 |
|
Jun 24th, 2012 at 12:46:29 - Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (PC) |
I totally caved to all the praise this game got and it was one of the reasons I bought that Humble Indie Bundle. But I gotta say I didn't really enjoy it on the whole. It just seems to have this 'cool retro indie' thing going for it that everyone is loving these days.
Pros: excellent pixelated visuals, soundtrack & sound effects, zelda love
Cons: boring gameplay, mood feels wrong mostly thanks to weird writing and language, illogical puzzles, TWITTER
For the pros, yeah it looks all retro which is very cool these days. But it's not just old school looking, it does sweet things with pixels. They animate ever-so-subtly to add apparent motion to the background. These visual throwback games should take notes because for me it's the difference between rolling my eyes at it and dropping my jaw at it.
The music is great and fits the game perfectly. The sound effects are enchanting and remind me somewhat of 'calming' games like Osmos, these airy blips and synthesized droplet notes. I loved everything about the sound, except the voiceovers, which fall under con category 'mood feels wrong.' A neat thing about this game is that it's also an EP for this musician, John Guthrie. I don't know who he is and I don't particularly care, but he did a nice job here, and it's something I'd like as standalone music too. It's also a neat way to distribute your music, wrapping it as an EP/game. He's in the game as himself briefly too, which is cool one time and just weird another time (again, see con: mood feels wrong).
For the cons, let's start with the worst. Twitter. This game really wants you to tweet about it and it's annoying and intruding as hell. Every time there is dialogue or any text whatsoever, this little Twitter tag pops up the top right of the screen. If you mouse over it, it asks "Tweet this?" No I don't want to fucking tweet this. Every single line of text! Which on one level is impressive that each piece of text is 140 characters or less. I applaud brevity, but I enthusiastically boo the devs insisting that I should tweet "The girl named girl and Logfella are sitting in the cabin." I can't think of much that people on my SNSes could care less about. BOOOOO!
Second, as you can tell from the girl named girl and Logfella, the writing is a mix of clever and irreverent. I actually like the girl named girl. But I didn't like Logfella...until I realized the dog was named Dogfella. Then I thought it was funny. There's a lot of alliteration, especially with the letter 'S.' It becomes over-the-top silly. I'm sure I didn't get a lot of the references in the game, but the main quest is most obviously and unabashedly Zelda's. You recover the Triforce for God's sake. And I said that the language and the writing make the mood feel off. The character says things like "There are three graves and we wondered what was up with that" or "We were totally jazzed about the awesomeness of that deer we just saw." Jazzed? Awesome and cool? What's up with that? I don't think it fits. I mean it fits, but I don't think it SHOULD fit. It's a fantasy game, but it has this modern bro-nerd-trying-hard-to-be-hip-and-ironic language. The visuals are cool and the sounds are cool, and the language just doesn't mesh. Also the voiceovers are weird. It sounds like the devs just leaned in to their laptop microphone in their bedroom and started talking "Hey...So uuh, you don't say much do you? Yyyyyep." It's not funny and it sounds out of place.
Finally, gameplay. The game was first released on touch devices and ported over to PC, but it's still obviously for touch devices first. If it had standard adventure game controls it would be fine, but they're below par. You play the whole game with the mouse just clicking and holding left-button for everything. It's just really boring. The fighting is boring and the wandering is boring if you're not busy marveling at the visuals or the sound, interacting with objects and things is tedious, especially the puzzles. Puzzles in this game stumped me completely at first. They all have to do with using this sworcery spell and just figuring out which order/which things in the environment to click on. It's not usually logical, just kind of start clicking on stuff and see what lights up.
I quit playing halfway through in the beginning of chapter 3 because I was stuck and when I looked up what to do in a FAQ, I couldn't believe the solution. I won't say it in case someone reads this and wants to play the game because it will totally spoil it. But I will say, study that book very carefully and you might figure it out. Let's just say that even if I wanted to continue, I'd have to wait until next week. Like the character names, I think this solution is both clever and stupid. Like, I enjoy the IDEA of it, but I don't enjoy being on the receiving end of it.
So, in the end, I can understand why this game got a lot of praise, especially looking at it as a mobile game. It's clever and innovative, and has a great style to it. But it's also got a lot of flaws. I'd like to see its strengths used and improved upon, perhaps in a more serious offering. Also it is Supershort. But I guess it's an EP, so it's forgivable.
add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Jun 22nd, 2012 at 15:35:48 - Super Meat Boy (PC) |
Just a quick one here. Came home from a night out, not tired, sitting at my computer eating some prata and drinking tea, needed something to do to kill time until I got tired, found my way into my 'games to play on my laptop' folder and clicked Super Meat Boy. I had 0 interest in this game, as I generally dislike platformers, especially these retro ones that seem to be very twitchy and rely on lots of developed skill and memorization. But, it came along with a Humble Indie Bundle I bought, so what the hell, I thought, I'll give it a spin.
First impressions: Okay, this isn't as hard as I thought it would be. [fast forward nearer to the end of chapter one, 10-15 minutes later] What the freaking hell is this madness? The game ramps up difficulty like you wouldn't believe. I got frustrated enough to quit on the first boss battle. I'm sure I could have beaten it and kept going a bit, but I didn't like the direction the game was headed, i.e., I invest a significant amount of effort to master new bits to move on in the game, die an outrageous amount (final tally: 152 deaths in chapter 1, 1/2 an hour's play time), and just get frustrated enough to quit farther down the line. Best to quit while I'm ahead...or stuck bad the first time...which is kind of like being ahead.
The game is super fast-paced. You're a little meat square and each level you have to save your girlfriend from the evil Dr. Fetus who slaps her and takes her away to the next level whenever you reach her. You can run, sprint and jump (so far at least). There are increasing obstacles. I got as far as buzzsaws.
Here's the kicker though. After I quit, I went on Youtube to see how the hell people played this and I found a gold mine, a series called "Until I Rage," where this user plays difficult, frustrating, and crappy games until he can't stands it no more and rage quits. So I watched him play Super Meat Boy for a long time. There are absolutely hilarious moments in his videos. He makes comments as he plays, makes a lot of 'jumping' noises that sound like constipation, pleads 'why?!' quite often to a god or jesus or unnamed watcher who most certainly abandoned him to the Sisyphean fate Super Meat Boy imposes. And every now and then, he goes into a mild expletive-laced rage. I applaud the guy. He made it 2.5 hours and into chapter 5 of Super Meat Boy in one sitting.
Besides the rage, I find his video series fascinating because he tries games that he's never played before. So what we have is video and audio footage of a noob. This guy thinks out loud a lot, so I can watch and listen to him making sense of Super Meat Boy. When he comes upon something new, he says out loud like "what the fuck is this? looks like a jelly. yeah, some kind of jelly. bet i die if i touch it. [touches it and dies] yep! ok, don't do that again" or "what the hell, where am i supposed to go now? buzzsaws above and below. i guess i'll just drop down. [drops down and dies but sees his platform] whoa! down, but not there. need to fall left." You can watch and listen to him developing an understanding of what he needs to do to overcome obstacles, how to deal with new information, how he deals with time and space in the game, and so on. It's pretty cool stuff to think about, and it's all just sitting right there on YouTube, him and who knows how many other gameplay videos like his.
Anyway, here's a link if anyone wants to check out the stage that finally did him in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8RstHfzO_w
I played Bastion over the last couple weeks, and this appears to be another example where a controller is superior to the keyboard. I played with the keyboard, and though I didn't encounter any real issues, I know I would have when it got more complex. So when I watched this YouTuber playing with a gamepad, I was thinking how much smoother his movements were. Also quite fascinating how different input affects player performance. You can read 1000 comments where players sound off on gamepad vs. keyboard for this game, and others.
I've no plans to load Super Meat Boy ever again, but there is a cool feature here: user-created levels. Actually that's what I found first, somehow stumbling upon them before I found the story mode. Let me just say, people are insane! I loaded a bunch of user maps and I just don't have any words. Nothing makes you feel old and 'behind the times' when you can't keep up with a game like the ones you used to play when you were a kid. Super Meat Boy vs. Super Mario Brothers? Ehh, same same but different. I think an NES would explode if you fed it a Super Meat Boy.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jun 21st, 2012 at 02:33:42 - Bastion (PC) |
Bastion is a remarkable game. First of all, it's very pretty and the soundtrack is fantastic. Thanks to the most recent Humble Bundle, I have it too! Much has been said about the narration in the game, and I vouch it's every bit as awesome as you heard. The narrator is a character in the story and he tells it, paraphrasing what other people say and always commenting on what you, 'The Kid,' are doing. It's dynamic, which blew my mind. I thought he was going to stop with the dynamic narration, like that was only in the beginning, but it's the entire game and so so so well done. So you come upon a new gun -- "The Kid sees his old friends, the twin repeater pistols." I mean he narrates the story as you move along and narrates significant things that happen and that you see and even makes little remarks about things you do. So I started a New Game + after beating it and I was rolling through the beginning (literally rolling) and he commented "The Kid just rolls right on through." Stuff like that. It's really neat. I would recommend everyone play this game just to hear the narration and experience the presentation of the story. Luckily the rest of it is great too.
Another unique thing this game does is handle its difficulty. You invoke different deities that grant enemies power/handicap you and it's your choice which ones to invoke when. There are 10 total (8 on the first play through) and they do things like make enemies hit harder or have more life, make them drop a grenade when you kill them, make them faster, etc. If the game's too easy (which is most certainly is without a few idols!) then pick a challenge. It's a freaking brilliant system, and to reward you for added difficulty, each idol you use grants you 5-10% bonus crystals and experience. One reason the difficulty system works so well is that when you level up, you get a spirit slot. You can add drinks that give you passive bonuses, 1 for each level. These include +15% damage reduction, +10 health, +100% shield counter damage, etc. The spirits and the idols sort of counterbalance one another. Like the more spirits you have, the more idols you'll be able to handle. And the more idols you use, the more experience you get, so the faster you can level and use more spirits.
I finished the game at level 7. When I got my first idol, I was thinking "haha, you must be crazy, why would I make this harder on myself?" and then I saw the bonus and I tried it out, and it was actually really nice to play with the sped up enemies (which I did first). So every time I got an idol, I added it. I was up to 5 or 6 the first time I ran into trouble. I accidentally made it so I couldn't kill this one boss because I'd turned on the enemy health regeneration idol (in addition to +enemy damage, +enemy defense and all the rest), and I couldn't attack this boss fast enough. He just regenerated faster than I could damage him. That's the first time I took an idol off. Then I just kept with 5 or so because some of the enemies got a bit harder. There is an achievement for completing a 'Who Knows Where' level (which is like a dreamstate with lots of waves of enemies where you can train and get crystals and xp) with at least 1 idol. I figured I'd try it with 1 instead of 5 so I took all of them off. It was then that I realized how crazy easy the game is without idols and how crazy better at the game I was from playing with idols the entire way than if I'd not used them. Like I spent the entire game with enemies moving way faster, taking way more damage, hitting me harder, and dropping grenades. When I took all that stuff off it was just like 'lol wow, really?' It's like how you run faster if you're following someone just faster than you, or you do better at a task when you're told that other people perform at this higher level. Really really great way of handling difficulty! And then once you beat the game you can do a New Game + where you keep all your weapons and upgrades and spirits and idols, which allows you to try and use more idols and keep leveling up for more challenge.
The fighting is pretty basic, feels fairly hack and slash with perhaps a bit more precision than usual since a lot of weapons involve careful aim and timing to pull off power shots. It's a fun system, and you can upgrade your weapons a lot with crystals. There are these weapon challenge areas where you can practice and beat times or scores and unlock some rewards, usually weapon upgrades or special attacks. Those were fun and I actually mastered all but 2.
The only thing I didn't love about the game were the controls on the PC. I think a game pad would be better for moving about the map. The mouse was fine for attacking, but the WASD just lacked precision for rolling and moving around the map. I fell off the map plenty of times. But minor gripe.
Wholeheartedly recommend Bastion.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Jun 19th, 2012 at 23:58:55 - Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love (PS2) |
This is a very interesting game. And that was a very vague statement.
As I find happens often, I had no idea what to expect from this when I began. It's some obscure 2010 NA PS2 update of a 2005 Japanese game that's in a long line of Sakura Wars games and has an anime and the rest of a full on media franchise. I've never heard of any of it.
It's categorized as a strategy RPG/dating sim, but I'm not sure how I feel about either label. There's definitely some strategy RPG, but it's really simple, and there's the tiniest bit of 'dating,' but it's 99% following conversations that don't have to do with romance, and of the 1% that do have to do with romance, 99% of those are silly, sometimes questionably inappropriate, things a 12-year-old would say or do. I don't know what I'd call it. It's about the "New York Combat Revue," a theater troupe/New York defense force, and it's the main character's story of how he gets recruited by the organization, moves to New York, meets everyone, learns a lot about them all and friendship, helps with their problems, some of which involve surprisingly mature discussions of life and death, law and justice, self-acceptance, pity, etc., they put on plays that the people of the city love, and they fight evil that constantly tries to destroy the city. And like I said, 99% of the game is dialogue. It's a weird premise and a weird presentation and a weird game, but I liked it.
I have played games sort of like this. It reminded me of 3 games in particular: Disgaea because it plays out in chapters and has the same kind of chapter scenes and dialogue presentation, Shadow Hearts because it's anachronistic New York, and mostly the Persona series because there's this emphasis on forming relationships with characters in the game. I guess the difference is that in Sakura Wars all your relationships are with girls and there are tons of different branching bits of the story depending on who you win over or piss off, and in Persona you're supposed to form relationships with all kinds of different people who don't necessarily have connecting stories. I'll always remember the dying man on the bench in the park, the little girl on the playground who wanted to run away from home, the old Japanese guy in the bar who left his family...that game seriously had some cool stories. Anyway, so however weird Sakura Wars is, at least I had a little exposure to things kinda like it before.
The dialogue is pretty good. Most of the characters are interesting and I actually enjoyed playing (reading) this game. You just follow them around their daily life. And the game is set in New York City, and I actually feel like I learned something about the place. There's a bit of a free roaming aspect when the game lets you explore the city and check out what's happening in all the places you can go to. Harlem is one area, and otherwise you can go to Central Park and Wall St. and see the Statue of Liberty. Whoever wrote this game really loves New York. There's tons in there about how great America and New York are, which, as an American playing this Japanese game, was pretty amusing. One of the characters is a black lawyer from Harlem who is super litigious. There's a lot of talk about soul food and jazz and community and fat Americans and it's funny because, since I've never been to Harlem and don't know anything about it, I don't know what's a stereotype and what's not. Like do they really like soul food in Harlem? I dunno.
This is the New York of the 1920s, roaring and full of life. There are a lot of immigrants, and I remember one point the game making a pretty strong statement about immigrants and diversity with a racially-charged scene of a white guy yelling at a Japanese, and then of course realizing later that he's wrong and they're all New Yorkers. But it's not just 1920's New York. There's a Demon Lord that's trying to invade the city, and the good guys all fight in giant mech suits, so that's the setting.
Each character (the 5 girls) has an excellent story, except Rosita, the annoying child with twin pistols who is obsessed with food. Hers is lame because she's the token annoying character in every RPG ever. Her story got really sugary sweet about teamwork and blah blah that other characters expressed in better ways. Then Diana, who has some fatal disease, she was annoying at first because she never responds like you think she will. So in dialogue, every so often you'll get a choice for what to say. You can piss them off, agree, hit on them, any one of various responses, and all these responses affect how you get along with that person and how they act toward you and perform in battle. Right so most of the characters I could read, but Diana, like in my opinion as a human trying to talk to another human, was irrational and would lash out when I was sure I was saying something she'd respond positively to. "I'm hungry Shin, what should I eat?" "Chicken." "What?! I hate chicken and you're a terrible person!" "Okay..." There was a scene not far removed from that...because she really likes birds.
The stories all follow the girls through some personal transformation, like Diana decides she has free will after all because you spend that chapter rehabilitating an injured bird. Cherion, the lawyer, remembers why she became a lawyer in the first place, not to attack people, but to defend the innocent in Harlem. And so on. Some of the writing was very good, like Subaru's story in particular there's a running theme of Polaris, the North Star, that guides people, and she relates it to you, the leader. Then crossword puzzles become a thing in the game, and especially with Subaru. Also Gemini, when it comes time for her story, you think you know what's what, but then the game throws an awesome twist at you and you're like OF COURSE and it's really clever. Then on the other hand, sometimes the writing is really juvenile (see Rosita) and at times just sexually awkward. There's no sex in the game. As far as I got you can make a move to kiss someone, but most of the flirtatious/sexual stuff is so dumb. Like Gemini had an old sword master who trained her to rub her boobs when she felt stressed. Then in some conversation there you can misinterpret what she says so your character thinks that she wants you to rub her boobs. I tried of course and she gets upset and smacks you. That's pretty much the rule here. If there is any flirting and you try to do anything toward the girls, they get upset, even if they straight up hit on you, they still get mad if you reciprocate, which to me doesn't make any sense, and is annoying because I can't figure out the rules of interaction. I could see this being REALLY confusing for like adolescent boys with real-world girl troubles playing this game. And with Gemini again, her master leaves her this scroll before he dies saying that her butt is her best feature, and there's a little running joke about her butt through her story. But actually they turn that one into meaningful story because it turns out she has some secret mark on her butt, which is what her master meant...i think...because he apparently liked her breasts too. Lecher. Anyway, by the end, you basically get with one of them.
I chose Subaru, who is an interesting character because her gender is uncertain through most of the game. Everyone calls her she and you figure she's a girl, but she rejects gender! It's very cool to see this happening in a game. And like in real life, some of the other characters are so confused and driven crazy because they can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl. I remember my step-dad in Thailand being so obsessed over how to tell whether the girls were real girls or ladyboys. It really really bothered him that he couldn't tell. So it's funny to see it here. I figured I would try to woo Subaru then to push her story further. Now, she turns out to be a heterosexual female, which is fine but too bad considering she was so provocative at the beginning, and turned out to be normal and everyone was like yay, now we know and things can go on as usual, reinforcing the dominance of gender in relationships and in understanding one another.
So the way you choose dialogue was cool. There are simple selection menus. There are 'simon says' type joystick movements you make to cook or do other things. Then the coolest one was this intensity meter. So say you're saying something like "We should spare the enemy's life." You can say it more or less strongly by moving the joystick up or down to fill up this gauge, then pressing OK. So say you say it very strongly, it might mean you have a lot of conviction behind it, or you are incredibly forgiving. So then a couple of your characters might really like that and agree with you and some story bit will happen. Now imagine you say it really quietly, like you don't really mean it. Now maybe Cherion, the girl all about justice, might override you because you didn't say it strongly. She might assert herself and say "No, the enemy is responsible for his crimes!" and then a different story bit happens. It's really interesting because you don't know what the different intensities mean or will cause to happen in any given case! Like you just know that you're making some statement with more or less intensity, but you don't know exactly what that means! It's really freaking cool and makes each one of those types of decisions exciting.
Finally, I guess just to mention, there is fighting in the game, and it's very straightforward SRPG stuff, no grids. Characters move and attack, everyone can heal, and everyone has a super move. Each character has X number of action points and it just ticks down depending on what actions you take. Each battle is basically a gang-up-and-kill-everything affair. There's not much thought involved and they're pretty easy until right at the end. The battle UI could use some real improvement. It's very tough to just check out an enemy's stats. The one neat thing about the battles is 'area move.' This means some battles take place over more than one area and you have to spend some move points to move to other areas to complete objectives. So say there are two areas and you need to destroy generators in one and defend a building in another. You can split your team up, have half move to the second area and you're basically fighting on two fronts. It's pretty neat. Also each boss battle has a flying portion. One later in the game I died on a couple times, then thought of a trick that made it ridiculously easy. You had three areas and had to defend an engine in one, another engine in another, and a steam valve in the middle. I tried to defend all three and was having trouble. Turns out you only need one engine to win. So I ended up just abandoning one engine from the beginning and practically doubling my strength in the other two locations and it was simple after that. Then the very last battle I couldn't bring myself to keep trying. In my opinion, the last boss (who you FINALLY fight the final battle after SIX previous battles...yes there are SEVEN parts to the final encounter, waaaay too long. It took me like 3 nights to do it) the last boss is super cheap. He attacks 2-3 three times in a row and just kills your characters when they can't do anything about it. So lame. I figure I've had my fun with the game. The dialogue was more entertaining than the fighting anyway, so I just turned it off and watched someone on YouTube beat it. Doesn't look like I missed anything.
So yes, overall pretty interesting game. Would probably never play another like it because though interesting, it's a lot of dialogue and it could get pretty tedious if it wasn't on the top of its game. But I'm glad I sat through this one. At least now when I see a 'dating sim' I won't automatically think it's stupid. Unless it's Leisure Suit Larry.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
