There are 9 skin tones and all of them are a different shade of white. You will always have facial hair, look rugged and appear as the stereotypical meat-headed crotch-grabbing male-power fantasy hero. What’s even funnier is that it says “Male Body” on one of the creator tabs. You cannot play as a female character. Did they assume their audience was comprised of paint sniffing football hucking pinheads who were in need of a reminder of what gender they were playing as?
NPCs in the game only exist to make you do things. There are no developed or important characters in the game. Not even the game’s villain is that meaningful, in spite of the fact that the entire game’s plot revolves around foiling his plans.
The game is called “Two Worlds.” There is only one world.
There’s more. I’m done though.

Steam Link