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Feb 5th, 2017 at 19:19:30 - This war of mine (PC) |
Really neat game. Not particularly fun, but made me think and feel things. My general mood oscillated from hopeful to hopeless and back. At times I wanted to just give up and let the characters all die. I'll back up and give some context. This War of Mine positions you as a group of survivors during some sort of civil war or coup. Instead of playing the typical badass hero in a war game, you're scared civilians whose characteristics only seem to hinder their efficacy in wartime. You have a bombed out shelter, and you have to fix it up using all manner of spare parts that you scavenge during the night. You can scavenge from various places, some of which are fellow civilians' homes, or an old school, or a supermarket where the military has taken up operations. The game plays in cycles of daytime (work around the shelter) and night time (scavenge for supplies).
There is A LOT more to take into consideration. It's a balancing act that I couldn't win. By the end of the game, I'd had two characters killed while scavenging, one deserted me, and the last was the only survivor--and he almost died of starvation, disease, severe depression, and bleeding wounds, but during the last handful of days of the conflict, I played it real safe so he got better. I was hoping and praying that international forces would come to my aid.
I started the game with three characters. There is no tutorial. This fit the theme of the game well. The survivors are ill-equipped to handle their situation, and so is the player. I built another bed so two could sleep at a time. I built a machine station so I could build basic mechanical things. I installed a heater. In the middle of the game, a blizzard came and it got cooold, but luckily I'd anticipated that. I burned a lot of wood during that week. I did all manner of things to help maintain food and water supplies, as well as board up my shelter so bandits would have a harder time ransacking the place. Despite my best efforts though, they still occasionally stole my things and wounded my civilians.
My home became quite depressed when I raided the home of an elderly couple and stole their things. This was the beginning of an emotional downward spiral for all my characters. It didn't help after I stole supplies from the hospital the following night. Shortly thereafter, one character was shot to death while fleeing from a garage. She didn't leave quickly enough after the people living there demanded she go. Another character died later after prowling around a locked door for too long. Another civilian joined me at some point (I had pity and let him stay), an elderly man. He was quite useless, could only carry 8 items (as opposed to the 10, 12, and 12 of the others) and arrived sick. He eventually left in the middle of the night and stole my shotgun, the only weapon I had to defend against intruders. I was able to make another, and a pistol too. It was with the second shotgun that I murdered the people at the garage, partly out of revenge, and partly out of desperation, as I think I was running low on materials to chop up and throw in the fire during the coldest days. Everyone was sick and tired and depressed and wounded. It was a grim time.
I kept notes about what I needed to scavenge and where. Ex: "hospital. doctor can heal wounds. bring lockpicks. trade medical supplies and food." And later: "not much left to loot." Regarding the town square: "trade for broken helmet, shotgun, meds, food." Then "Bring shovel and lockpick!" After I tried to pick the lock and was caught: "Shit. They killed Katia. Return for her things." Then when I was short on supplies: "Going to need to kill." I took two notepad pages of notes. I haven't written things down for a game in a while, but this was life and death.
One of the first things I built was a radio to get news from the outside. This let me know about impending weather conditions, blockades, and actually alerted me to the game being nearly over. At this point, I only had one character left, and so I just stalled. I quit scavenging. I ate all my rations. I traded if someone came to the door. The first time someone came when I only had one character, I thought they were going to kill me and I didn't open the door. I did the next time, and they just wanted to trade. I was very suspicious of other people. It's funny because after beating this, I loaded up H1Z1: King of the Kill, which has a similar theme: Trust no one. Kill on sight. Anyway, 5 or 7 days of waiting it out and the war was over. This War of Mine made me really anxious. I still don't want to imagine being in a war-torn country, but I was forced to think about it for 10.5 hours. Is this game meant to develop empathy for refugees? Support for international aid efforts? Not sure, but making players uncomfortable is a first step to getting them outside their boxes.
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Feb 2nd, 2017 at 21:31:04 - Outlast (PC) |
Excellent horror game. Reminiscent of Amnesia. You’re a journalist. You’re armed with a camcorder. Okay, armed isn’t the right word because all you can do is look through it. And run and hide. Which you will do a fair amount of. I hope you like night vision mode and managing battery life. If you are a person whose iPhone constantly runs out of charge, you might lose at Outlast.
The story is pretty good. You go investigate a psychiatric hospital. I forget why you are there. I’m not sure it is discussed, as the game begins with you pulling up in your jeep. Perhaps it was on the radio on the drive over, but my brain has since been filled with the screams of the insane. Quickly realize that a generic evil science corporation has been conducting psychic experiments on the residents. One is ultra-strong; one is obsessed with fire; two twins want to eat your liver and show some developer bravado for being nude and showing penises; a fanatical priest wants to use you as mankind’s salvation; and there’s a serious threat by the name of Billy who sort of runs the show. Pick up documents to reveal additional story details about patients, doctors, experiments, connections to CIA research like MK Ultra, etc.
Your goal is to escape the hospital, but you are constantly thwarted, your exit blocked, forced to find an alternate route. Sometimes you’ll need to find a key to progress; other times you’ll need to catch sight of an air duct to crawl into. Since your character is deeply committed to investigative reporting, another goal is to document the hospital. You can look through your camcorder or not, but if you look through it, your character will make observations about things that he sees which you can read. It also adds a layer of fear to the experience because for some reason looking through a camera makes games scarier. I’m sure there is a good psychological reason for this, perhaps that if you see something on camera, you know it’s very real and right in front of you. But keeping the camera up serves another function: quick access to night vision. Much of the game is dark, and you’ll be using night vision frequently. Keep a constant supply of batteries because not being able to see in the dark will be your doom. I played on normal and never ran out of batteries though. In fact, I never dropped below like 6 (of 10 max) once I got that many. I spent most of the game with 8-10.
The end presents a nifty, if predictable, little plot twist that makes you feel even worse for your character. If you don’t feel bad for this character, you may lack empathy. I would not want to be him. There is a DLC called Whistleblower that is half as long as the main game...and upon trying to play it I apparently do not own it and it is $8.99. Mmm...mmmm..mmmmmmmm. Nah.
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Jan 28th, 2017 at 08:57:39 - Darksiders (PC) |
This was a surprise! I wrote it off long ago as a God of War clone, but it is much more than that. Yes, there are numerous equivalencies (chests of green, yellow, and blue orbs that fill War's stats; similar combat including "finishing" enemies with a button press and even the enraged enemy [cyclops in God of War I think] that you ride on as your hero stabs it to death; similar tones; etc.). It's also got a hefty dose of Zelda games, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Gears of War, and even Portal at the end, which was really cool.
The game feels great, sounds great, and looks dated. But I ended up liking the comic book art style and I've got no qualms about its graphics. Combat is fast and you feel like there's weight behind your attacks. Enemies are vicious, gang up on you from all sides, and you'll frequently switch weapons and make use of all your move sets and special abilities. Enemies will beat the sense out of you, so thought is required! Button mashing will not get you through. Puzzles are smart, level design is excellent.
As in any good Zelda or God of War game, you get new gadgets and abilities over time that let you traverse new parts of the world. Here, you get a power fist that lets you smash crystals blocking your way, a demon horse (badass) that lets you move faster and cross special areas, a grappling hook to latch onto walls and interactable objects including enemies, a sort of boomerang spinning star of death that is a weapon and you can use to hit far-away switches, and finally at the end a sort of portal gun that lets you open portals (like in Portal, duh) on specific parts of walls and floors. You can hold R1 as you open the portals to make them propel you farther when you come out, and you can shoot portals through portals. It does some things beyond what the Portal games do with them! I really, really enjoyed all of this.
BUT, and big but, the game is buggy. I had audio issues in a lot of cut scenes. No big deal there, but annoying, sort of like what happened when I played Life is Strange. BUT, and humongous but, there are game-breaking bugs, and I had to quit and watch the rest on YouTube when I was near the end. There is a door in the Black Throne area after you cross the chasm with the two rotating pillars using portals in a tricky way. Kill the enemies across the chasm once you get there and the door unlocks. I saved the game here last week. When I booted back up yesterday, the door was locked and I couldn't go through. Enemies didn't spawn, and no amount of going back across the chasm and returning or anything else would unlock the door. I reloaded; still locked. Hmm. Everything in this game, no matter how tricky (hello bomb puzzles!) has a solution, so I assumed this was the same. I toyed around, backtracked, thought more, and I finally relented and looked online and saw that this was a glitch. Noo! Explanation: The game will think that you entered the door and it will lock it "behind" you. If you saved when you were outside the door, you're locked out. Even if you save inside the door, people report that you will load outside the door again also be locked out. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. No luck. Wow. It's been a long time since I hit a bug that made it impossible to progress. And this one is well documented, with tons of threads about it, but no fixes from the developers even in the Warmastered Edition that came out last year that I played. That sucks.
But the funny thing is that I still think of the game very fondly. I really, really liked it. I'm even feeling glad that at least I got to play as much of it as I did. Shouldn't I be more mad? Maybe it's a testament to how good the game is. Strange feeling! Anyway. I won't play Darksiders 2, but I suppose this one will go down as a flawed gem.
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Jan 25th, 2017 at 16:10:54 - Closure (PC) |
I've tried to play this several times but keep forgetting that it doesn't run on my personal laptop. So I finally got around to putting it on my work one! As I knew from starting over and over, it's a Limbo-esque 2d puzzler using light as a mechanic. Here's the trick: You can only walk on what you can see. If you can't see it, it's not there. It's a bit tough to wrap your head around at first because it violates object constancy. It reminds me of a game I saw for Kinect, the name of which I can't remember, where one player controls a character and the other serves the function of platforms. You move your body in front of the Kinect and create bridges and ledges and elevators with your limbs. It looked super innovative and fun. But little did I know that that's the way Closure uses light!
There are many different light sources introduced over time. To begin, there are light orbs. You pick them up and carry them around; they illuminate a radius around you. There are sconces to place the orbs, sometimes acting as switches or teleporting an orb around. Later, there are light sources that go dark when you are near. Some light sources require another light source to touch them before they shine. There are lamps you can manipulate and cast a beam to light your path. It's really clever.
Levels are pitch black when you begin, save for where lights currently are. You have to use the light-giving objects to explore and find the exit door. That's the goal of every level. Sometimes the door is locked and you need to find a key first. Sometimes the door is locked and requires that X number of lights are shining on it. So the exploration is neat, but I found it became tedious and frustrating, not just because you can't see (I get it, that's the game), but because you have to go so slowly. If you step out of the light, you usually die and start the level over. If I couldn't figure out a level or seem like I was headed in the correct direction quickly, I would get annoyed that I had no context for what to do.
In this way, I made it halfway through the first two worlds (24 levels per world) and played a few levels in the third world. Then, I looked on YouTube to see how much more complex things get. Answer: Much more complex! No way I would have stuck with it. So, neat game, fun for a couple hours, became tedious and difficult quickly after that.
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