ratpizza

Ghost of a Tale (Windows)

Be quiet as a mouse.

The Good
Despite the game's seemingly cute fable-setting, Ghost of a Tale feels surprisingly grim and sombre, taking place on the inhospitable keep of Redpaw. The threatening atmosphere is further accentuated by Tilo's vulnerability with him being a small mouse with few means of defending himself from the big rat-brutes patrolling Redpaw. One player likened this game to ”the Hobbit”, an observation with which I agree. In fact, one of the items you can find in the game strongly reminded me of a particular event from the book so the designers were probably inspired by it. It's a refreshing setting for an RPG that has the player focus much more on stealth and cunning rather than brawn and combat.

The setting is further enhanced by the the rich lore which you will uncover gradually during the course of the game as well as Tilo's own background history, some of it through dialogue but most of it thorough one of the games sub-quests which requires you to collect roses where each one gathered gives another entry on Tilo's background and the events leading up his predicament. You will also meet quite a few interesting and colorful characters on your journey including the mysterious smith and the thieving mouse-siblings Gusto and Fatale. The dialogue is well-written and full of charm and humour and all conversations are accompanied by excellent close-up images of characters faces. Also, a nice touch is that some of the dialogues will require you to play the appropriate song from Tilo's repertoire.

The Bad
Unfortunately the game-play is quite weak and most notably the rpg-elements. Experience-points only increase your health and nothing else, there are no character-customization whatsoever. The various (mostly thief-related) skills you can learn from certain characters, while interesting, ultimately ends up marginal and under-used. The stealth aspect does not fare much better either. Basically you try to stay unnoticed by the guards and if they spot you run away and try to hide somewhere until they loose you and give up and that's pretty much all there is to it. In fact, you only have to do sneaking for about the first half of the game until you find a costume that allows you to blend in among the guards and after that the game becomes almost trivially easy except for a tedious and frustrating ”boss-fight” at the end. There really aren't much in the way of cerebral challenge either except for a few decent puzzles. Also, on the topic of costumes they are little more than a gimmick, most of them you will probably only wear once to fool a specific character into giving you information or some item. Finally, there's no real conclusion either, it ends with ”to be continued”. Not necessarily a bad thing by itself but as I considered the story the best aspect of the game it does feel even more unsatisfying, especially considering the highly uncertain nature of a sequel.


The Bottom Line
Even if the the actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired the unique setting and wonderful characters makes Ghost of a Tale worth a play-through for adventure-game fans. I sincerely hope that the creator will one day make a sequel with a more fleshed-out concept.

By ratpizza on December 24, 2019

Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok (Windows)

The spiritual successor to Quest for Glory.

The Good
Note: I will abbreviate Quest for Glory as QFG and Heroine's Quest as HQ. Also note that when I wrote this review I had only played the game with the warrior so my impressions will be based solely on that class.

Just like the the QFG-series Heroine's Quest packs plenty of humor. A good deal of the comedic value are handed to you by some very funny NPC such as Thriwaldi the troll or Ratatosk the doom-squirrel but most of it is to be found in the witty textual descriptions, especially if you try silly commands such as talking to fireplaces or pushing bridges. Most of the time the humor is quite gentle but it can get downright silly sometimes and breaks the fourth wall on more than one occasion. Despite this HQ has a more serious tone overall than the QFG-series. People struggle with hardships such as poverty, illness and mourning of loved ones and a certain air of grimness always looms over Jarnvidir and it's inhabitants because of the coming of the Fimbulwinter (though not to the same extent as in QFG: Shadows of Darkness). The story is also better and more involving than most of the the QFG-games. It isn't really so much the main plot-line (which essentially is just ”kill big fozzle”) that is interesting as is watching your character gradually evolve from an unknown and green adventurer into a famed and widely respected heroine. But what really lifts the story is that the developers takes the background-material for HQ more seriously than most of the QFG-games, you definitely get the impression that they have gone to great lengths to make the Norse mythology setting an integral part for both story and game-play. Not only will you have to face numerous enemies taken straight from Norse Mythology such as frost-giants and lindworms, you will also have to endure and gradually build up your resistance to the biting cold of the Fimbulwinter which will slowly seep your stamina and you will even need to travel to the realm of Svartalfheim at one point.

The RPG-mechanics are very similar to QFG with skills you increase simply by practice. However, HQ introduces some new class-specific skills such as Animal-Keen for the Warrior and Herbalism for the Sorceress which makes each of the classes more distinct than those in QFG. Also, the game notifies you every time a skill goes up so you don't have to access the character-sheet constantly. The combat-system is also considerably improved. This never was a strong point of the QFG-franchsie and there were none of it's various systems I wholeheartedly liked even if they were serviceable. But they all literally pale in comparison to the combat system used in HQ. It most resembles the system used in QFG 2 but is a lot more deeper and varied. Three basic attacks and three evasive maneuvers (warriors can also block and parry) and a small weapon-selection gives a lot more room for strategy than QFG. There is also a much wider variety of enemies and half of the challenge lies in figuring out the optimal weapon and attack to use against each enemy. Combat stayed fun to the very end even though by then I could dispatch trolls with a single blow. Another nice touch is that NPC actually live their own lives, wandering around and outside of town during the day and frolicking in the local tavern at night. It's a nice touch of realism and quite a stark contrast to the QFG-games where all characters did was basically to stay in their shops all day and vanish without a trace during the day.

The adventure-portions of the game are equally good. Characters are distinct and memorable and dialogue is well-written with top-notch voice-acting. Puzzles are also very good, not to hard or easy and with alternative solutions to many of them. And the old-school graphics are excellent as is the music.

The Bad
At one point in the game, there is a certain item you can pick up that will soon turn out to be affected with a very nasty curse. While it is hinted that picking up this item is a bad idea it's very easy to ignore this warning especially if you play as a rogue. It seems impossible at first to get rid of this item and not even restoring to an earlier save helps. That's right, once you have picked up the cursed item, it will remain in your inventory even if you restore your game to a point far before you even laid eyes upon it! Naturally, there is actually a way to get rid of it but it is far from obvious and by the time you have figured it out (or resorted to a walkthrough in despair as I did) you will probably have suffered through a lot of agony. I personally did not find this ordeal the least bit of fun, I actually felt like I had been subjugated to a cruel prank by the developers.

Another, much less severe gripe I had was with the in-game notepad. While I appreciated this commodity I felt that it wasn't overly useful, there is only one page available and it is very cumbersome to edit.

Other than the above nitpicks I really can't think of any concrete flaws, maybe one or two puzzles are a little to obscure but what adventure-game can claim to have perfect puzzles all way through?

The Bottom Line
Playing Heroine's Quest is almost like playing an entirely new QFG-game. Of course it isn't actually a sequel but this game perfectly captures the spirit and unique experience of the QFG-series while at the same time improving upon virtually every aspect of them. QFG-fan or not, if you are even remotely interested in the adventure or rpg-genre you simply must try this game.

By ratpizza on December 11, 2014

Soulbringer (Windows)

Almost a great game.

The Good
At first glance, Soulbringer appears to be a fairly generic action-rpg, but after a few hours of playing, this obscure title turns out to be a surprisingly funny and innovative game. The story is given more room here than in many other action-rpgs and evolves in very much the same way as the plot in an epic fantasy novel would. The developers tries to make the player feel as if they are actually the archetypical “chosen one” and one of the tricks they use is to change the hero's appearance and toughen up his attitude at various parts in the plot to more clearly mark his change from “zero to hero”. The PC will partake in some large battles between opposing forces, repel an invasion and rescue a village of enslaved farmers, to mention a few major events. The world of Rathenna has quite an extensive background-history and you can find and read several books on this subject in-game. You will also get to speak with some interesting non-player characters which have distinct personalities and who are voiced with believability and insight. Overall, the plot in Soulbringer is interesting and engaging and a good author could probably rewrite the base-story into a paperback fantasy-novel.

The real ace in Soulbringer's sleeve, though, is the actual fighting. The combat-system is built so that with each weapon you will be able to execute various moves and more powerful (but generally slower) moves are added to your repertoire as you put more points into your combat-skill. In addition to that you must also take into consideration what type of weapon to use against what enemy (mace + skeleton = crushed skeleton) and even the type of terrain you are standing on since attacks aimed at the head won't hit anything standing below you and vice versa. As you can see the combat-system is quite complex and strategic and it puts Soulbringer one notch above your average button-mashing diablo-clone. The enjoyment of battling Rathenna's various nasties is further helped by the motion captured battle-animations which looks incredibly fluent and realistic. Also, you will get access early on to a special spell called “Death’s Recollection” which allows you to speak with the spirits of certain departed beings. There really is something special to defeating a particularly powerful foe and afterwards interrogate his soul!

The developers also tried something new with the magic system. The idea is that spells are made up of fire, air, earth, water or spirit and coo-exist in a cyclical harmony within the caster's soul and as the strength of one element grows so is the other elements weakened. In practice, this means that if, for example, you were to cast a lot of fire-based spells, they will become more powerful at the expense of the other elements. It's a fresh idea which puts a spin on the concept and adds a layer of strategy.

The Bad
For all the background-history of Rathenna, it's actual world really isn't that detailed and rather limited. There is a “sameness” over all the places you visit, there's hardly any visual difference between the small town of Madrigal and the capital town of the Thardolin empire for instance. Wherever you go there's always black fog obscuring your view so you can never see more than a few feet into the distance and the textures are bland and unvaried. Finding your way in the game can be a major chore and in-game information on where to locate places of interest is vague at best. You really won't have much incentive to go exploring the game-world as there is very little secrets to discover and few optional side-quests to perform. In the end, Soulbringer fails because it feels underdeveloped, the actual game feels to limited to contain it’s promising but nevertheless underdeveloped plot-line. There is several other problems too, such as the clumsy user-interface. Items are sorted into categories but many of them can't be used or equipped via the inventory and instead you have to click on the the category for the desired item in real-time and them flip though that list until you find the desired item. This is made even worse by the PC's poor path-finding which is next to non-existent. If the path you click for the PC to walk on isn't almost completely unobstructed, then the nitwit will often stop dead in his tracks even if there are several skeletons chasing him, doing their best to chop him up.

The Bottom Line
Playing Soulbringer roughly felt like reading Lord of the Rings compressed on a post-it note. There is so many good ideas and so much promise in this title that sadly never reaches it's full potential. It could have been really good, a classic even, if Infogrames had spent some more time on expanding upon the plot-line and streamlining it's interface. Still, Soulbringer has lots to recommend to it and will provide solid entertainment while it lasts.

By ratpizza on April 24, 2012

Wrath of Earth (DOS)

A forgotten gem.

The Good
Wrath of Earth is a very (undeservedly) obscure FPS released in 1995 which not only provides solid gameplay and excellent graphics, it also incorporated many innovations for it's time such as talkable NPCs, environmental dangers and lock-on targeting. Not to mention the “solar-energy”-concept which allowed for a decidedly more tactical gameplay than the average gung-ho “let's blast, em” approach common for most shooters around this time. A skilled player may well make it through most levels without ever needing to pick up a single health-pack. Likewise a veteran player can make it through most encounters with only the battery-fed machine-gun like “rapid ionic particle gun”.

But less skilled players need not fear as the game scatters plenty of ammo and medkits at strategic positions. Many of them are well-guarded though and hidden which motivates players to search through levels carefully. Yes, WOE is a level-progressed game and not an open-ended game-world. But each level is fairly non-linear and gives players many choices where to go and what to do next. Levels also have varied and detailed environments such as industrial buildings, caves and forests and are accompanied by memorable and mood-setting music tracks . Voice acting is top-notch too and somehow you never grow tired listening to the computer-voice saying “auto-map”, “weapon-systems”, “search-mode” etc.

The Bad
Inventory-items are picked up by a special command but ammo and health-packs are picked up by simply walking over them which causes some problems. If for example your supply of plasma is nearly, but not quite full, it's possible to waste almost an entire plasma-unit if you accidentally walk over it, especially if a fallen enemy drops the unit in such a place that it's impossible not to walk over it. Also, remembering the various locations of supplies can be tricky. While you can mark locations of interest on your automap you can't actually write on it so it can be quite hard to remember what is what. Very minor problems, yes, but still.....

The Bottom Line
WOE is an original and very entertaining shooter which to this day manages to feel fresh. Had only this game gotten proper attention it could well have ranked among classics such as System-Shock and DOOM. If you are an FPS-fan and can get hold of this title I strongly recommend you to try it!

By ratpizza on August 7, 2011

Highway Hunter (DOS)

Out of my way, you road-hogs!

The Good
In highway-hunter you control a car instead of a spaceship/plane. It's a simple but effective variation which sets it apart from most other top-down shooters.
Otherwise, however, game-play mechanics sticks to the basic formula. Collect power-ups, blow up enemies and defeat end-of-the-level boss. Fortunately, all levels have their own respective backgrounds and layouts with various mood-enhancing soundtracks which will ensure to keep you motivated to play.

The Bad
The only real downside I can think of is that it can be quite a tedious affair to beat some of the bosses unless you have any of the more powerful weapon-upgrades.

The Bottom Line
Highway-hunter is a fairly ordinary top-down shooter but it certainly is one of the better of it's kind. It's fun to play every now and then when you have some spare-time to kill.

By ratpizza on May 22, 2011

The Cleaner (Windows)

Simple, fun and brilliant action-game.

The Good
There exists many videogames today, commercial titles produced by professional teams as well as freeware titles made by amateur-enthusiasts. Some of are bad, most are okay and many are good. However, very few games have that special something that makes them a truly wonderful experience which will touch you to the heart! But it just so happens that this modest freeware game is one of those select few! I have played many adventure games in my life, many good ones and way to many for me to count and by the time I'm writing this review no other game than this one have captivated me so much as to get 3 full playthroughs from me. Must count for something, huh?

This game sparks of life, from top to bottom. The graphics and animations have been drawn in a humble and cartoony style which reminds me quite a bit about the graphic style seen in many later NES-games. Although there are some bright outdoor locales most levels are dark and claustrophobic. There are lots of effective sounds in this game, many of them coming from enemies, varying from low, menacing growls to semi-robotic shouts. Some enemies also have somewhat odd but beautifully unique looks. And in fights the air will be ripe with zaps, explosions and buzzes from the shots exchanged between the cleaner and his adversaries. Great attention and care has gone into the small details, those very details which gives life to an image and makes us for forget that it is.... an image! Tress are color-sparkling and lush, machinery will glow and blink, snow will fall, water will flow and trickle, the cleaners cloak will even billow in the wind! And there is many cool special-effects too, such as explosions, smoke and lightning which also looks very nice. All of these things contribute to create a unique atmosphere which I would say is.... magic! Mystic but beautiful at the same time. And it is further enhanced by the amazing soundtrack. Imagine the music score from megaman, only better. Each track fits it's respective level like hand in glove, in some places it is subdued and brooding and in others suspenseful and thrilling.

The gameplay is superb, striking a great balance between fast-trigger reflexes and contemplative strategic thinking. You will encounter various enemies, each with different attacks and movement-patterns (and some with a not so trivial AI) and you will need to choose the right spells for the right enemies. The many spells you will fire all have a well defined purpose and characteristic looks and sounds. They include Speeding Bolts which are weak but fast and Mage-beam which are powerful but mana-hungry. Upgrading spells to higher levels are an important part of the gameplay but you can also downgrade them at any time to free up essence-points and spend on another spell or stat. Perhaps you want to try out the Energy-blade but haven,t got enough EP to ”buy” it? Then try downgrading the Mage-beam one notch and spend the refunded EP on Energy-blade. Didn't like it very much? Then by all means give the EP back to Mage-beam. Or perhaps you rather prefer improving mana regeneration so your mana supply won't run dry as quickly during particularly intense fights? This was a very good design-choice which effectively leaves you free to experiment with spells without you having to worry about wasting your hard-earned EP on spells which you will perhaps only use once or twice during the entire game. The fights themselves are fast-paced, fluid and exciting and defeating enemies will reward you with unique death-animations for each type of them, organic enemies will burst in a shower of meat, robots will be destroyed in loud explosions and soldiers will let out high-pitched death-yells. And of course there is also the useful telekinesis which allows you to move objects such as rocks and and branches and smack them into enemies. It can be a very effective alternative to spells but it takes some skill to use as you must get the objects moving with sufficient momentum to cause any significant damage.

As for the story it is a quite typical ”good versus evil”-tale at it's core but it is well told and makes you empathise with the protagonist and understand the importance of his mission, you will not just think of the plot as a lame excuse for you to shot everything in sight. Also, I like the unusual way it is told, in pictures and not in words. It works great and ties in with the ”show, don't tell” philosophy running throughout this game.

The Bad
A few tiny specks of dust smudges the surface on this otherwise perfectly polished gem. For the first, controls are a little clumsy. WASD-keys in conjunction with mouse works flawlessly for moving and shooting but when you want to switch spells you must do that by pressing the numerical keys meaning you must take your hand away from the directional buttons. The designer should have incorporated the option of switching spells with a mouse-wheel, that would have been terrific. Also the button for accessing the stats-screen could have been placed closer to the WASD-keys, perhaps ”g” instead of ”m” For the second, some exits are quite obscure and makes certain tasks harder than they should be.

The Bottom Line
The cleaner very clearly demonstrates that lack of access to advanced 3-D software and a multimillion-dollar budget doesn't have to be a hindrance to creating a great game. I sincerely hope that we will one day see a sequel to this marvellous action-adventure.

By ratpizza on February 5, 2011

Alone in the Dark: Inferno (PlayStation 3)

The innovative features does not make up for frustrating controls and the embarrassingly bad story and dialogues.

The Good
In most survival-horror games your main method of fending of the monsters are to find weapons such as pistols, shotguns, flamethrowers etc which all magically fit into your pockets. Not so in AITD: Inferno. Here, the main way of defence is not spelled firearms but.... Fire! You see, all the hellish creatures are highly sensitive to fire (funny, huh? You'd think that they, of all the nasty monsters in the universe, should be able to stand a little heat:)) and fire comes in abundance in this game, very nice-looking realistic fire at that.

Now, how do you use it against the monsters? Well, you could pick up a hatchet (or any of a number of melee weapons you'll come across) and chop down that zombie and drag it into a nearby bonfire before it wakes up again. Or you could destroy it directly with a broomstick you have set aflame. However, the real fun lies in making improvised weapons out of household items you will find in various places. For example, you can combine a bottle of booze with a cloth to make yourself a molotov cocktail which will fry the monsters nicely. Perhaps you rather prefer holding a spray-can to your lighter as a makeshift flamethrower? Or why not pour some flammable liquid on the ground and light it when an enemy steps onto the trail? Improvisation is the key to survival here and I thought it was a nice, fresh breeze to the genre and an admirable (though not flawless) attempt to move away from the somewhat stale run-and-gun convention.

Many game-designers of today seem to overlook the strength of good, engaging puzzles but AITD have managed to pull of some good ones. Most of them requires you to use the environment in clever ways to get by obstacles, for example, you may have to find a way to get a severed power-line out of water or find a heavy object to smash open a locked door. Overall, most of them aren't a no-brainer but are still perfectly logical. There was certainly, at least occasionally, a nice, old-school-adventure charm over this game.

The Bad
Sadly, there's far more things to dislike than like about this game. The biggest flaw of this game is without doubt it's story. It's an illogical and disconnected mess of cliches, such as a protagonist suffering from amnesia, an ancient stone with evil powers, a satanist sect and the knights templar. Sure, cliches can be good if they are used effectively but they certainly aren't here. The main problem , I think, is that instead of focusing on the horror-aspect, the developers saw fit to throw in a lot of elements from action-games such as driving (I will go into more detail on that later) and climbing and therefore diluting the overall atmosphere. AITD simply tries to be so many things at the same time that in the end it doesn't really do anything particularly well.

What about the dialogue? Well..... apparently, according to some other reviews, the designers tried to create a gritty, dark atmosphere. Fine and well. But seriously, do the guys at Atari really think a game will be more ”gritty” or ”dark” because the characters says fk and st in about every third sentence!? Add to this such original and well-written lines as ”Run, save yourself”, ”Bah, I'm fine, just a fleshwound” or ”who the hell am I?” and you should have a pretty god idea of what a great storyline you can expect from this game. I would like to add that normally I find it quite annoying when a game doesn't have the option of subtitles. However, in this particular case I doubt I would have been any happier of reading the dialogue in it's entire awfulness as well.

Now on to the next, miserable aspect, namely the controls. You will find out that turning and rotating the PC (Player character, if you didn't know that abbreviation) is so clumsy and imprecise in third-person view, it will be a major hazzle getting him aligned properly to first pick up a baseball-bat or branch or whatever and then struggle to try to hit the enemy and not just dead air which becomes quite a serious issue in close combat. Another thing which complicates getting up close and personal in battle is that instead of the standard ”one button-press does it all” approach to close combat, here you have to mimic real arm-movement by moving the analog stick in the direction you want Carnby to swing a melee weapon. While this sounds like a nice and quite original idea in theory, in practice it's mostly just clumsy and unnecessarily difficult to master, even if it allows for some intuitive puzzles near the end. And to top this of, Carnby ”runs” at a pace which would have been suitable for a relaxing jog in the park but certainly not for running away from badtempered zombies.

Ah, yes. About the aforementioned driving. I will contend to say that early on in the game, an entire section consists of driving through narrow streets littered with various obstacles where the slightest crack in the road can cause you to become hopelessly stuck and fall to your death as the road crumbles under you. I found this section so frustrating and unforgivingly difficult that the real horror of this game lies in thinking what the ps2-version would have been like which I have read had even worse controls than this ps3-version. (Shudders!)

The Bottom Line
Overall, Alone in the Dark: Inferno is a game that could have been something really good but unfortunately it tries to bite of far more than it can chew and falls flat. If Atari is ever to make a sequel I sincerely hope they spend time and effort to polish and refine this, after all, promising concept.

By ratpizza on December 11, 2010

Dark Void (PlayStation 3)

Don your rocketpack, we're going to hunt some UFO's!

The Good
The gameplay is a mixed bag of tricks. It incorporates elements of hide-and gun ground combat as well as aerial dogfigthing action and both parts actually work well together which makes gameplay fun and varied. At it's best, It's an intense and actionpacked game with quite a few challenging battles. The dogfights though, are what really shines and is no doubt the game's strongest aspect. You have many choices here, you can shoot enemy aircrafts down with your rocketpack's inbuilt machineguns or man an allied antiaircraft gun to take the UFO's down. Or even more fun, you can chase after a UFO to hijack it and then fly it yourself.

The Bad
You aren't likely to appreciate this game for it's plot. I thought it was quite weak, mainly because it seems like a patchwork of several halfbaked ideas instead of a coherent well-defined story. Also, none of the characters have any real personalities and come across as shallow and dull stereotypes so it's hard to really care for any of them.

Searching for the collectibles in the game, techpoints and journal entries, is mostly a waste of time. The upgrades you can add to your weapons doesn't seem to make much difference and the journals which tells the stories of various other people within the void feels bland and uninteresting and adds nothing.

It is also too bad that the game's best aspect, using a rocketpack to battle UFO's at the same time feels so disappointingly underdeveloped. The rocketpack could have been far more useful and versatile, as it is it's little more than a regular plane in mini-size.It,s almost useless outside areas with wide, clear spaces. If you are in more cramped spaces you will barely be able to lift before you smack hard into a tree or crate. It is my opinion that when a game features a trademark tool such as a whip or a boomerang or jetboots or whatever, that tool shouldn't just have one purpose, it should be useful for various tasks. (Think of the bionic arm in Bionic Commando from 2009 and you should have a pretty good idea of what I mean) Also, there is hardly any difference between flying your rocketpack or a commandeered aircraft so the whole skyjacking-thing becomes little more than a fun gimmick.

Lastly, I encountered some annoying lockups of the game on more than one occasion so apparently the programmers haven't done their jobs as well as they should have.

The Bottom Line
I certainly had fun while playing this rather short adventure but when it was all over I didn't have any lasting impression of it. This game certainly had the potential to become a really great game which I think the developers could have achieved if they had incorporated a better story and focused more on the jetpack and dogfighting aspect. Still, it's certainly worth a playthrough if you can get hold of this game for a bargain-bin price.

By ratpizza on August 28, 2010