Author: LepcisMagna

SPAAAAAAAACE!
Blackwell
by LepcisMagna

Blackwell: A five game series of point-and-click adventures about guiding lost souls to the afterlife.  I love point-and-clicks, and Blackwell has a lot of good elements to it – psychic detectives, a touch of gothic horror, and just a good overall point–and–click atmosphere.  Unfortunately, unlike the games I just linked, those elements just never came together for me. This view may be biased (particularly against the later games) since I just came off of 10 hours of playing through the series (and I’ll admit, I had to look up a few puzzles), but I feel that I have to write this before my memory fails me.

Point-and-Clicks

That isn’t to say that these games are bad – in fact, they steadily improve as you play through the series.  These are solid Tier Two games – with the notable exception of the second game, Blackwell Unbound.  The trouble here comes more from the potential you find in point-and-click games.  For me, point-and-click games exist in a unique middle ground for video games.  In a fully “free” or open-world game, your practically unlimited agency makes small things like not being able to jump a two-foot-high fence a remarkable annoyance.  In a platformer, story is often neglected.  In a visual novel, there is no real challenge or choice (though there are exceptions to that rule).  Conversely, a good point-and-click adventure gives you just the amount of freedom to let you feel as if you contribute, just enough challenge to keep you thinking, and just enough story to keep you engaged.

Perhaps I’m biased.  At the end of my favorite point-and-click, The Longest Journey, I found myself unable to play any video games for a day or two – anything else would have been less perfect.  Between TLJ representing the pinnacle of story-telling and Submachine representing the pinnacle of puzzle-solving, any new point-and-click adventure game has a high bar to clear.  But before I go further about the overarching adventure, let me give you my per-game opinions.  For the record – and because I was constantly confused about it myself – the games go in this order:

  1. The Blackwell Legacy
  2. Blackwell Unbound
  3. Blackwell Convergence
  4. Blackwell Deception
  5. Blackwell Epiphany

The Blackwell Legacy

I’m afraid I don’t have any pictures for this one, since I beat it some time ago.  That says something, as I never found the motivation to go on to the rest of the series.  The protagonist, Rosa Blackwell, is a medium that leads lost souls – ghosts – to the afterlife, with the aid of her spirit guide, Joey Mallone.  Joey is a 30s clothing shop clerk who was gunned down after his best friend got into debt with a loan shark.  This is important, as it is never clearly explained why Joey is special or how often these “spirit guides” are created.  A Tier Two game since I had fun, but there wasn’t enough of the overarching plot to really draw me in.

Blackwell Unbound

Unbound is a prequel, following the aunt of Rosa – mentioned in the first game – back before she lost her grip on reality after the universe poured into her mind. That’s understandable, but this game frustrated me the most in the series.  The protagonist isn’t particularly likable, the puzzles were the worst of the series, and the only connection to the main games was explained in 30 seconds in the next game. You can safely skip this game and move on to Convergence without losing much, so it must be relegated to Tier Three.

Blackwell Convergence

I think this was my favorite of the series: just the right blend of mysterious foreboding and day-to-day ghostbustin’. One of the most important mechanical changes happened here as well – your cursor changes color depending on which character you are currently controlling (which was quite relieving, having played the previous game). The series’ art also peaked right around here.  The pixel art may not be quite as good as Epiphany, but at least the character portraits aren’t in a jarringly different style. The NPCs are well-developed and feature some of the best side characters of the series. It finishes strong with the hope of future adventures ahead.  The entire game has charm and conjures up that certain panache which good 90s games captured so well.  This is the game I almost put into Tier One – and if you’re okay with a semi-cliffhanger, I’d almost suggest that you stop playing here (while also having skipped Unbound).

Blackwell Deception

And they were doing so well.  While this game keeps some of the refinement of the previous one, it also introduces the two major issues I had with the series: a strangely uncharacteristic tone and an increasingly jarring art style.  Scroll up a bit – see that beautiful “spiritual realm” art?  Well, for some reason, this game makes the same place look like a 90s sci-fi set:

To be entirely fair, this game also introduced two things that greatly streamlined gameplay.  The first is a mobile phone so you don’t have to go running home to look things up every ten seconds. The second is this slider:

Walking speed.  WALKING. SPEED.  Every point-and-click needs this. I almost forgive this entire game its increasingly bizarre tone just for that slider.  I would sell my left arm to have that in The Longest Journey – as much as I love that game.  But even counting that slider, this too must fall into Tier Two.

Blackwell Epiphany

This game has some of the best art of the series – and more importantly, it has widescreen resolutions.  Well, a widescreen resolution. Did I mention that all the previous games run at 640×480?  This one runs at 640×400. Apparently, HD is a foreign concept even in 2013.

Even so, the wonderful art doesn’t entirely forgive the definite changes in tone. This is certainly the most “film noir” of the series, but that doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the series.  Especially when you compare Legacy to Epiphany, you wonder where the tone shift of the last two games came from.  Epiphany has ghosts ripped apart, child ghosts, suicide, prostitution, and more. It really feels too much like an attempt to have a serious (and bittersweet) ending.  Worse yet, several main plot points aren’t resolved and the epilogue throws in a strange twist not even hinted at previously that entirely invalidates the plot progression from the previous game. I should clarify that I’m not complaining because everything didn’t end up perfect for everyone – I’m a sucker for bittersweet endings.  I’m complaining because the ending didn’t make sense and didn’t fit in with the information given to us in previous games.  It avoids Tier Three because it is pretty and does provide some touching moments.  At least they kinda fixed the spiritual realm art:

And now that I’m thinking about it, this scene’s art has quite the Doctor Strange vibe (though mostly I just wanted to use this screenshot).

The Series

From a mechanical standpoint, the Blackwell series isn’t particularly impressive. Visual cues are often lost in the backdrop and important mechanics don’t always act the way you want.  None of the puzzles really stood out, preferring to blend into the story.  That’s a stylistic choice, and I can respect that – but it does make the few puzzles which require video-gamey logic particularly immersion-breaking.  This improved in later games, but there were still a few strange leaps of logic to be made, and the requirement that you talk to everyone about a subject five to six times particularly grates.

I liked the characters, and the overarching story was engaging enough to motivate me to finish the series.  That being said, the tone shifts unnecessarily in the final two games: introducing elements that really don’t fit into the earlier mythos in an effort to make it more serious. Lovecraftian horror I can get behind, but the grimdark turn this game takes… I cannot. If you just play the games with Nishanthi in them (which would be the first and third ones), you’ll be fine.

 

Steam link (1-4)

Steam link (Epiphany)

Rise of Nations
by LepcisMagna

Imagine Civilization crossed with Age of Empires II.  Actually, you don’t even need to imagine since it exists: in the form of Rise of Nations.  As a real-time 4X-ish game that progresses through the ages, it seems pretty solid.  Remarkably solid, even.  The thing is, I’m not a big fan of that sort of game.  I’m definitely more of a Sim City or Sim Tower (or, if we’re sticking with strictly RTS, Homeworld or Masters of Orion) sort of person.  So while this game seems mechanically sound and pretty deep…I can’t really say I was having fun.  That being said, this game does combine a lot of the better features of both Civilization and Age of Empires.  Maybe if I was playing over LAN with a few friends I would have a more favorable opinion.  Since I can imagine picking this up again someday, I’m going to stick this into Tier Two, with a distinct possibility of an upgrade if it’s the right group.

 

Steam link

R.U.S.E.
by LepcisMagna

I’m afraid this impression will need to be a bit short, since the above screen represents about 75% of my playtime.  R.U.S.E. had been on my Steam playlist for quite some time – next to World in Conflict.  Much to my dismay, I have discovered that both of these games are no longer available and are pretty much dead.  That’s…quite a pity.  I had been looking forward to trying both of those games.  R.U.S.E. worried me when it asked me to sign in to Ubi.com, and my fears were justified.  Some quick Googling later, I find myself deprived of not one, but two games I had long thought about playing – both axed by Ubisoft.  I miss hosted servers (though apparently R.U.S.E. was pulled due to a licensing agreement).

 

Tides of Time
by LepcisMagna

Ahh….Tides of Time.  Wait.  That’s a board game!  Yep – part of our semi-weekly tradition is to find and play a random board game.  This time, I thought it might be a good idea to write up a quick look at our experience with this game – again, the requirement to give each game a fair shake (usually an hour) stands.  In this case, we played three rounds at our FLGS.

Tides of Time styles itself as a glorious adventure of “merciless cunning, grand choices, and a deeply tactical game in only 18 cards”.  None of that is contained within the box (Not even the 18 cards – for, you see, there are actually 19 cards).  Chezni and I played several rounds, but (as might be expected), the limited number of cards does lead to limited strategy.  While its possible we were just missing some crucial aspect to the game that makes for the grand choices specified on the box, it really does seem like this is just a case where too little was included to make an engaging game.

The one redeeming aspect to the game was the card art – on extra large cards, no less.  Sadly, even that is not enough to save this from Tier Three.

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic
by LepcisMagna

Chezni already reviewed this, so I’ll spare you the details.  Suffice to say that as a Source-based RPG, Dark Messiah isn’t bad.  Here’s an analogy to explain: I recently watched a movie called Hudson Hawk, starring Bruce Willis.  It was an interesting movie – sort of a cross between Die Hard and The Fifth Element.  It wasn’t the best movie ever (and it wasn’t as good as either Die Hard or The Fifth Element), but it tried something new and was an overall decent movie with a couple great scenes.  In the same way, Dark Messiah isn’t bad (though the running animations are hilariously bad) – it has some interesting interaction with your environment (kick everything).  It wasn’t terribly long or unique plot-wise, but at least it tried something new.  It scrapes its way into Tier One because it isn’t Risen and because you can kick everything (though the platforming is still terrible).  My only real problem with it is its serious fascination with spiders.  So.  Many.  Spiders.

And, because Chezni took the dark path: I took the light path.  Interestingly, I found the succubus’ voice annoying (though occasionally amusing) and your companion likable but underdeveloped.  Dark Messiah definitely falls into the trap of “female interest likes you because the plot says so.”  There is practically no development for Leanna (and the Succubus is mostly a tutorial voice), which was a bit disappointing.  They really could have done quite a bit with both of those characters as they follow you on your adventures, but then the game would need to also be twice as long (which would not be a bad thing).

 

Nevertheless, as for my endings:

Yeah…they’re all pretty much the same.  The only difference is that whats-her-name is with you instead of the Succubus.  I mean, she doesn’t tempt you to rule the world.  But the no-succubus demon-father ending is exactly the same as the one Chezni mentioned with the succubus.  The “good” ending (with Leanna and re-chaining your father) is equally disappointing – perhaps more so since the narrator essentially says “and the fate is still unknown” – so your entire effort was for naught.

Ah well.  I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my time, or that I didn’t wish I could spend some more – which is why it stays in Tier One.

Eversion
by LepcisMagna

Eversion is a game about hailing the dark lord collecting gems in a post-apocalyptic cthulhu-esque happy little meadow, somewhat reminiscent of another game.  This is both a first impression and a full review, since I finished the game in under an hour.  Well, technically, I got the “bad” ending, but I didn’t really feel like doing all the work to get the “good” ending.  Eversion is based on an interesting concept – the slow decay of the world around you as you traverse what I assume are different time periods in each area.  Unfortunately, it’s too short – and getting the good ending requires quite a bit of additional effort.  While that wouldn’t normally be so terrible, the main draw of the game is your first experience.  When you are forced to go back and get every collectible skull gem, it quickly becomes just a chore since the mechanics aren’t terribly new or remarkably executed.  If it were longer and had more branches, I think it would be a solid Tier One.  As it is, it must go into Tier Two.

Thief: The Dark Project and Thief III: Deadly Shadows
by LepcisMagna

These games combine much of what makes playing games fun.  In both (and the second one, The Metal Age – but I didn’t play that one), you play as a thief (shocking, I know).  You’re given a simple heist mission and the ability to accomplish it however you like.  From there, story grows in bits and pieces between the missions.  But then, the story isn’t really why you’re here.  The reason you’re here is to steal everything.  And steal everything of value you can.

One of my favorite features of these games is the adaptable objective system – more so in the first (but still present in the third), the difficulty level you choose doesn’t really change how the game plays – it changes what you need to accomplish.  Lower difficulties just have you surviving and accomplishing the goal.  Higher difficulties have you not killing civilians and stealing everything that isn’t tied down.  And I think that’s fantastic.  That’s how difficulty should feel.  Giving the player more health or the enemies less damage doesn’t mean anything but changing some numbers.  Giving you new challenges forces you to grow as a player, rather than just execute the same thing more and more perfectly.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the fantastic level design and worldbuilding.  Each level has multiple approaches. The guards walk their shifts while humming to themselves (which is amusing even if it does make for some of the noisiest guards I’ve ever seen).  Everything feels like a guarded place you’re not supposed to be, but that you’re going to rob blind anyway.  Even so, it never feels cheap – when guards see you, you deserve it.  Even better, the game doesn’t automatically end if you’re spotted.  You have a chance to recover and stop the guard before he raises the alarm and kills you.  In other words, this is the kind of gameplay I would have hoped for from Assassin’s Creed.

The last thing I should mention is that these games still have a modding community.  For The Dark Project, there are fixes and resolution upgrades.  For Deadly Shadows, there’s a meta-mod of sorts that fixes everything from resolution to enemy difficulty to map backgrounds.  Both of these are practically essential with modern hardware, but come with the bonus that they also improve both games dramatically from a technical standpoint.  With these mods, both these games come in at a solid Tier One.

Steam link

DeadCore
by LepcisMagna

DeadCore has an interesting problem.  Or, rather, two problems.  The first is that cubes spawn randomly.  The second is that wall clipping is possible.  These may seem like very obscure or minor complaints, but they are significant.  You see, DeadCore is a speedrunning game.  It’s a fantastic platformer, with at least 20 different paths in each level.  There may only be five levels, but finding new paths or perfecting the ones you know can keep you playing for many hours.  Each level is a new height of difficulty – introducing new mechanics or asking you to perform previous tasks faster and more precisely (though sometimes with just a bit too few save points in between).

But this is also where wall clipping – and some other minor bugs – are a real problem.  Being a speedrunning game means executing actions extremely precisely – repeatedly.  Except where you expect there to be RNG (I really hate those cubes), the same actions should produce the same results.  But more often than should be, you’ll find yourself clipped into a wall or hitting a jumpad that doesn’t send you as high as it does 97% of the time.  And then the run is ruined though no fault of your own – and you have to start over.  DeadCore was made by a small team (six people, I believe) for an 7-day FPS challenge, so I’m willing to let these bits slide.  Even so, I do wish they had been able to spend another six months working out those last few bugs.

Other than that complaint, Deadcore is wonderful.  The controls are precise, the myriad paths are fun to discover and complete just a little bit faster each time.  It’s well worth the $10, and I highly recommend it as speedrunning at its purest.  The only thing more I could have wished for was a level editor.

Steam link

Star Wars: Dark Forces
by LepcisMagna

Dark Forces is the grandfather of the Jedi Knight series and a surprising combination of Doom and Ultima.  Well, just the music style from Ultima – which was a surprising choice for a Star Wars game (though probably just a limitation of the hardware).  The rest of the game is Doom clone all the way – until you get a lightsaber, but I never got that far.

I went back and forth on putting this in Tier Three or Tier Two.  I felt like putting it into Tier Three was unfair since many of my complaints are due to the game’s age and comparatively lackluster design.  At the same time, I feel that many of my complaints are legitimate: movement is floaty and you have the magical ability to bend your blaster bolts towards enemies as long as you are pointing your weapon in generally the right direction (and I miss vertical look, but I’ll let that slide).  The environments are complex, but provide little direction or visual cues.  In fact, due to the Star Wars aesthetic, enemies and switches often blend into the background.  One of those ten panels may be a switch, but there’s little to indicate it.

What clinched putting it into Tier Three is that it came out two years after Doom, a year after Marathon, and the same year as Marathon 2: Durandal.  Those three games are fantastic – from exquisite level and enemy design in Doom to the fantastic story of Marathon and Durandal, they are deserving of their places as classics of the shooter genre.  Dark Forces just feels like a reskinned Doom with little to recommend it as a first-person shooter – except that it’s Star Wars.  Which is almost enough.

Steam link

911 Operator
by LepcisMagna

A few weeks ago, I looked at This is The Police – a game where you act as a police chief three months from retirement.  There was a lot of polish in that game, but it was all overshadowed by a lack of any real choice or any event randomization.  You are forced to work for the Mafia, and actually trying to help your town (instead of just working solely for yourself) is just going to lead to disappointment or death.  Still, there were a few interesting moral options (not that they mattered, which was the problem) and a bunch of interesting features (like being able to collect LPs and playing them while you dispatch).  I would have liked it they just hadn’t tried to have an “interactive” story1 – which, coincidentally enough, is exactly where 911 Operator comes in.

911 Operator is what happens if you took only the mechanical bits of This is The Police and made it into a game.  And it’s almost exactly what I was hoping for from This is The Police.  I’ll admit, it is a little disappointing to not have to try to deal with the outrageous demands from City Hall.  I also think This is The Police had better staff management mechanics and a bit better interface.  But overall, 911 Operator is the way to go for actually feeling the pressure of trying to help people with limited resources.  Similar to This is The Police, you manage the day-to-day happenings in your corner of a city – dispatching police, fire, and ambulances where necessary.  The primary distinction is that here, you actually answer 911 calls and determine if action needs to be taken for many events – which is pretty cool.  The calls are quasi-randomized – in just the right way – to keep them unique (at least for a few hours), with a few scripted events sprinkled in.  For example, when I got to the second city of Albuquerque, I was surprised by a call that sounded like suspiciously familiar story:

But this is where the trouble comes in as well.  Randomization is hard, and you need a massive pool to keep things fresh over long periods – otherwise these Easter eggs or scripted events will stick out too much.  911 Operator is quite good, but it could definitely stand to have about twice as many voice actors and randomizable lines – though I suppose that’s a complaint that can be leveled at any semi-random game.  Having a choice of Operator voice would have been nice as well, but the voice actor is good enough that it isn’t too much of an issue.  I do wish the 911 Operator developers had had twice the time or budget to expand on their concept, but the game that they made is still quite worth it, I think.  And hopefully, since it is on version 1.0, the developers may be able to do just that in updates or DLC (and quash a few bugs along the way).

My bottom line is this: This is The Police feels like the grimdark faux-noir that leeches into so many films and games due to its contrived and unavoidable plot.  911 Operator feels like Sim City 2000 or Sim Tower – games that were just plain fun mechanical toys: so, to Tier One it goes.

Addendum: I’ve also realized this is an educational game.  Being a 911 Operator means you have to talk people though bad situations – and making the wrong choices makes things worse.  You don’t throw water on oil or electrical fires, you prevent people from moving impaled people, and YOU ALWAYS SAY WHERE YOU ARE AND WHAT THE PROBLEM IS FIRST.  It’s fantastic.

Steam link

1Actually, if you’ll permit me a moment to complain about This is The Police: You know what is a moral choice?  Being forced by the Mafia to either work for them or let your best friend be killed.  You know what isn’t a moral choice (or even a choice at all)?  Being forced by the Mafia to either work for them or let your best be killed…and you still have to work for them.  If you aren’t giving me a choice, don’t act like you are – that will just anger me and make me hate your game.  Make my choices (moral or otherwise) alter my game experience.  That would have been good game design: working for the Mafia makes things easier and keeps your friend alive.  Not working for them makes your work a bunch harder and means your friend dies, but it gives you the chance at a “good” ending.