Category: Tier Three

Dark Souls
by LepcisMagna

Dark Souls is my favorite game series.  It’s good enough that even disliking Dark Souls II as much as I do doesn’t unseat it (the Valve-verse of Half-Life and Portal would likely be my second). I first heard about it in probably much the same way you have: that it is a remarkably difficult game with a fanatical fanbase. And also like many, I avoided it because I had heard it was so difficult. It was only when Chezni suggested that we co-op some parts of the game that I started playing.  And I died.  A lot.  I hated it.  I thought it was an unnecessarily difficult game – only fun for people who play all their games on hard mode. I preferred wandering around Skyrim, getting lost, and filling my quest log with a laundry list of dungeons to clear – why would I want to play a game that just wasn’t fun?

Slowly, though, I progressed. I learned about dropping from heights to deal more damage. I threw myself against the Asylum Demon until I beat it through a combination of luck and Chezni’s advice. I fought, inch by inch, through the Undead Burg. I figured, to borrow from Zero Punctuation, that “I’ll just keep tanking the rakes and maybe I’ll somehow become really psychotically into being rake-faced […] and I’ll be blatted in the face with rake if that isn’t kind of what happened.” It may have taken me half of the original Dark Souls, but eventually I found myself having fun.  A lot of fun.  So much fun that I kept coming back even after having beaten the game to play through on NG+.  Later, Chezni and I powered through the first few hours of Dark Souls III, which turned out to be just as good as the original (I’m intentionally omitting Dark Souls II in this statement, which I’ll get in to later).  So why did I change my mind, and why should you? Continue reading “Dark Souls” →

World of Goo
by LepcisMagna

World of Goo is an award-winning indie game about building structures out of black balls of goo/tar.  It’s a physics structure-building puzzle game, and it’s….okay?  I guess?  It feels almost sacrilegious to put this in Tier Three given how many good things I’ve heard about this game.  But the thing is, I’ve played this game on Kongregate.  Well, not World of Goo specifically, but so, so many games like it.  And I’ve played better versions; you see, World of Goo has both camera issues and control issues.  You can scroll around the map by moving to the edges – but the detection is just a tad too large, scrolling around your already small play space wildly.  Grabbing new nodes is a bit persnickety, since the goo balls (used for building) in your existing structure move around randomly.  This is particularly annoying since there isn’t a good reason that the game couldn’t just automatically spawn one wherever you click (as long as you had goo left).

From a technical standpoint, the lack of any graphical options whatsoever is a bit annoying.  It runs at one (low) resolution, full screen (admittedly, I didn’t try ctrl-enter to try it in a window).  When my monitor has 8-12 times the resolution as the game’s only resolution, things tend to look a bit pixellated.  It’s a small complaint, but one that bothers me.  I can forgive Doom, made in 1993, for running at a low resolution.  But World of Goo came out in 2008 (which I’ve just realized was almost a decade ago now – yeesh).

If this sounds a bit cranky and short-tempered, I’ll be honest: I’m writing this review so I can make Dark Souls the 100th post – so my heart wasn’t particularly into writing this one.  World of Goo might be worth your time, and it is only five bucks.  For me, it must be resigned to Tier Three.

Steam link

Boss Monster (with Expansion)
by LepcisMagna

 

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Too long a while. That’s mostly because I’ve been playing Dark Souls III – a review I want to write soon, but one that I’m not sure I can do justice.

In the meantime, I have played another board game with Chezni at our FLGS. This time, the game is Boss Monster with its expansion “The Next Level.”  When we first played this some time ago, it seemed a tad simplistic, but with a lot of potential.  Now that we’ve played with the expansion, I can say definitively that the game – as it comes out of the box – is disappointing.  The typical game goes something like this: You are the boss of a dungeon, à la Dungeon Keeper (the original, not that abomination).  You build a dungeon using card “rooms,” and heroes come to attack you and the other players based on the room card treasure types (of which there are four).  You have a rather limited pool of spells you can use to help yourself or hinder the other players, but they are sorely underused.  There is very little interaction with the other players beyond choosing your dungeon treasure specialization.  Once you’ve built a reasonable dungeon, the game becomes a bit of a slow plod to the victory condition (beating all the heroes or acquiring 10 hero souls in our game). This is quite sad, since the rooms and spells are varied and interact with each other in interesting ways.

So here are the problems: First, spells are criminally underused unless you fall into the “Mage” category of dungeon (even then, the rooms which allow you to draw spells are typically underpowered). Second, games are either too short (with normal victory conditions) or far too long (with the alternate game modes). Finally, interaction with the other player dungeons is almost nonexistent and the heroes themselves aren’t unique or interesting enough to provide challenge or variety enough to make this a good game. This is terrible, since the cards themselves are well-made, pretty, and well-balanced.  Chezni and I spent some time trying to fix these problems, and here’s what we came up with:

Changes:

  1. Draw a room card OR a spell card at the beginning of each turn, and remove all the “Haunted Library” cards from the deck.
  2. In a two-player game, set the win condition to 20 points.  In general, increase win conditions for fewer players and increase loss conditions for more players.
  3. In a two-player game, remove half the ordinary hero cards if you are playing with the expansion.
  4. Set a maximum for +x spell cards to +3 for balance.

These changes allow for an early race to build a suitable dungeon, but ensure that once you have a good enough dungeon you are able to focus on inhibiting the other players by drawing spell cards instead.  Since the Sorcerobe School cards do essentially this, it makes sense to just remove them from the game. Increasing the victory condition allows you to have a more entertaining game by ensuring you get epic heroes and good use out of spell cards. Together, these fixes bring this game from “okay, but flawed” to “actually fun”; or, in PICD terms: from Tier Three to Tier One.

Amazon link

 

EDIT 2018-10-03: We have confirmed that this is a fun game with the above changes for two players.  Adding spells makes the game far more dynamic and interactive – things can change quickly and there’s a lot more play between bosses, rather than just running your own dungeon.

Tomb Raider
by LepcisMagna

I suppose it was inevitable that I’d be rolling a lot of big series in my Steam lottery. I have many, many games that are part of a series that I haven’t played. Mostly, I held off because I like to start at the beginning of a series, and the first game is usually not that great (I’m looking at you, Final Fantasy.  And Ultima.).  This time, it’s Tomb Raider and the various adventures of Lara Croft.  I have now tried all the PC-released Tomb Raiders (except Rise of the Tomb Raider.  Don’t have that one – though I’ve heard good things). There’s a lot to say here, but I’ll try to keep things moving quickly.

The Tomb Raider franchise is one of the most well-known of video game franchises, and Lara Croft is perhaps the most famous female video game character thus far in gaming history (competing with Princess Peach, Samus Aran, and Cortana). The PC releases of the franchise can be broken into three categories: the originals – built on the classic engine, the Legend chronology – built on the Legend engine, and the modern era – a hard reboot from 2013.

Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III, Last Revelation, Chronicles, Angel of Darkness

Why, you might ask, are all six of these games grouped together?  It’s because I’m cheating a bit. I’m lumping all of these into the “Technical Issues” category – though not because the games didn’t run on my computer. They’re being shuffled to the side because I just could not get the hang of the controls. Between not having mouselook and Lara turning and jumping crazily, my ability to play these games is almost non-existent. Back when they were released, I’m sure I would have put the time into learning the controls – but today?  I’m content to just look for a fan mod that makes it easier to play. I do want to comment on my (limited) experience, but that will wait until my discussion of Lara herself.

Tomb Raider Legend and Tomb Raider Anniversary

These two games marked the first soft reboot of the series and a long-overdue move to a far superior game engine.  Both of these games go solidly into Tier One – Legend is the only game I played longer than I force myself to – and Anniversary seemed on par.  The platforming isn’t as terrible as in previous games (or future ones, for that matter), Lara is still a strong protagonist, and her legs are composed of more than three polygons. The set pieces are fun (even though I did get a bit lost).  Near the beginning there’s an arena that I got stuck in for about ten minutes while I tried to find my way out.  That brings me to the two problems I had with this section of games: puzzles aren’t always clearly presented, and climbing is a bit tricky (and not in a good way).

My complaints wouldn’t be such a problem except that puzzles and climbing are the bread and butter of the Tomb Raider franchise. While it kept being fun, I found myself wishing that these games had the puzzle-presentation of Valve with the free-running of Assassin’s Creed. There’s a bit of advice (I don’t remember where I first heard it) about puzzles: it stated that a good video game puzzle is one that you have all the pieces to.  In Tomb Raider Legend, there’s far too many instances where a puzzle relies on a small hidden door or switch – this is acceptable from time to time, but it breaks the flow of the game when it goes on too long. Similarly, climbing is limited to very specific (and often unclearly marked) ledges – which makes the navigation part of the game that much more obtuse.

Nevertheless, these games were fun and kept me interested and playing.  In fact, Anniversary (a re-imagining of the first game with the engine of Legend) had that ineffable “good” feeling you get when playing a game that is just plain fun.

Tomb Raider Underworld

Those of you who have played the Tomb Raider franchise may have noticed I left off one of the Legend engine games: Underworld. This is because it goes into Tier Three, unlike its predecessors. It goes into Tier Three for two reasons.  First, the camera and movement.  While Legend and Anniversary’s camera control was reasonable, Underworld’s camera and Lara’s direction of movement will only occasionally follow your command.

The second problem comes from the ridiculous and contrived plot – which is a remarkable complaint when talking about a Tomb Raider game. But as you see above, one of your first tasks is to murder a giant octopus. Typically, it is best to descend slowly into strange worlds: slowly revealing more and more unnatural things. Underworld pays little mind to this – or to reason itself – preferring to have a plot that progresses because there wouldn’t be a story otherwise.  Why do you kill the octopus?  No particular reason.  Why do you call your team before diving to the underground city? No reason. How do the “bad guys” show up immediately behind you with no warning and entirely silently? Because there wouldn’t be as much plot otherwise. This seems to be a theme throughout the game – trying to “raise the stakes” just results in an unbelievable story.

Tomb Raider

Finally, we come to the most recent reboot.  I don’t have any pictures for this section since I actually beat this game a year or two ago. Since it is part of the same series, I thought I should talk about it briefly here.  This also gives me the chance to put a second game into Tier Four. I recently talked with Chezni about Tier Four, and it turns out we had different ideas about what it meant.  The definition on the rules states that Tier Four games are not worth the time put into them.  I had taken that to mean the time spent to play them was entirely wasted, while Chezni saw the definition as saying that the game itself was not worth the time spent developing it.  I like that definition more, and it is the definition I use here.

So why does the Tomb Raider reboot go into Tier Four – particularly given the large number of accolades it received? It’s not because it uses the most cliche of plots (with Nazis and supposedly sympathetic nerds sacrificing themselves for no good reason).  Instead, it starts with quick-time events. Quick-time events pervade Tomb Raider and its cutscenes – these replace gameplay with a punishment for not knowing exactly which buttons to push. This is apparent challenge without real challenge, and they only exist to give the player a feeling of accomplishment for doing something cool during what might as well be a cutscene. And if you fail?  You run into the next problem: the unreasonably gruesome deaths of Lara Croft.

Lara Croft will die in the most horrific and terrible ways – for no good reason (quite often that you hit the wrong button during a QTE).  While playing the game I could only guess that the game designers really, really liked blood and watching people die. Recently, I was talking with Chezni and he mentioned that the producer wanted it this way to inspire the player to want to protect Lara – which certainly explains some things (more on that later). I have no problem with gore or violence. I have a problem with pointless gore and violence. Think about the time the developers spent on animating Lara getting eaten by dogs, impaled by spikes, and nearly/probably raped. Think about the time they could have spend making more places to explore.  Get mad.

Finally, we have the biggest problem – at least gameplay-wise. There are mini-temples and crafting mechanics throughout the game, but no motivation to actually use them. I finished the game without finishing a single side-dungeon – and only actually finding one. The game is designed to trick you into thinking you have a whole island to explore. But really, you just follow a set of linear quests to the end of the game. Admittedly, I did not take their chances to explore the island – for the reason that at every point in the main quest-line, you are given a sense of urgency to complete the next mission.  I took this to mean that perhaps Lara would return to the island after finishing the plot and give you time to go find all the nooks and crannies where treasure might be hidden.  It did not. The Lara in this game would likely never return to this island even if it contained the most fabulous treasures in the world.

Lara Croft

Lara Croft is a difficult character to analyze, made more difficult by the four distinct takes on her character. The Lara Croft of the first six games, the Lara Croft of the Legend trilogy, the Lara Croft of the reboot, and the Lara Croft of the movies are all distinct. Perhaps the best way to describe her influence is controversial (I promise I wrote that before reading her Wikipedia article).  On the one hand, all but her most recent portrayal has been as a devil-may-care action hero.  On the other hand, perhaps her most famous physical feature is her remarkable pair of…eyes.  And if you played video games in the ’90s and early 2000s, it was almost impossible to avoid the seemingly endless supply of nude mods for the Tomb Raider games.  Though, on this last point, I’m not sure we should judge a character based on what is done to them by the internet – Rule 34 exists for a reason.

We are faced with two aspects of Lara Croft that diminished as the series progressed: body proportions and sassiness.  Earlier iterations of Lara were entirely unrealistic, but she also commanded an attitude of control and confidence – approaching a level rivaling Saints Row. The Legend games toned down both her unrealistic proportions and her remarkable attitude.  I think this was probably the sweet spot for Lara as a character – even if it was still on the side of unrealistically proportioned.  An action hero can be unrealistic both in character and in body, as long as neither are taken too seriously.  At the same time, this must be balanced by believability if you want to start telling a complex story.  This toning down continued on both fronts into the reboot – and Lara became yet another bland protagonist for people to project their fancies on.

The Lara of earlier games is an action hero in the style of Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element or RED – ridiculous, over-the-top, and a bunch of fun (if a bit questionable on occasion). This is important because these elements are so diminished in Underworld and non-existent in the reboot universe.  In attempting to make Lara more realistic, they made Lara less Lara.

Oh well.  At least the developers of Tomb Raider don’t care about body proportions regardless of gender:

 

Steam Link 

Hitman: Contracts
by Chezni

 

And it was written in the book of Game Progressionis, chapter 4 verse 10: “…and lo, unto the success of shootin’ up thugs, villains and hookers bequeathed by the Auto of Grand Theft, truly I say unto you, all early 2000’s shootin’ games will neigh eventually succumb to the same mold–even Hitman: Contracts. אָמֵן.”

 

 

There are a ton of improvements between Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Hitman: Contracts but I’m going to ruin the ending and tell you that sadly, in spite of all of its improvements, it’s Tier 3 material. As you probably gathered from the intro, it’s just another 3rd-person shooter Grand Theft Auto wannabe. I’d probably still rather play this than GTA as I generally find my motivation to immerse myself into GTA to be rather lacking (try actually following the law, it’s probably the most stupid kind of fun you can have in GTA) but H:C still doesn’t strike me as being worth much of anyone’s time who isn’t interested in just shootin’ up thugs and hoes.

 


 

Let’s start with the good–and I’m not kidding, there’s a lot of it. Level design has had a massive upgrade–the mission locations actually feel like real buildings. They’re big, have tons of doorways and passages and are not linear at all. Controls have only improved through the progression of the three games, with this one having the best. Movement feels less floaty, interactions with objects in the environment are smoother still, and it’s clear when and where you can interact with things. The environments are populated with a massive amount of NPCs really making the locations feel alive–almost to a fault. There were probably around 100 people on-site in the second mission and the game processed them all smoothly.

 

 

Going hand-in-hand with level design, approach to the level itself has mercifully gone back to “strategy discovery” instead of “choose your flavor.” There always seem to be a couple of different ways towards accomplishing your goals and none of them are painfully spelled out to you as in H2:SA. While it will always be easier to execute a bloodbath strategy on your first run through a level, I noticed several points in the level where a stealth approach would be just as viable. Oh, and speaking of stealth, guards no longer immediately gun you down from a football field’s length away for moving faster than a brisk walk–a complaint I made in my review of the 2nd title. It’s pretty safe to jog around a bit in disguise, as long as you don’t do it right in front of a guard or bump into them.

 

 

In spite of this vast list of improvements, I still can’t get behind this game. I appreciate the stealth approach but let’s be honest–it’s harder, requires at least 4 times the amount of time to pull off (when you factor in scope-out time, planning and actually executing the mission flawlessly)–it requires prior knowledge of the level, and in some ways is less exciting (albeit more rewarding). The game lends itself far too easily and just runnin’ in and shootin’ dudes. Don’t get me wrong–the game calls you out on it at the end of the level (after shooting up 55 victims that were not my 2 targets, I got the label “Murderer”) but I seriously doubt that the majority of the intended audience playing the game drew satisfaction from much else other than weighing people down with a couple ounces of lead. Additionally, the game doesn’t seem to penalize for it either.

 


 

Look, I have no qualms with GTA from a moral standpoint. I may think it’s portrayal of “gangsta” life is shallow, pointless and uninspiring, but I’ve never been the type to shame people for playing it due to its take on ethics. The biggest reason I don’t like GTA is that I find it mechanically to be an unfulfilling game. Combat is point-and-click at best. Weapons may have varying degrees of power but they are all executed the same. While you can have some exciting car-chases with the cops, I always found Driver to be much more fulfilling on this front (keep in mind I’m about 10 years out of date though). It seems that the reason a person would play GTA (and by extension, H:C) is to feel a rush of power from having the freedom to deface, plunder and kill every person you meet. Fair enough, but why can’t that be done on the backdrop of a meaningful game? You could basically do the same thing in Just Cause 2 only there were several other mechanics happening alongside it, not the least of which was creating some awesome Hollywood explosions in the name of “anti-terrorism.”

 

 

Back on track and to the final supporting point indicating the weak creation of an effortless power fantasy is the horrible and literally sheep-like AI that the NPCs, both armed and unarmed, display. It reaches a point in H:C that goes beyond a lack of self-preservation and enters into a realm of wince-inducing stupidity. In a room filled with about a dozen dancing people, around 2 of them armed, I was allowed to walk in and pick them off one by one (in various ways) whilst they took no notice of me, their murdered friends, or the puddles of blood that were undoubtedly beginning to pool around their still-dancing feet. Likewise, in a room where I was “discovered” by some guards who opened fire on me, I rounded a corner, picked a few of them off, walked back into the room and and the rest of them ignored me completely. I understand that I had the game on normal mode and not some of the higher difficulties, but I expect “normal mode” to be the “normal” method through which the game was intended to be experienced which seems to send the message of “you’re an idiot, so we made the enemies even stupider than you.” Bullet sponging is also on par with H2:SA, in that guards must empty rounds of clips into you before you finally die.

 

 

I’m glad H:C made some huge improvements over its two previous titles. I’m happy to see the levels themselves opening up and expanding into something that begins to feel exciting. Overall though, I just feel like this one is also not worth the time it would take to play it. What do you gain from it? What do you take away? Not a whole lot in any department.

Steam Link

 

 

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)

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
by Chezni

 

Oh early 2000’s. Was there anything you didn’t cartoonify? You didn’t even spare Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.

 

Okay, I’ve only played an hour of the first Hitman so I can safely say that this isn’t a case of “Hur dur hur, I luv da first game and it is bettaaar” fan-boyism. After playing H2:SA, I can say that it just feels wrong. the entire time I just kept thinking that everything about the first one was just better. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning with the plot.

 

 

That picture up there of some young tomatoes? I bet you thought that was a mistake didn’t you? Nope. Now, I obviously didn’t finish the first one so I don’t know what exactly the conclusion was for Hitman: Codename 47 was, but whatever it was it lead our protagonist, the legendary Agent 47 to become… a gardener who lives in a shed inside the courtyard of a Catholic church. I’m not even kidding. The entire time I kept expecting the veil to be lifted and 47 to blow the local priest’s head off, revealing him to be 47’s long-stalked target or for 47 to throw off his gardening smock, whip out his guns and reveal that he had been using the folksy church gardener image as a ruse to somehow get closer to a target attending the church. I kept expecting… something… but nope. 47 is exactly what he’s portrayed as. This was not done for humor.

 

 

It’s not that I’m against the idea of a cold-blooded trained killer finding Jesus or something and settling down. It’s not that I’m against a story about a person having a change of heart. What I’m against is how out of place this whole thing feels. Nothing about it is believable. What’s even weirder is that the entire catalyst for the plot is that the priest whom 47 had apparently become friends with gets kidnapped by the local Don and so 47 digs up his old laptop (which must be like a million years old by tech standards now), briefcase and weapon stash so that he can contact the old agency he worked for to get the priest back. What ensues is what we in the delicate part of world like to refer to as “having the shaft worked upon you,” as for what little of the game I played was nothing but a series of excuses to go out and murder tons of dudes which supposedly put you one step closer to rescuing the priest.

 

 

There are many quality of life improvements in this sequel over the original, but it’s at the cost of mood, immersion and freedom. Controls are much more intuitive and movement is so much smoother comparatively. Graphics are much rounder as well and don’t hit uncanny valley as hard as before. Mechanically speaking, you can now drag bodies around to avoid their discovery, take people out non-lethally with anesthesia, and look through keyholes of a door before entering. While all this is nice, there was far too much sacrificed in its place. First, the story is contrived at best. Next, instead of getting to choose your loadout for the mission, you just take whatever they give you–if you need other equipment or weapons you have to find them on site. I literally found a sniper rifle just sitting in a garage next to a car that I used to assassinate my main target in the first mission. How convenient. Thirdly, you still get to solve the puzzle of the mission the way that you want to but it just feels like choosing a flavor instead of discovering a strategy. Do you want to sneak in as the mailman, the grocer or the guard? The results are all largely the same.

 

What’s wrong guys? I thought this was where I was where you wanted me to drop the groceries off!

 

That’s the other thing–it feels like this game wants you to move as slowly as possible all the time. You have to wait for characters to slowly creep around until they’re where you need them to be. You can’t run up to any of the people who’s outfits you want to steal because you’ll alert them. You can’t run while wearing an outfit or you’ll create suspicion. You can’t let the body of the outfit’s original owner to be seen, unless you slowly drag it somewhere out of the way. Look, I understand that in real life all of these things make sense, but they make for a very dull game. In the end, I just solved the first mission by running in and creating a bloodbath. It’s not like I couldn’t take enough bullets. Once, upon being discovered by two guards, I sat still and let them shoot at me to end the mission. Both of them together had to shoot and reload their clip 3 times before finally killed me. I was standing about 5 yards away from them. I was completely motionless.

 

 

This game isn’t atrocious, but I feel that it’s a rather large waste of time. It just feels so goofy compared to the first one but not in a good way. The manner in which you steal different flavors of clothing almost makes it feel like a cartoon and sets a very strange mood when compared to the original. Tier 3 is where it belongs, playable only to die hard fans and those with a large amount of time to waste.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, this Scarecrow turned its head to look at me. Nothing can convince me that it’s not alive.

Steam Link

 

Hydrophobia: Prophecy
by Chezni

 

Haha… well, it’s good to see that we’re still making games that that are teaching our tub-jawed meat-brained male populous how to be a good-guy stalker. I am of course talking about Hydrophobia: Prophecy.

 

 

Hydrophobia Prophecy is an “action” game where you take control of Kate Wilson, an engineer on some… ship… whereupon waking up on her day off, her peaceful home life is ruined by an unforeseen terrorist attack. To be fair though, most terrorist attacks are. In order to escape, you’ll control Kate as she runs around through water-filled corridors while some thick-headed smooth-talker tells you what to do and comments on your every little action. All the time. It never stops.

 

 

It’s hard to get a good feel for the rest of the plot beyond that in just an hour. While Kate seems to dream of drowning, she doesn’t seem to have a fear of water. The terrorists are boring and generic–kill all humans because they are overpopulating the earth (ship?). Generic cryptic “Kill Yourself” phrases and other messages are scrawled all over the place, many of which are only viewable when using Eagle Visio–er, I mean–hacker vision. Apparently this is the first chapter in a 3-part game that was cancelled after chapter 1. I have never understood why so many developers shoot themselves in the foot with this tactic. Very few single-chapter game series survive.

 

 

Gameplay is basically all the staleness of old Tomb Raider with none of the fun. Pathways are largely linear, stupid annoying collectibles are littered everywhere with little meaning to their collection and ladders–LADDERS my FRIENDS!–will be climbed. Admittedly, the water’s pretty and flows realistically, but it means little if that’s all we have. There’s a bit of acrobatics in Kate’s arsenal such as the ability to scale certain pipes on the wall and to swing from one pipe to another ledge (covering a distance of about 3 feet which, while realistic, is a tad dull) but it’s nothing special and frankly games should stop using the existence of linear wall-scaling as a substitute for real game mechanics. Even older Lara Croft’s exploits were not so painfully linear. No doubt later on we would gain some sort of power or fighting skills, but for a game that’s rated at 4~6 hours long I can’t imagine they would be that great.

 

 

The worst aspect of the game by far though is storytelling itself and the heavy lean towards the good-guy stalker syndrome. I once heard a quote concerning the newer Tomb Raider games that effort was being made on Lara’s model so that the players would want to “protect her.” This idea is repulsive on so many levels. There is absolutely nothing wrong wanting to protect a person. There’s nothing wrong that if the person you want to protect happens to be female. The problem is, that this is not how the sweaty-palmed male-targeted audience will receive these games–and it’s not how the developers designed them either. Kate is designed to be sexually appealing to hetero-sexual men. She’s well endowed, wears a skimpy skin-tight tank-top, taut jeans and has no bodily defect that would be considered unattractive. Kate is designed to titillate her male viewer, stimulating their primal urges into associating feelings along with the game that aren’t really there in substance.

 

 

Keep in mind here though, that Kate’s appearance alone isn’t the source of our problem. Our problem is that while she’s spunky, energetic and active, she’s also timid, innocent and needs the constant direction of the man in her ear, the alleged “Scoot.” Scoot is who the male audience is supposed to want to be. He’s fit, muscular, has a commanding American accent and has complete omniscience to Kate’s whereabouts and actions at every second of the journey. Jump to a ledge and he frets over her choice to take a dangerous route. Run into a corridor filled with water and he passionately yells at her “Don’t stop! You can do it!” Kate asks Scoot to leave her and find safety and Scoot responds with “No, don’t even think about it. You’re my responsibility and I’m staying.” Why is Kate Scoot’s responsibility? Why does her safety belong to him? Chivalrous bullshit, that’s why. Unless Scoot is Kate’s father (which is about as likely as getting the second chapter for this game) or some similarly audience-informed explanation, Kate belongs to herself. You want to know what’s worse? In the original Hydrophobia (yeah, this one’s a remake) Scoot was fat and had an Australian accent. He was not the mold that male players were supposed to inject themselves into so that they could feel one step closer to their precious Kate. The good-guy stalker syndrome devalues people (and in almost every case women exclusively) by assuming that their existence depends on the good-guy stalker.

 

In the end, this strikes a hard Tier 3 garbage level, only avoiding Tier 4 because the water really is so damn pretty. Otherwise? Why bother playing this misogynistic piece of crap. Old Lara Croft would have a thing or two to say about being sexy and “needing protection” and she’d probably say it while gunning down Bengal tigers, awakened dinosaurs and raider thugs with an arsenal of weapons that would make even Rambo nod his head in respect.

Steam Link


Skyborn
by Chezni

Why the heck do I have so many RPG Maker games?

 

I… can’t even stomach this one enough to give it a proper review. I’ll just sum it up that playing this game is like walking into someone’s fanfiction. The main character is a hot-headed mechanic who’s going to be married off against her will to some rich snob. There’s political turmoil in the form of racial oppression from a race of winged beings, of whom our hot-headed mechanic is self-righteously angry at all the time. In order to escape her fate, she steals the airship she was fixing and flies off into what could only be guessed at to be a generically dynamic series of events that one might describe as an adventure. Oh right, I should have mentioned that there are airships. Why Airships? Because… steampunk I guess. Honestly the airship wasn’t that important and I’ve never been a fan of them in fantasy games anyway.

 

 

There are some unique sounds and of what little I heard, the music is original but if you’re familiar with RPG Maker games you’ll hear plenty of recycled material. The art and sprites work the same way–it’s about 50% new and 50% reused. Inherently this is not bad, say if the game was actually interesting in either the mechanic or storyline aspects, but this is not the case. The mechanics seem average and as I’ve already mentioned a bit concerning the story–I feel like I’m reading the secret diary of a teenager’s fantasies. It’s not that there’s anything wrong a diary of this sort on it’s own, it’s just I’m not sure why I would want to play a game about it, let alone buy it (which apparently I did at some point).

 

 

Here’s one that popped up a lot that I just could not ignore. Why is there a midget knight? Well, it’s because our main character is a custom sprite that’s bigger than the generic RPG maker sprites. Our poor knight on the other hand is… you guessed it–a generic RPG Maker sprite. You’ll run into this a lot with the NPCs.

 

 

No EXP in combat means that the game likely focuses on story aspects and not so much on grinding. This is actually a mechanic I can get behind… but it’s the only one. It’s not that the combat is bad, but it’s generic and let’s face it, we’ve moved away from it for a reason–it’s too simplistic. There needs to be something more–something else appealing; this isn’t the 1990’s where a working combat system justified the making of an RPG. Nowadays, and RPG must justify the working combat system. Since all this game seems to offer is material that would appeal to a Twilight Fan, I’m relegating this to a Tier 3 position. It’s not at the bottom of Tier 3, but still undoubtedly belongs there because of one simple question: Why would you want to waste your time with this?

Steam Link

 

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.