Asinine

Spore (Windows)

I can proudly say: I did not make a penis in this game.

The Good
Allows for a lot of customization.

Universe is very expansive.

Final stage allows for a lot of completion.

Choosing between Herbivore, Omnivore and Carnivore really makes a difference.

The Bad
Controls are problematic.

There is always a best option when creating your characters, so there is no reason to experiment or make your own thing.

Civilization stage drags on.

Space is the most enjoyable, but has too much “doing things”, besides just been repetitive.

The Bottom Line
Cellular

As the game starts you’ll find yourself in the ocean, controlling a small creature. This is the first phase of the game and also by far the least complex of them all: Your goal is to consume a number of pellets, red ones for the carnivores and green ones for the herbivores. You can also kill other creatures by bumping into them with your mouth or whatever spiky parts your body contains, which has a chance of giving you a new part to stick to your body (such as a needle) and gives you three free red pellets. It sounds alright, but it’s slightly unfair towards the Herbivores who can’t bite enemies and thus they need to either scour the world for meteorites (which also have parts in them) or awkwardly kill enemies through other means. It’s also slightly beyond me how you can play as an Omnivore in this phase, because some mouths eat the green pellets and other the red ones. Maybe you stick two mouths to your character?

Once you have some parts you like and consumed some pellets, you can use a special button that calls a “mate”. If you swim over to your mate, then the two produce an egg and you can spend the DNA you collected by finding the pellets on adding the new parts to your body. Overall this reminds me of old Flash games where you had to consume smaller fish (or whatever the theme was) in order to grow and eat even bigger fish. This deviation might not be exactly that, but sticking parts to your body allows for a bit more tactic instead of just comparing sizes. The selection of possible parts is still very limited at this point, but we are supposed to be simple cells, so it’s fine.

Creature

After you absorbed enough pellets you’ll be prompted to leave the ocean by clicking on a button, upon doing so you’ll be taken to a new customization screen. You now have the ability to stick legs, arms, hands and other limps to your character. You can now also bend your body in different 3-dimensional shapes. While the amount of available parts is yet again underwhelming, this is the phase where that will change a lot, as you’ll find new parts scattered around the planet and by interacting with other creatures. If you decide to collect everything, then you’ll end up with a reasonably large library of parts that should allow you to realize most of your creative visions. If I have to name one problem though, then it would be that each part has a set of stats to it. On the easiest difficulty it’s not THAT big a problem, but it does mean that there is a definitive “better” option and that means settling with anything else will handicap you.

During this phase you have two different ways to play, though both feature around interacting with other races. Herbivores will have to make friends by sticking parts to themselves that upgrade their social skills (posing, dancing, singing and the likes). They then click on a creature and mimic their moves in order to fill up a bar. If the other creature fills his part of the bar faster than you do, then the attempt will have failed. You can increase the speed at which the bar fills by bringing more of your kind with you (you’ll unlock more slots for allies as you progress in this phase) or increasing the level of your actions by, you guessed it, sticking parts to your creature. Alternatively you can pick Carnivore and just rip the other creatures a new one. Carnivores are once again better off in this phase, as you are unlikely to die as long as you keep to basic gaming-instincts (don’t charge into the middle of the group, keep your gear up to date, max out your group). Either killing or befriending other creatures once again gives you DNA that allows you to add new parts to your race and fills the progress bar.

You can also get additional DNA by completing the mini-quests that pop up all the time, but these aren’t really that complex. Every time you find a new race, it will give you a number and tell you to befriend or kill so many of that race (Carnivores usually have to do more). There are also a few rare creatures that give you special quests, but these are hard to find and don’t really break up the tedium. It doesn’t really get into the way, since you have to do the tasks anyway, but it got really frustrating that I would run out of creatures to kill as a Carnivore. This meant having to wait for a while until they respawn, but in the time that takes I would be prompted to move to a new nest again. Moving nests is not too bad a quest either, it’s actually pretty clever: once you run out of nearby inhabitants to harass or befriend, then game will automatically locate a new nest nearby that has plenty to do around it.

Overall not a bad phase, though it would have benefited from more variation in the quest and less RPG-elements forced into it.

Tribal

As your guys gain more and more DNA, their brain gradually grows and they become capable of logical thinking. Fire is invented, a house is built and they unite themselves into a tribe! This part of the game is really reminiscent to Age of Empire mixed with some elements from Halo Wars, you have a town center and from there you can raise individual peasants that can take on whatever job you assign to them. Doing so costs food, so you’ll have to use them in order fish, farm and hunt in order to keep the storage filled. There is however a very good twist to this scenario, because these peasants also fulfill a combat role (be it unarmed or with whatever weapon you give them). This means you’ll have to simultaneously keep up food production, guard your stock and keep your young safe from harm, as well as possibly wage war on enemies.

The aforementioned Halo Wars elements come into play when you want to construct buildings and get a selection between different kinds to place on pre-determined tiles attached to your base. From these buildings you can get items that help you in your tasks, such as a club to fight better or a horn to impose other tribes. You can give each individual villager an item of choice and this makes up for the lack of individual units. This phase signals the rise of the main problem I have with the later phases of the game: all of them are variations on other games, but with no depth at all. In this Age of Empires part there are no defenses you can build, no technologies to research, no trade, no diplomacy, no ships, no siege weapons and no ability to make buildings wherever you want. It’s a quality over quantity problem we are talking about.

During this phase the Carnivores once again have to slaughter their way to success, which is definitely the most straightforward option. This time around the Herbivore solution is easier though, you just take all your guys with you and play music for other tribes. If you picked Herbivore before, then you can fire fireworks into the sky that instantly raise your relationship with a tribe and you can also offer presents to instantly get a better relationship. By doing this you can end this phase in less than an hour and don’t have to deal with the poor combat mechanics. The problem is that there are set moments when you can start recruiting more villagers (similar to how you could get more room by building houses in AoE), so there is no way to outdo your enemies through size as this also instantly spawns larger enemy tribes. All you can do is waiting for a few enemies to walk away and then quickly burn their stuff down before they come back. Another derpy feature is the clothes you can stick to your characters, which looks almost always stupid. Clothes have statistics, but I managed to break the system: the hats have the highest stats, so just take three different hats and put them somewhere halfway decent (preferably where you can’t see the damn things).

Civilization

Guess which series this phase is mimicking? Yeah, it’s the beloved Civ series! You’ll have to manage and defend cities, create units to do battle and claim resources in order to prevail… or you just go religious and mess everything up. Let’s start at the beginning:

At the start of this phase you’ll be asked to design a basic house for the first time and then a land-vehicle to go along with it. You can also build an entertainment-building, a factory and turrets, all of which you can personally design (aside from the turret, oddly enough). Likewise there are also three different vehicles; land, water and air. While it’s fun to design your own vehicles, I can’t help but notice that this is once again done in an attempt to hide the lack of units and technology. The vehicles aren’t very comfortable to design either because they have three stats: speed, health and religion/power, but all of these are stuck in a percentage bar, so you can have five rockets driving your car forward, but it will still be slow because there are guns on the side of it. Religious vehicles are even more dumb, because you need to stick ridiculous trinkets to them (such as giant harps), but in order to get enough religious power you’ll have to fill the whole thing up.

A positive change to the formula however is the fact that everything is done real-time, so no turns that just serve to slow things down. This part of the game can also get REALLY fast-paced as different factions (all of your own race, oddly enough. You’d think they at least let you conquer other races if you chose Herbivore in the previous phase) steal resources from one another and cities trade hands quite often. I also like the way you build your cities: Factories make people angry (making your city easier to take through religious methods), but also increase your income over time. To balance out for making people angrier you can place entertainment-buildings, which increase happiness. You can also place homes, which have no bonuses, but when connected to a factory they increase the income of that factory or, when attached to an entertainment-building, they increase happiness even more.

This phase can be played in three ways, so if you wanted an Omnivore, then this is finally the point at which you can develop your creatures into that position. Regardless of how you want to play it, the goal is always the same: conquer all the cities on the map. You can simply bomb the place with powerful vehicles (Carnivore), but also use religious vehicles to summon a holograph of your leader that tries to convert the population (Herbivore) or buy other cities (Omnivore). I am rather puzzled as to why you use holographs, seeing as we just evolved from a tribe and maybe priests would make more sense, but there is something else to complaint about. Buying cities DOES NOT work. I had enough money to buy 500 planes, but whenever I clicked on a city, it would say I didn’t have enough trade, even if I had every possible trade route leading to that city. I spend like two hours farming money in an attempt to buy that city, but then the game literally gave me the option to instantly win the phase. What the fuck?

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

This is the final stage of the game and obviously the main focus of the designers. You go into space and are allowed to travel to the millions of stars and galaxies out there, as well as interact with other galactic empires. I had so much fun in this phase that I wish they would have just made a damn Space-sim instead; the trading is amazingly fun, there are badges to collect by doing tasks, the missions aren’t too bad, there is so much to explore and it’s motherduckin’ space! I LOVE IT!

But I also grew bored of it too soon. This is perhaps the greatest disappointment I experienced with the game, but it was so rough that I had trouble enjoying it after I got over the initial kick. First of all: the missions are basic MMO-stuff, meaning collect that from there or kill X amounts of that. It’s always like that and this really shines through once you found some other empires and they start asking you a million things. There are also so many factions out here that it got really hard to keep track of anything after a while, it got so bad in fact, that I constantly forgot where my allies were located and what was safe to explore and what wasn’t.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that I couldn’t play as hostile as I did in any of the other phases. Your ship is stronger than any regular one, but you can’t really do anything offensive for a very long time and when you do you’ll be toasted by a million freaking planes at the same time. This forced my race to instantly change their whole way of interacting, but no matter how long I played, I never acquired the power to even assault ONE enemy planet. Another huge deal is the Terraforming, which is needed in order to make profitable colonies. I´m fine with placing a generator on the planet to keep atmosphere levels good, but then the game demands that you plunk down trees and animals to sustain it as well. It sounds okay, but for some reason the score keeps decreasing after I do this. How does placing trees make the planet colder? Or how does placing animals drain the planet’s atmosphere? It’s stuff like this that makes this phase a lot less enjoyable.

Verdict

Spore has a lot of good ideas, but having so many phases only serves to make each one of them incredibly underwhelming and unpolished. It was certainly a nice experiment, but history has already proven that collections of small games rarely work well, unless they are intended to be mini-games.

By Asinine on September 27, 2012

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Windows)

The remake of the classic FPS.

The Good
Unforgiving in all the good ways.

Retro feel, but with modern visuals.

Arms Race is really cool.

Earning money to buy weapons works.

Good bots.

The Bad
Lacks a regular death-match.

Online games are always lacking due to lag.

No story at all.

Only a handful of maps.

Spawn-points are random.

The Bottom Line
Story

Counter-strike: Global Offensive is the latest entry in a series of online first-person shooters. The series is built around a very simple goal: Terrorists kill police-officers & police-officers kill terrorists. There is very little story surrounding the details of this conflict, but I suppose a tale about terrorists trying to plant bombs writes itself. I have nothing against simplicity, but Counter-strike really puts in too little effort. There are plenty of online FPS-games, but almost all of them have a single-player mode that serves to explain the overhanging plot. Admittedly most of these aren’t too spectacular and a lot of game-designers seem to have a grudge against Russia lately, but not having any plot at all removes the context from a game, thus leaving the player without a reason to care about the conflict. The only reason to play this game is for the fun of logging in and shooting a few lads before logging off again, there is literally nothing plot-wise to keep you interested in the action you are partaking in.

Gameplay

Despite what my review might be suggesting so far, CS:GO is far from a conventional shooter. Unlike some of the other games in the genre (Call of Duty, Battlefield and etc.), this game stands out for been very unforgiving. You don’t have a fancy aiming-mode for one thing, so no Red Dot sight or Holographic sight to make shooting easier for you. You also can’t just select what weapons you want, you have to buy each weapon with the money you earned by making kills, if you don’t have any money, then it’s the starting pistol for you. One point that goes too far however is that 50% of the game-modes are elimination games, meaning you don’t respawn when killed. It’s a good way to encourage you to get better and it allows you to observe other players through the spectator-camera, but it’s more likely that people will get pissed off and shut down the game instead.

One thing I dislike about these online games though is that my internet connection renders them unplayable. There is just something infuriating about sitting through five minutes of matchmaking, then wait till the game ends and you can actually play, THEN half a minute of warming-up and all that just to play for ten minutes before the game freaks out and you start bouncing around like basketball in a wind-tunnel. To the game’s credit though, the official servers are fairly stable and if you really can’t play online, then there is the option to play against bots. I freaking love bots and these are very good, they almost completely resemble real players, but without screaming into microphones. There is also an alternative for the elimination-games too, namely “Arms Race”. In this mode you start with a basic SMG, but as you make kills you climb up a metaphorical ladder and unlock the next weapon. You respawn instantly and the game ends when a player makes a kill with the last weapon on the scale, namely the knife.

Presentation

It’s no secret the Counter-Strike isn’t the most breathtaking game in terms of graphics and for an online shooter that already cut corners on the story, that’s a pretty big deal. These games sell almost exclusively on the prospect of having more pixels and more detail than other games in the genre. That doesn’t mean the game looks bad, not at all in fact, but it just doesn’t look as fantastic as some other titles out there. To balance out for this problem the game provides a good variety of maps to play in and the design of these areas really is ingenious at times. The tactical diversity these maps allow and the fact that you can actually conceal yourself in scenery like plants is really worth noting. However, the game may strike a lot of people as generic, despite of the fact that it was this series that invented a lot of the trends it continues to use to this day. I am not affected by this too much, but I think the game would have benefited from deviating from the old formula a bit, seeing as how soldiers yelling: “Stay frosty” and generic action-music playing in the menu is going to get old after a while. Why not play something slow and emotional instead? That could be really interesting.

Replay-value

Counter-Strike is meant to be played in short bursts and since it can’t really be finished, you can play it until you are absolutely sick of it. This will vary per person, a true fan might be able to play this for another twelve years, but somebody else might get tired of it after a week. However, you can always come right back to the game whenever you want and thanks to the bots you can get a feel for the game again before diving back into the online community. In fact, a lot of the content is created in such a way that makes it easy to come back into the game after stopping for a while. The weapons for example are all different in feel, but not necessarily in power. All the characters wear armor and are pretty durable, so killing them is based more around making headshots than who fired the stronger weapon. This means your choice of weapons is purely personal, I was good at making headshots with the pistols, but not so much with the shotgun, so I often use pistols.

Some people would argue that all online shooters can be played like this, but I have to disagree. I have played Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield 3 myself, but I never continue playing them for more than a month and sometimes they disappear from my system for many months. The reason is because the studios behind these games are very sequel-happy and since MW2 we have seen Black Ops and now MW3 and Blacks Ops 2 are apparently on their way. Why should I continue to play these games when a few months from now I’ll be asked to put down cash for the next graphics update and all my progress will be reset. Counter-Strike and more specifically Valve doesn’t do this (except for maybe once if you’re still pissed about Left 4 Dead) and thus CS is more enjoyable to continue playing, seeing as how you’ll be able to show off your achievements for a much longer time.

Extras

Talking about achievements, there are plenty of those to collect. A total of 167 are present in the game at this point and future updates may bring in even more. Just like with Team Fortress 2, these achievements are done very well. There are easy ones that you will gather like crazy once you start playing, then things slow down and you can focus on getting a few special ones. Eventually the time you invested in the game will be rewarded with some time-sink achievements like “defuse a 100 bombs” and if you get really far, then you can spend the remainder of your time getting some really tough ones. A very satisfying feature that is part of Steam is been able to compare your achievements with the rest of the people who own the game, so when you finally get that special achievement you’ve been hunting for weeks, then it’s double as satisfying because it clearly shows that only less than 8% of the world has it too.

Besides that though, there is very little in terms of extras for you to collect. Perhaps future updates will add something new, maybe something like… hats? Who knows?! If Valve stays true to their reputation, then we can at least expect this title to receive additional content for quite some time.

Verdict

Counter-Strike definitely stands out as been a very different addition to the FPS-genre and oddly enough it does so by succumbing to old habits. We have gotten used to all the modern novelties like minor aim-bots, vehicles, low enemy health and kill-streak rewards, not having any of that fancy stuff suddenly makes an online shooter much more intense. More so than in any other title, it really feels like it’s either you or your enemy that bites the dust. There is no perk like Last Resort that allows you to stay alive for a while after been shot down, if you get killed then you stay killed. That’s not to say that Global Offensive is without any faults, essentially it’s just a graphic overhaul of a game from twelve years ago and Valve could have done a lot more polishing than they did. Personally I would have liked better spawns (I lost count of how many times an enemy spawned in my back during Arms Race), better hit-zones (a headshot is always an instant-kill, but hit anywhere else and it does barely any damage) and more than four different modes to play in.

Veteran Counter-Strike fans will get the game they have been hoping for, but besides the obvious, there is also room for shooter-fans who think the other modern shooters are getting too easy. Because the game is just 14 euros, it’s also great to play with a few buddies if the paycheck is still a week away (as was my case).

By Asinine on September 16, 2012

Secret of Mana (SNES)

Edible at best.

The Good
Very beautiful looking.

Real-time combat is preferable over the regular turn-based systems.

Action is fast, but also has some depth to it.

Having companions is kind of nice.

The Bad
Mana sword is replaced fast.

Hits often don't register.

Multiple enemies can fuck your shit up.

Chests more often than not contain traps.

FREAKING EVERYTHING does poison damage.

The Bottom Line
Story

I have yet to play Secret of Mana completely and this is more of a first-impressions review than an actual final product, but so far I am not very impressed with the game. After we type in a name for our characters we get to see a little cut-scene showing off some of the areas we get to see in the future. Through text-boxes throughout this scene we are told that the gods gave people magic, but people abused it and made weapons out of it. The gods got angry with the Humans and created monsters to battle it out against the weapons the people created, eventually resulting in the human fortress been destroyed by a hero with a so-called “Mana Sword”. Both then disappeared… until the player takes over control. As gameplay starts we find ourselves in a forest where we run into the legendary Mana Sword by pure coincidence, upon pulling it (as instructed) though, the town is besieged my monsters that the sword protected it against.

The hero, in my case “Sam”, is then banished from the village because he pulled the sword. This starts an epic journey against… I have no idea. People keep telling me that I should fight the monsters and save humanity, but if the monsters are attacking me, then aren’t I provoking the gods? Where is the character on the morality scale? The story doesn’t have much impact, especially when the legendary mana-sword gets outdated REALLY fast. You use it to kill a few rabbits, but at the very first area you are told to visit you receive a spear that does more damage and has longer range. “And thus the mana-sword disappeared forever into the dark depths of Sam’s backpack. Until the day Pixelspeech figures out how to sell items”, doesn’t sound too epic to me. It’s just incredibly silly and considering the rather serious tone of the game, it feels very out-of-place. There is a lot of dialogue too, which is odd for a SNES game, but I didn’t mind that too much. It only got annoying then they started throwing options at me, what is the point? The game is very linear, so giving me dialogue options is just for show-off.

Gameplay

“But hey, Super Nintendo games are all about the gameplay right? Just look at Super Metroid and Mario World, those have very little story and are still awesome, right?” Yes, that much is certainly true, but I’m not too fond of the gameplay either. Secret of Mana is a very combat-heavy game, which I personally enjoy since it balances well with the loads of text we have to read in calmer sections of the game. However, the combat is sticky at best and insanely frustrating at worst. You can’t just spam attacks all the time, there is a small bar at the bottom of the screen that depletes every time you hit something and then regenerates. If you land a hit when the bar is full, then you will do regular damage or critical hits, but any sooner and you do minimal damage. It’s a clever system, but every single hit stuns an enemy (or you for that matter), giving you exactly the right amount of time to wait for the bar. This takes all the pacing out of the fight, but it only gets frustrating when you try to strike an enemy afterwards and the terrible hit-detection doesn’t register your hit. Here is a pro-tip: NEVER rush your attack, wait for an enemy to stand up and then hit him. If they are still doing their animation to stand up, then they are immune to all attacks for like two seconds.

To make matters worse: The combat is also incredibly difficult. Every single hit sends you flying, just like the enemies do. If there is more than one enemy fighting you though, then they just gang up on you and leave you with no chance to ever get up. Getting hit just once when there are two enemies or more is pretty much an instant-kill. The game is also big on traps and poison-damage, which became clear to me when I realized I had seen seven different types of enemies so far and five of them did poison damage to me. The first boss you run into also has a magic attack that you can’t dodge, which is already unfair when you use it for a final boss and in the first dungeon of the game you run into bats that can stun you any time they want, which is also impossible to dodge. The aforementioned traps are also ridiculous, you see, there is a random chance enemies drop chests for you to loot after killing them. Now, I complained in my review of Resident Evil 4 that there we like five boxes that throughout the entire game that contained snakes, but this is far worse. Every single chest that drops has like a 50% chance to have a trap, which can do poison damage too! I am not even exaggerating, throughout the six hours of play I have undergone so far, I have looted 6 chests with actual items inside and 9 that had traps!

Presentation

I have done a lot of complaining so far, so let’s focus on something more enjoyable for a while. The presentation in this game is nothing short of stunning. After the cut-scene at the start of the game we see a quick shot of the camera flying over the world map, which is quite amazing for games this old. You also get to see a similar shot every time you use one of the cannon-travelling systems, you got to love public transport sometimes. The game is also consistently very colorful and even the dark caves I ran into were at least somewhat interesting. That is mostly thanks to the cutesy design on the enemies, which I suppose is somewhat strange to see in a game that pushes the dramatic story so much, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Enemies too are very colorful and some very simple choices made even the basic enemies enjoyable. I have lost count of how many times I fought black bats, but the designers behind this game made them purple… That’s already a bit more colorful and the color doesn’t deviate too much, so it’s still recognizably a bat and a hostile one at that.

Animation-wise the game is also quite pleasing to look at, which is due to the many different poses the enemies and characters have. Aside from just walking, the player character can also run, attack with different weapons, be knocked down, stand up again and interact with several items. For a normal person it seems like no big deal, but I personally found it a very sweet novelty. The only real problem I have is that opening chests looks very stiff, the character literally lifts it up and smashes it into the ground a few times before throwing it away. This would seem fitting for characters like Conan or Joe & Mac, but not for characters that are clearly civilized and reasonably intelligent.

Replay-value and extras

I see very little reason to replay this game after I am done with it. Unless the game takes a sudden turn for the amazing, it’s just a little too tedious. The combat starts to wear on you very fast and to play it for the dialogue alone is a bit silly. There are plenty of places where I find games with good presentation and since the presentation here is not by any means stellar, I might as well replay No More Heroes or DinoCity.

Since this is an RPG though, there is always the challenge of training your guys to the maximum level and collecting all the best weapons. This can soak up a lot of time, so I suppose people who like the game enough don’t have to restart anytime soon. That’s a pretty measly reason to keep playing though and since I am not aware of any kind of collection-quest or other 100% challenge, the extras part of this review doesn’t really count for much.

Verdict

Secret of Mana is one of those titles that only really grew a fan-base several years after it was released, making it a pretty big cult-classic after a while. It also comes at a pretty high price, 40 friggin’ euros for the cartridge alone. I had to pay an additional 25 euros for the manual and box! Was it worth it? Well… I am kind of a collector, so any rare game is a worthy purchase for me, but for the regular person who just likes his retro-games, I’d say an emulator is a better choice. The game can be entertaining and it certainly looks very promising as you play the first hour or so, but after that it really dies down and a sticky combat-system and confusing plot really get to you. I can’t even force me to say it’s worth playing for the visuals either, though it comes very close to reaching that.

Die-hard fans of JRPG-games likely disagree with me on plenty of fields, so if you count yourself among them, then don’t mind my rambling and go try it out, it’s quite unique. More western-loving gamers are likely to be turned off, but the real-time combat can win some open-minded people over.

By Asinine on September 1, 2012

Super Metroid (SNES)

I have no idea what I'm doing here.

The Good
Rather scary atmosphere and visual design.

Great design on enemies.

Awesome boss-fights.

Exploring is very fun.

Finding items that open up previous sections makes me very excited.

The Bad
Save-points are too scarce and sometimes they don't work at all.

You quickly lose sight of the overall goal.

Controls tend to be a bit wonky for the more advanced moves.

The Bottom Line
Story

Super Metroid is one of those games that throws you a few textboxes and then allows you to freely explore the world and pursue the goal. There is a lot to be said about a game that plays out like that and we’ll be going over all of it. The overall plot is that Samus, after the events of the first game, delivered the Metroid to a station for research. The ship is however attacked shortly after Samus left and once there she finds the research subject gone and the scientists dead at the hands of Ridley. That is the point where the story-telling ends and it becomes time to forge your own. As Samus you’ll be exploring the many reaches of Planet Zebes after Ridley’s escape, completely free of handholding. I enjoy this a lot because it’s you who gets to choose when and where to go. The game only has a few core areas that you can’t reach until you find a certain item, but other than that you are free to get further in any way you want.

The biggest problem however is that you quickly lose sight of the overall goal, in fact I had to start a second save just to be remembered of what I was supposed to be doing five hours into the game. The ending was also really weird, I found Ridley again and royally kicked his ass (after dying five times), but after that I just found and empty room. The game didn’t tell me anything, so I assume all that’s left to do is explore the rest of the space station. It’s kind of weird to see a game that literally has you fight the last boss and then just keeps going for no reason, it’s a bit underwhelming, but at least you can round up the last few collectibles without reloading a save.

This was the first Metroid game I ever played, so at the end of the day it’s the following that matters: “Did I come out of this knowing more about the Metroid universe?”. The answer is “yes”, while I am not very up-to-date on the story, the freedom this game offered me in creating my own progression has shown me how a Metroid story plays out and I’d like to see this tale continued in Metroid Prime.

Gameplay

Just like the story, the gameplay offers you a lot of freedom in regards to progression, but here the result is utterly and completely perfect. As you explore the many areas of Zebes you’ll run into places you can’t reach yet, finding an item that solves this issue an hour later always brought a huge smile on my face. This cycle of finding obstacles and eventually running into the tools used to overcome them was what kept me interested in this game, even though it’s fairly well known that I prefer my gameplay to be fairly linear. Besides major items like the high-jump boots and morphing ball, you’ll also run into upgrades for your weapons. These upgrades are a little less hidden, but finding every single one of them is a tough task and well worth the effort.

You are naturally going to be harassed by enemies during this process and I must say there is enough variety of enemies to keep gameplay interesting. I also like the sense of progression they give you, at first enemies may give you trouble, but come back three hours later and you can shoot through them without any difficult whatsoever. I do have to say that I would have liked it if they experimented with combinations of enemies more often, because most of the time you’ll end up fighting a group of the same enemies in every room you find. That’s a minor complaint though and the only real one I have is that some of the more advanced controls just refuse to work most of the time. The space-suit which should let you jump an infinite amount of times often stops working for no reason, wall-jumping is as random as it can get and whether or not you do a spin-jump depends on the game’s mood.

Presentation

Super Metroid looks to me as if it was a generation ahead of the Super Nintendo, at times it looks and sounds like it could have been on a Sega 32X (compare it with Knuckles’ Chaotix). The sprites are of a superb quality, the music is atmospheric and well-composed and the sound-effects are very fitting. I am especially fond of the diversity in areas, you’ll run into everything from the fiery pits of Norfair to the poison-filled labyrinths of Brinstar. Each and every area comes with a number of rooms, a lot of which have their own theme songs.

Repetition is very rare, though spending long amounts of time in one area can make the place wear on you a little. A good example are areas where you need a certain move to traverse them every time you need to cross it (like going through a small opening with the morph ball. Those just get a little grating after while.

Replay-value

This is definitely a game I will find myself replaying sooner or later and not just because I didn’t understand the story. The gameplay is constantly entertaining and never once grows dull or repetitive, that is the main reason why I think this game is very good for a replay or two. The semi-sandbox way of progression also helps improve the replay-value, as you are given a degree of freedom, while also having a structured experience to enjoy.

Extras

As stated before there are great deal of collectibles in this game, these can be separated in two sections: the weapon upgrades and the ammo upgrades. Finding new upgrades for your weapons or suit directly changes the way the game plays, using a freeze ray for example freezes enemies just before they die (forming platforms for you to use). The ammo upgrades don’t really change the way you can play, but having more missiles and health can really make a difference during some of the later boss-fights. Once you have all these upgrades, there is not much else to do besides finishing your map and then the game.

Verdict

Is Super Metroid fun to play? Yes. I had a lot of trouble writing this review and upon consulting a friend of mine we came to the conclusion that I have very little to compare Super Metroid with. The game is unlike anything I have ever played before: the theme is strange to me, the shooting is unlike anything I have ever done before and this is the first time I actually had fun exploring. All of this in a 2D package is just slightly above my capabilities to review. Thus I leave you with some simple words: “I had fun, so you probably will too”.

Having a love for the Metroid universe will probably make the game even more enjoyable or if you’re just big on 2D-shooters, then that would be swell too. I am neither and still had a good time though. Such a unique game this was…

By Asinine on August 26, 2012

BioShock (Windows)

Bioshock, y u no work properly?

The Good
Areas are nicely designed and especially looking out of a window is cool.

Enemies have very fascinating dialogue lines.

Able to hack machines.

The Bad
Confusing inventory and interface.

Visuals get really messy.

Controls are awkward.

Standing still to listen to taped messages is kind of lame.

You have very little health.

The Bottom Line
Story

Bioshock reminds me a lot of Half-Life in some ways: both games heavily emphasize a story told as you play, some gameplay elements are also similar and both titles start off with gameplay instead of cut-scene. After hitting “New game” you witness your airliner crashing into the ocean and are then forced to swim to a lighthouse. As you look for shelter, you come upon a pod that, once entered, sinks into the deep and brings you to the remains of an underwater utopia called “Rapture”. I would go into a bit more detail about what happens after, but that’s where our first problem arises: I simply can’t follow it. This might have been letdown, but it seems like climbing up the lighthouse and lighting it or maybe just staying put would have been a better choice, as a rescue team would probably be very interested in the huge fire in the middle of the ocean. I suppose you could say the goal is to save Rapture, but we have no personal connection with the location or the characters within it, so why should we care?

The game seeks to flesh out the story some more through ways that Half-Life also used, but things tend to get a little too busy. There are environmental hints, but at the same time there are characters speaking to you directly, enemies taunting you, people ordering you around through the radio, commercials been played through the intercom and if you aren’t getting enough of a headache already, then you can also find recorded tapes. I like to see games that don’t throw you to death with cut-scenes, but this is still obnoxious in a different way and even harder to follow. I gave up on it pretty soon and just played through the game in a trance instead. The recorded messages are especially annoying because everything just keeps going while you are trying to listen, that includes enemies and other characters talking.

Gameplay

Bioshock has some very obvious tells that reveal that this is a new IP, but it also has some capable people working on it. The game mixes RPG elements with a first-person shooter, this means you can upgrade your weapons and also choose between a number of upgrades to change the way you play. It sounds good on paper, but in practice the menu used for picking these upgrades is very clunky and confusing. I ran into a number of improvements as I played, but every time I found and installed one, the previous options I picked were gone. Eventually I found out the game has sub-categories for these things, but that still didn’t make it any more clear. You can also use Plasmids, which are special augmentations that you can inject into yourself and use as some sort of spell. There is a great deal of these and they certainly make for more diverse tactics, but switching between shooting stance and plasmid stance is annoying as all hell and some don’t even seem to work (such as enrage which should make enemies fight each other).

Levels are also designed in a way that I don’t like. The progression is linear, but there are branched paths that result in neat goodies. I do like that the game points out the way you need to go with an arrow on the HUD, but it’s still irritating to have to comb a dozen random rooms every time you get somewhere new. Levels mostly consist of dynamic goals that change as you accumulate information or get your path blocked, which I do actually like, but as stated before it was hard to figure out why stuff happens in this game. Most of the time you will be harassed by the former residents of Rapture and defense systems as you try to make it through the level, admittedly there is a lot of freedom and you can make it past enemies in many different ways. However, the actions fails to engage because the story is too hard to follow, making the gameplay a very dull affair overall.

Presentation

During that opening sequence in which we see the whole of Rapture while been transported in a pod I became really excited to see more of the city. However, when gameplay finally took over it was rather shallow and standard. I can imagine Rapture used to have a lot of color to it, but they went with such dark lighting and so much of it is destroyed that little is left of it. This results in a very inconsistent presentation where some parts look really scary, but are accompanied by cheerful music or advertisements on the intercom. To make the situation work either the area would have had to be intact or maybe they could have made the machines and speaker distorted, so that they would sound disturbing. As it stands now these areas just feel very mediocre: the design is too dark to be fun, but the sound is too cheerful to be scary.

Trying to get this game to run was also very difficult, something that I feel should not be the case for a game from 2009. On Windows 7 the game simply wouldn’t run, not at all in fact. If I launched the game in Steam it crashed instantly. It took me a while to figure out that I had to run the game in compatibility mode, because I assumed it had something to do with my drivers and I ran some updates instead. There’s our first problem: Windows 7 was launched in 2009 as well, so there is no excuse to not support it. Even if the game came first, there should have been an update to make it compatible long ago. It gets better though! The game would run in Windows Vista, but with NO SOUND. To get the sound working I had to run it in Windows XP (service pack 2). Let me get this straight… To get this game from 3 years ago working, you have to run it with an Operating System from 8 years ago? FUCK LOGIC.

Replay value and extras

Normally I would handle these two aspects separately, but for the first time I can group them together, just because there is not much to say. The game can hardly be considered very good for another playthrough, simply because it’s already a drag on the first run. Normally the fast-paced nature of linear first-person shooters is enough to keep it at least entertaining, but Bioshock dabbles in so much backtracking and other slow elements that it loses this advantage. You also tend to fall into a routine, which renders the option to try out different plasmids and tactics worthless, especially when you keep in mind that buying new plasmids and upgrades costs valuable Adam.

On the subject of Adam, that is also the main thing you’ll be going after. The game has a running moral-choice system in which you occasionally run into creatures known as “Little Sisters”. The idea is that you have to fight their guardian, a hulking machine known as a “Big Daddy”, and then either kill or cure the child. Killing them grants you a lot of Adam, which you can use to buy (passive) upgrades or new plasmid powers, and curing them grants you random presents and a lot less Adam. This choice also changes the ending you get. It works to a certain extent, but fighting the Big Daddies becomes, just like the rest of the game, a chore. The things are so powerful that they seem to me like a way to balance for the stupid amounts of money and ammo the game gives you every chance it gets. Besides that you can also gather the various upgrades and recorded messages if you really want a 100%, but frankly I don’t see the appeal and some levels won’t let you backtrack (by means of shut doors).

Verdict

The main problem I have with this game is the story, which may sound odd for an FPS, but hear me out. Even Call of Duty has a little story that adds context to what you are doing, without that little B-movie plot about Russians invading, the game would just be four hours of psychotic violence. Without the context there is no meaning to what you do and this will almost always result in the game failing to engage you. Bioshock however has so much plot that the player can’t keep up with it, there might be a context, but the player won’t experience it that way, thus giving the same result as having none at all. This affects every aspect of the game: the gameplay is boring because we don’t know what we’re doing, the presentation is dull because it always seems inconsistent in tone and there is no reason to replay it because who wants to go for a second round of random murdering?

Most of the people who seem to like this game are former fans of the “System Shock” franchise, so if you are part of that group and still haven’t tried it, then go ahead. If you’re dying for a new IP in the shooter market then Bioshock is again a pretty good choice. Veterans of the genre however will find Bioshock to be too slow and too story-heavy to entertain, so for everybody else I recommend skipping out on this game.

By Asinine on August 19, 2012

Fallout 3 (Windows)

Traveling the wasteland is certainly not a waste of time.

The Good
Introduction sucks you in.

Storylines are well written.

Controls are functional and what you expect from Bethesda.

World-design is very intriguing and makes you want to explore.

Been able to lose limbs is an interesting idea.

Nice atmosphere.

Perks and leveling.

The Bad
This game just LOVES crashing.

Karma-system feels out of place.

The stats on items are vague at best.

Repairing weapons.

Too many different bullet-types.

The Bottom Line
Story

In Fallout 3 you take control of a “vault dweller”, one of many people who sealed themselves into an underground bunker in preparation for the nuclear apocalypse. The game starts quite literally where the character does, at your own birth. The introduction takes you through several stages of your character’s life and has you making small choices that change your statistics and future appearance. Most Bethesda games do this kind of thing, but I must say that Fallout 3 is the first time they have done it right. Whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim you just magically arrive in the world with no backstory at all, this intro not only serves to fill you in on the lore, but it also familiarizes you with the characters and makes you emotionally invested. Soon enough though, the shit hits the fan and your father leaves the vault overnight, forcing you to go after them lest the security forces pound your brains in.

Once outside the true Bethesda feel takes over and you are free to pursue your father or delve into hundreds of fascinating side-quests. To my knowledge the team that wrote the Dark Brotherhood quests from Oblivion was in control of all the missions in this game and this leaves us with much better tasks than ever before. One point that still bugs me though and this is true for every Bethesda game I play, is that characters seem way too trusting. In the very first town I was approached by two individuals, one of which wanted me to set off a nuke that was in the town and the other wanted me to get irradiated for the sake of her research. Both of those requests seem like basic RPG-stuff, but consider for a moment that I just randomly walked into a bar after freshly emerging from a cave and suddenly some guy asks me to murder hundreds of innocent people. His justification was “you have no connections here” and while that is true, it still seems risky to assume random people might be insane enough to do something like that.

Gameplay

There are two problems that make playing Fallout 3 feel rather rocky: the interface and the fighting. Let’s talk about the interface first. The problem is that they tried to go more for atmosphere than functionality, so you get a rickety old computer that serves as your inventory, quest-log, map and everything else. The lack of size however means they had to cut down on text and minimize the amount of information that you can see, so a lot of terms that you need to remember are also abbreviated. It can also get downright confusing, such as when I scoffed down a handful of items that I thought would reduce my radiation poisoning, but after closer inspection were expensive radiation-resistance booting items. Where the combat falls flat is that it sometimes feels like a modded Oblivion, especially some guns feel more like firing arrows than firing actual bullets. At least in Oblivion every bow didn’t need some kind of fancy different ammo-type though! I am always low on ammo because there are so many types that it gets ridiculous, I can agree that a sniper shouldn’t have the same ammo as a rocket launcher, but then why did they group together pistols with SMG’s? Sneaking and explosives can also be really obnoxious, especially sneaking which you need to level up really high to have any use from. Most enemies spot you regardless of whether you are sneaking or not, some even from a considerable distance.

Everything outside of combat is very good though and I especially like the new mini-games they came up with for lock picking and hacking. These mini-games nicely combine the player’s own skill with the points they cared to invest in the stats-screen. Gaining a new level is also amazingly satisfying because of the brilliant perks you can get every time you do. After putting your points into the skills you want to upgrade, you’ll be send to a different screen where you can select a special upgrade. These make use of incomparables, meaning you can’t weigh off the effect of one against the other and decide which one is the best (as you could with a weapon in a RPG). Instead there are options like “getting gorier kills” or “special dialogue combined with more damage against male enemies” and the likes. It’s a bit rough around the edges and there are too many perks that just instantly boost your regular skills, but this is something that needs to be perfected. There is also not so much managing to do and this really benefits the more explorative nature of Bethesda games. Instead of spending minutes of your time comparing weapons in the interface, Fallout keeps everything rather straight in terms of items and armor. There are only a handful of weapons that give you bonuses and most of the time it comes down to what you happen to like, I decided to take a bit of everything in terms of weapons and I never had to deal with fancy firearms because the game just gives you a pistol, not a “venomous pistol of fiery death”, But a regular pistol. You just need to make sure you keep the ammo coming and invest skills in your shooting if you want to get better with it.

I must also say that they ironed out a lot of flaws that soured Oblivion for me. Times after the nuclear war are tough, so tough that nobody can really claim authority and punish you. In Oblivion (and to a lesser extent Skyrim) you would always run into pesky guards that punish you for the slightest provocation. The laughably bad AI often had them drawing their weapons when you did something as innocent as taking a cherry from a bowl in someone’s living room. Fallout doesn’t have that and instead the law of the gun is in place. If you do something people don’t like they’ll shoot you and you can shoot back, the one who lives was in the right. Loading times are also notably faster and there is a lot less time wasted on asking questions about the lore, time that you can instead spend on having more fun.

Presentation

In recent years the market has become flooded with games which have a very brown and gritty style of graphics, but Fallout manages to impress, even with this bland aesthetic. How they did this is simple: they just designed the world to be as atmospheric and imposing as possible. I have walked through roughly a hundred ruined cities in my gaming career and never have abandoned buildings seemed so eerie, never has a wasteland felt so full of adventure and NEVER have I screamed like a little girl while exploring relatively simple areas. The last time the game scared me was even more humiliating than you would think, because I was looking at a distant sculpture thinking it was an enemy, only to be jumped at by a cockroach instead. My point is that with good level design and the right atmosphere, even the overused brown aesthetic can be made into something entertaining.

The in-game presentation is amazing, but there is still something that bothers me: The technical aspect of this game. I bought the Game of the Year edition on Steam, this assuming it would come with all the DLC and with most of the bugs worked out. I was VERY wrong about the latter. The game did start up after the installation, which is at least further than Bioshock got, but after that it became a hell. The game would crash randomly almost every ten minutes for no apparent reason and trying to fix it took me several hours of looking through forums. It turned out that it was a processing problem and I had to edit lines of code in the .ini file… I don’t care what you say, that is fucking inexcusable. Even after I fixed it did crashes remain fairly common, especially when alt-tabbing or locking the computer. I bought this game at 11AM and was busy with it all day. At the end of that same day I had only racked up a total of 2 hours of actual playtime and I had only just left the vault.

Replay value

Bethesda games have always suffered from the fact that they aren’t really fun to replay, but save-files can’t be relied upon to stick around either. Sooner or later you are going to delete your file by accident or it will just get corrupted. In a game with so many variables (to the point that it saves the placement of every single item you drop) there will be a point at which it will just burst and die. This is often the point where I stop playing these games: it happened after 500+ hours in Oblivion, it happened after 75+ hours in Skyrim and I fear for the day that it will happen with my Fallout save. I really recommend that you make back-ups of your save, just to make sure you won’t lose them.

To its credits: Fallout 3 is more replayable than any of the Elder Scroll games. This is because the game is not very big on lore and therefore you can play it again without having to sit through endless conversations again. Having to repeat quests is still very obnoxious though, as it will always be. The many choices you make in Fallout’s story do seem to have more of an impact and aren’t as bland as in other games that claim to have choice. Sometimes you are even making choices while you don’t realize it, such as when I murdered my way through a cave where some troublemakers were residing, only to come to the realization that I could have let them live and get a whole different experience. “Choosing” how your character develops is still pretty simple though, even more so than normally. In Oblivion there were milestones that gave you bonuses when investing enough points in your skills, but here your accuracy just increases or you unlock tougher challenges. Especially the weapon-based skills are somewhat odd, since you can get along just fine without them if you’re good at shooting games.

Extras

Outside of the main story there is plenty to do in Fallout 3 and I am not talking mini-games here. There are many side-quests that you can pick up, most of which are longer than your average MMO fetch-quest. Finding these quests is also a small task on its own, as you will have to ask NPC’s for rumors or possible leads. The map is also pretty large and some quests are hidden in obscure locations, so if the dungeons alone didn’t provide enough incentive already, there is also the joy of finding a new story to follow by simply stumbling upon a shack. Fallout 3 also has a total of five DLC packs that you can purchase (or get for free with the Game of the Year edition) that add a new main story line to the original game (I’ll review them individually later).

The level cap in this game is twenty, which isn’t that high, but any higher would have rendered the Perks system useless. As stated before there isn’t a lot of grinding to be done for weapons either, but there are still some neat ones that require some extra work and searching. Once you’re done with all of that, I suppose you could try to clear every dungeon, but that would really be pushing the content to the maximum. One problem though is that the final mission of the main quest also marks the end of the journey and if you finish it, then you are send back to the menu. The only way to explore the content after the final mission is to reload a save, but the game locks the doors after the game auto-saves from entering the last room. This is very obnoxious if you have no extra saves to load up, because the only way out is to buy the DLC-pack “Broken Steel”, which will make you pass out and wake up in The Citadel area.

Verdict

Fallout 3 is so far my favorite Bethesda game out there and in the land of RPG’s it ranks fairly high. While the gameplay tends to be a bit rocky and unbalanced, the story and atmosphere do more than enough to make up for that. One thing I can’t forgive however is the load of technical problems I had while using the Steam version of this game, including not receiving the DLC and having the game take a million screenshots at random moments throughout the game. I know some people still claim to this day that Fallout 3 is a bad game because of how different it is from the original games, but frankly I prefer it when a franchise has some diversity (such as Donkey Kong Country), as opposed to just making the same kind of game over and over again (the direction Kingdom Hearts is going in).

Fans of the old Fallout games are certain to have some good times revisiting the Wasteland and Vaults with this game, as long as they are willing to deal with a slightly less complex experience and more streamlined controls. Likewise Bethesda fans are certain to have a blast with this if they can deal with the lack of medieval themes that usually characterize Bethesda’s high-profile titles. If you have never played the games I mentioned, then you can also ask yourself if you would be interested in a somewhat challenging open-world RPG. If the answer is “yes”, then sit down and enjoy some Fallout 3.

By Asinine on August 14, 2012

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Nintendo 64)

My final review on this game

The Good
I know you are probably sick of this, I know that I am most certainly sick of this and yet here we are again. Majora's Mask, one game that people can't stop bothering me about. Whenever I review this game a whole load of friends and people argue that I am wrong and when I replay it again I notice that they are right. It's an endless circle, but finally I believe we have broken free from it. All these years I didn't have the patience for Majora's Mask, playing only a part of it before shutting it off and reviewing it, unprofessional I know, but now that is remedied. I played Majora's Mask completely this time around and I must say that my experiences were much different from any I had in earlier attempts. To keep this final review interesting I'll take Majora as an example to counter some common criticism towards Zelda games as a whole. In the negative part of this review I'll however argue against some of the most common praise that Zelda games receive. Let's do it!

Zelda games are kiddy!

Zelda games tend to be all over the place when it comes to their content, but one thing that is almost always present are horror or mature elements. Majora's Mask may be the only one of these games to truly focus on creating an eerie atmosphere, but it's most certainly not the only one who has them. Even games as "kiddy" as Wind Waker tend to have scenes that genuinely stick out, such as a level set in a tomb or the reversed Triforces (similar to an anti-Christ cross). Majora's Mask really lets itself go though and the result is a game that actually managed to scare me without using jump-scares. The atmosphere can however also be used to support the story, without wishing to spoil anything, just go to Romani Ranch on the last night and speak with the two sisters, put the pieces together afterwards. Just the thought of what is happening over there on the final day is very depressing.

Zelda games have too much reading

If you really like action games, skip all the cut-scenes and are just generally disinterested in the context of what you are doing in a game, then there is little I can do to change that for you. If you are interested in context, but simply think Zelda games have too much of it, then that is also okay, but there are redeeming factors. Much of Majora's Mask is based around going on side-quests and exploring the various areas of the game. Talking with characters is still crucial, but there is also a lot you don't have to do if you don't want to and a lot you will experience without even having to approach characters. The best example is the main mechanic itself, the three-day cycle. As you re-experience the same days over and over again you see characters going through the cycle of their daily lives, this allows you learn about them through repeated observation. One time I was chilling around the Stock Pot Inn when I ran into the owner talking to her elderly grandmother. The grandmother refused to eat the food, making excuses I knew to be false and clearly showing signs of dementia while doing so. Thus I learned that the relation between these two characters is troubled and all I did was stand there.

Zelda games are too long

I know what these people are going through and I myself grow very tired of a game that passed the forty-hour mark too. I have however always found Zelda games in particular to be a very clear exception, as more and more gameplay elements are introduced as you play. Zelda games also generally show that your character grows stronger and stronger as gameplay progresses and sections in-between levels have characters reacting on this or at least show the world or story change due to the actions of the protagonist. It's a case of giving the player the proper incentive to keep playing, the game would indeed be boring if it was just 40-hours of swinging a sword around, but receiving a spell like the "elegy of emptiness" at the very end of the game suddenly opens up a whole lot of puzzle-opportunities and gives the player something new to master, without discarding all the content that came before.

Majora's Mask however succeeds on the other side of the spectrum. The game only features four dungeons and you can literally skip right to the final boss afterwards, no cheating involved. This might change the argument to "this game is too short", but that would be wrong. The game CAN be finished in ten hours, but why would you want to? As stated before there is a lot of content on the side and the game gives you plenty of reasons to see it all. The most prominent features are the masks in the game, you can obtain a total of 24 of them (not counting boss-masks) and only a handful of them are obtained naturally throughout the story. All these masks have special abilities that open up new stories to explore or give you an easier time in certain sections of the game (such as the Stone Mask making enemies ignore you). Since the characters are quite endearing it's also very hard to just leave them to their fate and even if everything has to be reversed again at the end of the day, it's still worth it to at least once fight off the monsters invading the ranch or helping Anju find her missing boyfriend before her wedding. For the explorers among us there is also plenty to see and discover in Termina, including various secrets that may lead to hidden items. All in all, Majora's Mask easily packs up to fifty hours of content and all of it enjoying in one way or another.

Puzzle-games are boring

It's worth remembering that The Legend of Zelda is more of an action/adventure type of game that has plenty of puzzle-elements. If you don't like puzzles, then this series contains plenty of opportunity to battle opponents instead. Fighting enemies, especially in the two Nintendo 64 games, is also made a lot more enjoyable than in most other fantasy games due to the challenge they pose. At the start of the game you only have three lives and enemies are quite weak, but later on enemies and their placement grow more and more challenging. Boss-fights especially require a combination of skill, equipment and attention. Even basic enemies however have at least some strategy to them: one of the first enemies you meet is a Skulltula spider that hangs from the ceiling, if you mindlessly hit it with sticks it will deflect everything and kill your ass in mere seconds. You need to know the enemies, their attacks, their patterns, and strike when they open up for you.

I won't claim puzzles are optional though and you will have to go through them almost as many times as you will have to fight. However, I felt that Majora's Mask was a fairly fair game and if you take your time for it (pro tip: use the song that slows the in-game clock) you can complete the puzzles by merely looking around the environment and using what items you have to solve the puzzle at hand. There are no puzzles that demand knowledge from you outside of what the game teaches you (Notpron...), there are no puzzles that go in against logic (Braid...) and there are no puzzles that ask you to figure out entire mazes worth of areas. The key goes in the door, the crate goes on the switch, the arrow goes into the enemy. That logic will get you very far in Zelda games as a whole.

Zelda games are all the same

At the surface this is a correct statement, but dig slightly deeper and you are already seeing faults in this reasoning. Yes, most Zelda games are about a guy in green clothes and pointy ears going on an adventure to save a princess from some evil entity, but each Zelda game messes around with the formula and mechanics a lot. If you were to show up at my doorstep and argue that A Link to the Past is the same as Twilight Princess, then I'd just shut the door right there and leave you standing in the rain. Zelda games are under constant criticism that they don't change enough, but at the same time change too much, critics simply don't know what to do with a series almost all of them enjoy.

A Link to the past revolutionized how we expect puzzles and action to function in games, Ocarina of Time brought that formula into 3D while Link's Awakening brought it to portable devices. Majora's Mask experiments with the timed narrative, Wind Waker has cell-shaded graphics, Twilight Princess uses cinematic action and other tricks to bring the series to the new youth. The list simply goes on and naming only one innovation per game (like I just did) is only scraping the top of the iceberg. Arguing that Zelda games are all the same or stagnating is a lazy argument, it shows that the reviewer merely looks at the summary featured on the game's box and never delves into the actual mechanics or just sits through the entire game with the sole reason of hating it.

The Bad
Zelda games have very good stories

While Majora's Mask certainly stands out in this regard, due to its focus on atmosphere and characters, most other Zelda games are certainly not the pinnacle of fantasy writing. In fact, the fascinating races that go beyond elves, dwarves and hobbits is perhaps the only amazing part of the story.

Zelda games follow a very basic three-act structure. In the first act we get to know the hero and his surroundings, we experience his daily life and learn who his friends are. Though this is missing in this installment, it follows up from Ocarina of Time, so that game's opening (Kokiri Forest) serves as the first act for this game too. The second act starts directly after the hero's life is thrown into disarray, in this title when he learns that Majora is trying to destroy Termina. In the second act the hero has to obtain the means to fight the enemy, in this case the masks and whatever bonuses the player wants to bring with him. The third act is the finale and what happens with the protagonist after he has overcome his obstacles and reached his goal.

Zelda games follow this formula perfectly and rarely does something to rise above it, they are comfortable in this position and I don't blame them. Zelda games have an amazing atmosphere instead and the characters, while not amazing, are endearing in their simplicity.

The world in Zelda games look amazing

Many argue that Zelda games have brilliant world design and while they certainly have a degree of atmosphere to them, I still prefer individual areas. Locations such as the observatory or Stone Tower Temple simply resonate clever design & atmosphere and there is a huge variety of them. The world as a whole though, no matter what Zelda game we are talking about, is kind of hallow in comparison.

Zelda games always miss in this field in one of two ways, either the world is too small and simplistic or the world is too open and empty. Twilight Princess for example had a very large world, but walking around it was a chore. The world had not much to offer in terms of content: enemies were scattered scarcely around, a handful of collectibles here and there and done. The closest we have ever come to success was Hyrule Field from Ocarina of Time, but only because somebody was smart enough to put a major areas in the middle of it. You need interesting locations or scenery to fill up an open world, if you don't it will just be pointless space taking up room on the disc that could have been used to make a better game.

Termina on the other hand is too small and while it feels more populated and the space we have is well-used, it still makes you wonder why we bothered buying an Expansion Pack for this. The world is also kind of simple, in fact, why don't you just sing along: The beginning area is in a grassy field and from there we explore a forest-area, ice-area, water-area and desert-area. All we need is a volcano and the entire list is complete.

Transformation or dual-world gameplay

Ever since A Link to the Past, Zelda games have been very big on dual-world gameplay and transformations, but frankly I have never been very impressed. Having two worlds, each of which have a different set of rules, is the most simple way to design puzzles. A situation in which a door is locked, but if you press a button and go into a different reality where it isn't, then that is certainly a nice little puzzle, but not worth talking about in great lengths. The only way to make it really work is if the two worlds both have an interesting story behind them, as is the case in Twilight Princess, though that game makes more use of the second mechanic I named.

Transformations also fall in the same category: they both simplify puzzles and they are both more useful to the story than the gameplay. If you can transform into a guy that breaks rocks, then the rock blocking a path is not a puzzle, but just a progression/exploration-halter until you have the right tools. Majora's Mask boasts four transformations, but they aren't really well implemented. If you want to transform, you'll have to equip a mask in an item slot (which mounts it to a C-button). This might not seem like a problem, but for as long as you wear the mask, you'll have to make do with only two item slots. Switching between transformations should have been a button combination or something else that resolved the amount of menu-travelling you'll have to do.

Zelda games have lots of collectibles

Zelda games indeed have plenty of collectibles and I praised this fact earlier in this review. However, unlike Ocarina of Time, I couldn't force myself to get all of them. In almost every Zelda game there are dozens of mini-games that test your accuracy in trade for upgrades and heart pieces. It doesn't sound too bad, but they demand such insane skill that the game becomes frustrating. Majora's Mask has like four or five shooting galleries and it also features everybody's favorite "timed jumping from platform to platform with awkward camera positioning" game, which wins the prize for been the most uninspired "side-quest" ever.

Games likes the "bombchu bowling" may seem like clever novelties, but the stiff turning makes it nearly impossible, as are the shooting galleries that have you using the lacking aiming that came with the Nintendo 64's limitations. Also obnoxious are the fetch-quests where you need to find X-amount of spiders or something along those lines.It only serves to make the games longer and they don't even have the decency to mark objectives you already found.

The Bottom Line
I am sure there are some arguments and points of criticism I have not addressed here, but these are the few I wanted to go over. After numerous attempts I have finally formed my opinion on this game and that is... above-average.

The game has amazing atmosphere and story, the 3-day mechanic is well used and to me this game stands out as one of the creepier games out there. However, it also has quite a few flaws to stop it from been truly good. A loyal fan of the Zelda franchise will get the game they want from this and the haters can continue to hate as always.

By Asinine on August 4, 2012

Portal 2 (Windows)

Feels a little too much like the previous installment.

The Good
Story is more developed and explained in this sequel.

Plenty of walking around in gigantic areas that are mainly for presentation.

Puzzles or still of a very high quality and quite enjoyable.

More characters.

Gel adds a new layer of depth to the gameplay.

The Bad
Game pretty much reiterates Portal 1 for the entire first part.

The post-apocalyptic redesign of Aperture Science is very bland.

Physics can get a bit wonky at times.

I am kind of over Glados.

The Bottom Line
story

In Portal 2 the player returns to Aperture Science, though the long time that has passed since the first Portal game has done the place little good. We once again take control over Chell who wakes up from stasis to find out the facility has been largely destroyed and she might suffer from severe brain damage. After been rescued from her room, Chell teams up with another AI to find a way out of Aperture Science. This leads to the revival of old fan-favorite Glados and her many daunting tests. This is where I started growing a bit disappointed, as I was actually hoping that we could instead focus on new characters. As the game progresses Glados takes up an increasingly more relevant role and eventually the player has to team up with her to fight another rogue AI, something that I personally didn't really enjoy as she pushed newer characters out of the way.

What I did like however was that the story behind Aperture is more explored in this installment and we get to literally experience the history of the company and the people that formed it. In typical Valve fashion the game avoids using too many cut-scenes and instead allows the player to maintain control over Chell at almost all times. The story is instead told through what the player sees in the environment and the commentary given by a variety of characters and pre-recorded messages. As nice as this was, it did little to make up for Glados been pushed into our faces again, as well as many scenes and puzzles from the original Portal (and even a similar boss-fight with quirky song at the end).

Gameplay

Portal 2 is a puzzle/platform game in which the player is challenged to solve physics puzzles using a device. This device - known as the Portal gun - allows the protagonist to place a set of portals through which objects and characters can travel. At the start of the game you indeed start off with just the portals as the main and only focus of the puzzles, but later on more and more elements come into play.

The most prominent new feature are the various varieties of "gel" that are present in the testing chambers. The blue gel makes you jump higher, the orange gel makes you run fast and the white gel allows portals to be placed on locations they normally wouldn't. Most of the elements are present in the environments though, so the player has no inventory to manage and can only use what is given to them. Puzzles are also fairly well designed and I was able to solve most of them myself by observing the environment around me. Only in rare cases was I able to glitch out of a puzzle or solve them in a way that didn't seem natural to me, which reflects good testing.

One area that still needs work though are the physics themselves, as Portal 2 can be terribly obnoxious from time to time. I do enjoy it that when I am forced to land a portal at exactly the right spot while watching from a diagonal angle, I can at least expect the physics to do the same every time, but some of the new stuff is just plain annoying. The blue gel in particular refuses to listen and can be very picky about where the border lies. The white gel that lets you land portals anywhere also has an invisible rule that ignores portals placed at certain points. Gel can also be very annoying when you got multiple colors at the same time, as trying to spray it somewhere is likely to remove other gel, a problem that is especially troublesome when you need to switch portals after a lot of preparation. Gel aside, there are also the few rare items scattered around the environment that are interactive, as opposed to the millions of random scenery that isn't. Figuring out what can be used from what can't is not very entertaining and I would have preferred it if they outlined usable objects.

Presentation

Let’s start this section off by saying something positive, namely that Portal 2 takes my favorite moment from Portal 1 and does a lot more with it. Nearing the end of Portal 1 players were suddenly exposed to a gigantic and imposing area with lots of open space. Though made out-of-reach by means of walls, this scene stood out to me as really showing the scale of Aperture Science and it got a kick out of me. Portal 2 starts out like this right off the bat and uses scenes where the player can look around large areas more often in the second act. I absolutely loved it and this time around we received a little more freedom to move around these areas too, though it still doesn’t allow you to wander around completely free of barriers. Portal 2 however falls flat for me in the presentation field. The reason for this is the more decayed (read: post-apocalyptic) redesign of Aperture Science and its brightly lit testing chambers. These rooms are still scarcely present, but the rest of the time is spent exploring dark and rusty industrial areas. I know this complaint kind of contradicts with what I said earlier about the large areas, as almost all of these are part of the industrial sections of the game, but my earlier statement would apply even more if the large areas also had some kind of spirit to them. I understand Aperture has gone through some rough times after Glados fell, but the unique art-style of the first game earned it a lot of praise, so doing away with that almost completely is just willingly making yourself more bland. Don’t rusty corridors all start looking the same after a while? Did we really need to make Portal look a bit more like Modern Warfare 2? Areas also tend to be inconsistently strung together: one moment you are walking through ravaged corridors with overgrown plants and the next you arrive in a perfectly clean test room, one moment you are jumping across the remains of grated walkways and the next you arrive in a perfectly clean office that’s so shining that you’d think somebody wrapped it in plastic. Humor is still present, but on a brighter note, it has also left some room for story development now. Portal’s characteristic humor is still very much present in the form of Glados and some of the new characters can be even more entertaining than her. However, by the end of the ride you’ll also feel like you really experienced something fascinating from a story perspective. Both the story and the humor can get a bit grating though, especially when you die and need to get through the same loading-screen-airlock sequences again and again.

Replay-value

Portal, at its core, is not very fun to play over and over again. Unlike Left 4 Dead (another Valve game) the dialogue and jokes are set, so if you play the game over again, you will also have to hear the same commentary at the same moments. Even if you avoided death and never had to hear repeated dialogue in your first playthrough, this will still be very obnoxious. Puzzles are also naturally not very enjoyable to replay, unless the game is so sizable that memorization becomes impossible (Kameo, Legend of Zelda and long RPG’s for example). This is also made rather frustrating because Portal 2 doesn’t have a list of each room and instead you’ll have to play entire chapters or go into challenge mode if you want to play a specific level again. BUT! You don’t really have to replay Portal 2. New to the series is a very neat level-editor that allows you to easily assemble and try out your own testing facilities. This is made easy due to a graphical interface that is comparable to RPG Maker, but even more accessible. A child can quite literally make his own maps using this. Levels can be shared online with ease, so there are potentially unlimited amounts of levels. I normally wouldn’t count modding as part of this review, if I would every game would have endless replay value, but because it’s so well weaved into the overall story and made so accessible, I’ll make an exception for this once.

Extras

Portal 2 doesn’t really have any collectibles of sorts, but for the completionists out there, there are over fifty achievements available on the Steam version of this game. Sadly though, most of them are obtained through simply completing the story mode and doing stuff in the co-op mode of this game. None of my friends got this game legally, so I can’t play it with any of them, meaning all the co-op fun goes right out of the window for me. Only a few of the remaining achievements are centered around doing interesting tasks within the story mode, this is only a real problem when you are limited to single-player only though. Like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Portal 2 also has a “Challenge Mode”, though it’s hardly as difficult as advertised. When you select this mode it will put you in a test room of choice and have you run it on a timer. It then scores you based on how long it took you and how many portals you used, a number comes out of it and you may choose to post it on the Leaderboards if you want. It’s not too bad and I definitely prefer this over Batman’s challenges, but I don’t see why the scoring couldn’t be part of the regular game. It seems silly to make an entire separate mode around replaying the same stages, if you keep in mind that the leaderboards could just run in the background of a single-player game as long as an internet connection is maintained.

Recommendation

Portal 2 is most certainly an enjoyable game, despite of the many points of criticism I have named here. Mechanically the game is functional, the puzzles are fun and at times challenging and the humor is still as enjoyable as ever. The main problem however is that this sequel is struggling to have an identity of its own. At times it completely remakes Portal 1, but then it suddenly changes its mind and does something new. This inconsistency, along with some bad decisions doesn’t make Portal 2 the sequel we were hoping for, but at least a game that is still more enjoyable than most other games that come out in this day and age. If you are interested in Portal 2, then I recommend playing Portal 1 first. Admittedly that makes the audience for this game quite gigantic, taking in consideration Portal 1 has always either been cheap or completely free. If you have and you are still up for some puzzles in the same style, but with a bigger budget, then sit down and enjoy Portal 2.

By Asinine on July 29, 2012

Batman: Arkham Asylum (Windows)

Unique in many ways

The Good
I am going to do things a bit different from other times and I would really appreciate a little feedback. If anybody reads this, I would love it if you could send me a PM on this website and tell me if this new style of reviewing is better than my usual method. With that said, enjoy the review and thanks for any help you may offer:

The game is very accessible to people interested in the game, but without back-story. Only a few lore-references and useful character bios.

The combat is very smooth and fun due to the fast moves and overall intuitive controls.

Sneaking feels satisfying and tactful.

The story is well-written and additional dialogue tapes help to flesh it out a little.

Story is also well-paced.

Fun challenges to be found.

The commentary you hear characters giving changes depending on where you are and at what stage of the game.

The Bad
The Joker is not as visceral as he was in the movie.

DRM is beyond stupid.

The game is very linear, but has a lot of open areas with no enemies in it. This leaves me with an hour of work every time I come somewhere new.

Detective vision is obnoxious

Very often you need to go to insane lengths to save random characters who die a few minutes afterwards anyway.

Boss-fights aren't spectacular.

The Bottom Line
story

In this game the player takes control of Batman who has just apprehended his rival, an insane murderer called The Joker. Upon returning him to the asylum (that is located on a large) island Joker makes an escape and releases all the convicts, including some of the major villains from the Batman lore. The island quickly falls under Joker's control and it's up to Batman to punch all the villains back into their holding cells.

What is interesting is that Batman comics go back to like 1939, but the game demands little to no knowledge from the player. Instead, the game turns around the isolated event on the island and characters never really talk about events that go back too far or are unconnected to the task at hand. This is comparable to how you can play Mario Galaxy 2 and never ever have to have touched upon a NES before. For those who are interested in learning more there are a number of character bios and interviews that can be found in-game (more on that later) that flesh out the characters a bit more.

Another major plus is that not all the villains in the Batman lore make an appearance. Prior to playing this game, I took the time to sit down and watch "The Dark Knight", after that I looked up a list of Batman villains and found myself somewhat staggered. The game instead circles around a core group of the more interesting villains; Joker, Harley Quinn, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and Bane. The pacing is also not too bad and at the beginning you notice that Batman is struggling to get his bearings, but as time passes you will soon take out the first villain and then run them all down a lot quicker. It doesn't feel too rushed, but at the same time it never really drags on too much either. If I have to give out one complaint though, it's that Joker is not as insane as he was in the movie and comes off more as a clown. While that is certainly the idea of the character and heck he even wears clown make-up for crying out loud, in the movie he was more than just that and came off as very threatening too. He also uses guns to kill people a lot, while in the movie his kills were very well-crafted and visceral (such as ramming a man's head into a needle stuck in a table early on).

gameplay

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a very rare example of a game that brilliantly mixes combat and stealth together in one tasty soup. The reason for why Batman always appealed to me as a character is that he doesn't have superpowers, he can't just conjure webs out of the ether or turn into a green giant. Batman has to use his wits and his hard-earned combat abilities to make it through the day and that is very visible in this game too. When combat shows up, Batman stands out as an obvious powerhouse, but when enemies bring guns into the fray or alarms, you'll have to sneak through ventilation shafts and hang from the ceilings to survive properly.

While the sneaking does work really well, I often went for combat regardless of that. The reason is that the game utilizes a very clever engine that makes combat feel very flowing and natural. You don't just awkwardly string together combos, you will have to deal quick blows, switch between baddies and keep an eye out for enemies that you can counter. When punching you can also steer in a direction to make Batman leap for another enemy and this is where the flow comes in. Because you can switch so easily I managed to rack up pretty decent combos and for once enjoy a beat-em up game.

Navigating through the asylum works pretty well too, but lacking an auto-run functions is kind of obnoxious. If auto-run turned off for stealth sections, then that would make sense, but here you have to keep your thumb on the space in order to run. Especially when backtracking this can get very annoying or when you're spotted by some armed thugs and kinda want to get the hell out of the fight. Other then that, Batman uses a variety of gadgets that help him opening up parts of the asylum; a grapple hook allows him to reach ledges normally out of reach, explosive gel blows up weak walls, a claw can pull down items and that line-thingy can help you cross large gaps. There is also small computer that allows Batman to hack doors and open them up.

presentation

Batman has a problem that I run into an awkward amount of times lately and that is graphics that are simply too dark. Even when messing around with the Gamma-settings a bit, the game's environments are still so dark that I run into walls or have to zoom in if I want to see anything. The art-style is also very familiar to people who play a lot of modern games and this title seeks to recreate the realistic and gritty feel that the movie had as well. It's not too bad, but I feel like opportunities are been missed to go all-out with Joker's style.

Overall Batman does a decent job in terms of presentation, but it never rises past it. Perhaps the only remarkable points are some of the story-heavy sections that often involve Scarecrow, something we rarely see in mainstream games these days. If anything, it proves that a widely popular title (6.3 million copies sold!) doesn't need to have a tacked-on multi-player of any kind. I was however surprised when I was browsing some articles on relyonhorror.com and found that Batman was credited as an "honorable mention" among horror games. I admit that the Scarecrow sections are fascinating a way, but horror is a much different kind of sandwich, if you ask me.

One thing that I have to mention, even though it has little to do with in-game presentation, is the irritation that is caused by the DRM present in this game. I have debated with myself over purchasing this game for at least a month, not because I wasn't sure if I would like it, but because I tried a pirated copy to see if the game was fun, but ran into so many layers of excessive protection that I started to doubt if the game was customer-friendly or not. Tucked away in the smallest corner of the sales page is a note saying "4 times activation limit", meaning the game may only be activated on four different systems. This is vague at best because sometimes replacing the hardware on your system counts as a separate activation in the world of DRM and sometimes it can just mean that every single re-installation eats up another precious activation. Even when buying the game on a service as great as Steam, this rule still applies, even though it goes in against everything Steam stands for. Also obnoxious is the forced use of Games for Windows Live, which literally demands that you log into or make a Windows Live account in order to freaking SAVE your game. This is once again regardless of whether or not you are using Steam, ignoring the fact that Steam has a Cloud service and can make save-files locally on the user's system.

replay-value

Batman: Arkham Asylum actually strikes me as a game that isn't too bad to pick up and replay every once in a while. The focus on combat and the lack of expository cut-scenes makes sure that you never really have to sit through anything grating and in the few cases that the game does take away the control from you, the cut-scene that follows it can often be skipped immediately. The game also has several difficulties, so after completing it once, it can be fun to revisit if with a meatier challenge ahead of of you.

The game however offers little in terms of customization and while it is possible to get upgrades for Batman, you get enough points to get everything that's available to you. Even if that was not the case, the upgrades don't really make much of a difference to the gameplay, so it's unlikely you're experience will differ that much from the first time you played.

collectibles!

Though the Joker is your main target throughout the game, there is a very large side-story on the side which involves "The Riddler". As the name implies, this villain is obsessed with Riddles and would very much like to test his wit against Batman's detective skills. His challenges come in several different kinds, the most prominent of which are the actual Riddles. Every time you enter a room where a challenge lies, you get a message containing a riddle. You then need to look for the item that the riddle refers to and use detective vision to capture it. Detective vision is a mode in which you get a colored filter over the screen, all the enemies show their skeletons (X-ray) and important items start to glow. It sounds interesting, but since you pretty much need to have it on all the time to spot Snipers, weak walls and receive general information, it feels like something that should have been implemented better, preferably in the regular HUD.

Aside from the riddles there is also a large amount of collectibles that you can find; "Arkham statues" that reveal a large part of the asylum's background story are hidden in secret locations, Interview tapes are character-specific recordings that flesh out the villains a bit, Joker Teeth are obnoxious buggers that you can destroy and the trophies are more or less filler content. This brings the total of collectible items to 240. To make this more do-able, the game provides you with constant commentary from Riddler himself, which is very enjoyable. What starts out as arrogant comments soon turns into disbelief as you slowly solve each and every single riddle.

That's where the in-game content ends, but outside of the story, there is also a challenge mode. Personally I have always resented these modes and this particular one is a clear example as to why. The challenges all exist outside of the story and contribute little to nothing to the narrative or experience of the game. All they do is put you in a room with a few baddies and say "Hey, hope you mastered the mechanics. Good luck". There is not even a set goal, you sort of need to get a certain amount of points in order to get the best ranking and if you don't get the best rankings, you won't be able to get a 100% save. I have always stood by the notion that getting a 100% should always be a case of will; I was willing to spend hours scouring every last nook and cranny for the collectibles, I was willing to see the story through to the end, I was willing to go through the many fights just to get all the upgrades. Challenge modes aren't about will, but more about skill, which is a completely different kind of virtue. If a casual player were to put in all the hours to get the items and even complete the game, then he or she will run into a brick wall, just because they aren't capable of putting together endless combos with varied attacks.

recommendation

Before we finish this up, I would like to remind all readers that I would really appreciate feedback on this new style. You can send me a PM on this website or my Backloggery account of the same name, thanks once again for any help you can offer. Back to the important things though: a recommendation. Well, fans of the Caped Crusader are certainly in for a treat with this one, but like I said before, you don't need to be a fan to get into this game. The combat, decent presentation and good integration of the story make this a very appealing game for the mainstream-gamer and the extra content offers a nice challenge for the Completionists out there. Casual players are also not excluded, but not particularly played to either.

By Asinine on July 21, 2012

The Binding of Isaac (Windows)

Aaaaaaaaaaalmost good

The Good
After playing Super Meat Boy this game felt like a genuine surprise for me. When I picked it up after numerous recommendations and a good old Steam sale, I was all geared up for absolutely hating yet another boring, uninspired scam. It's true that Binding of Isaac is yet another game from Team Meat and once again it's just another Flash game that, in my opinion, has no right to be sold commercially. However, Isaac also does just enough to rise above the status of mere Flash game; it has a lot of content, it has a clever theme and it actually feels very original in many ways.

In this game you take control of Isaac, a young infant who has to explore a number of dungeons to escape from his insane mother. The atmosphere in the basements and caves I got to visit really rubbed me up the right way, the areas themselves are a little basic, but the design of the monsters and the more macabre rooms is very admirable. All the monsters are lost broters of Isaac, I understand and you'll meet quite a lot of them. They also leave a very large amount of gore, so if the areas are boring, then you can just paint them up a little.

The funny thing about a growing technology is that you'll always look back to the early exploration and think your commentary was a little too enthusiastic at the time. Back in my reviews of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, I said that the randomly generating "AI Director" truly made every session unique. Looking back though, L4D1&2 were pretty basic and most of the time you'd just do the same thing, but with different weapons. Isaac however pulls this off marvelously; every time you play the dungeons are different, the power-ups are randomized and even the enemies and bosses aren't always the same. One time I got to the boss room with a lightning-fast Isaac who had tears that shot all across the map and another time I was a bomb-expert.

The power-ups are also very clever, but for a different reason. Whenever you pick one up, it briefly shows you what you found and what it does, but then it also appears on Isaac himself. Every single item you find changes Isaac's appearance slightly. This has the very interesting side-effect that by the end of the game, Isaac looks just as monstrous and evil as all his brothers and sisters that he had been fighting all this time.

The game often references Zelda a lot, but not to the point that it becomes too obnoxious. To begin with: the dungeons are all in the style of the original Legend of Zelda on the NES, a good concept because the dungeons were the best part of that game. There is also some short music tracks and some animations are the same. Like I said though, it doesn't get overly annoying. The game is not constantly pushing these references in your face and I often didn't even notice them for a while. Compare that to Animal Crossing where you get to buy almost a half-dozen items from Zelda games, much better isn't it?

The Bad
The story has a very nice setup, what with Isaac running away from his homicidal mother, but there are some parts that annoy me a bit. The reason for why Isaac has to run, is that his mother heard the "voice of god" and he commanded him to kill her son. I am religious myself, but I will admit that stuff like this happens from time to time and I won't deny a game the right to address it. However, I would like to see this subject tackled in a more serious light. Binding of Isaac is more of a parody in religion and just can't get over itself. Half the items have some kind of religious connection, extra hearts are referred to as "faith" and the mother supposedly spends entire days watching Christian broadcasts on the television. The theme becomes less "Religious fanaticism can lead to horrible things" and more "haha, Christians are so silly", whether that is intentional or not is open for debate.

On the technical side of things it's the game window itself that annoys me. Unlike Super Meat Boy it doesn't go full screen and instead opens up in this very tiny window. It's not the worst fate in the world, but when you do that, then please auto-pause the game when we go to a different window. I am playing this game on a laptop, so in the heat of a boss-fight I often stroke past the touchpad and accidentally open up something else. It may sound like a small complaint, but if freaking emulators got this completely functional, then it also seems like a small effort to fix.

I admit that the random generating of content still doesn't function completely as it should. While the game makes sure that every dungeon has at least one store and one item-room, it's very possible to end up at the final boss room with only one heart, no power-ups and only one good item. The main problem is that there is a difference between power-ups and usable items, but the game doesn't notice that. This means that in item-rooms, you are just as likely to receive one of the stacking power-ups as the non-stacking items. Another problem is that pills can have a negative effect, but you don't know that until you use one. Pills can do anything from giving you a power-up, to reducing your health permanently.

The generating also has a tendency to spawn enemies that conflict with the room you are in, meaning that tactics become useless. One enemy is a surprisingly tough worm that charges at you as an attack, these would ideally spawn in rooms with open space, so that you have a fair chance at dodging them. Instead, they usually spawn in narrow pathways where it's impossible to dodge them and you can't kill them unless you maxed out your damage. This is a consistently present problem that comes in many variations and it really soured the game for me.

Another technical problem is the firing. The game's viewpoint makes it hard to see whether or not a shot lines up perfectly and this can lead to problems. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to fire away at enemies while you are been chased and fired at from multiple directions and the bullet just bends into a different direction or goes a centimeter past the enemy. In Zelda this was fixed because the sword is a big target and goes completely straight forward, but in this game the tears are small orbs and every inch counts.

Is that all I have to complaint about? Nah. not really, there is one last thing: One of the bosses you can possibly encounter is really poor when looking at the game's mechanics. This guy takes up almost 40% of the screen, limiting you're movement drastically. He also fires in multiple directions and spawns additional enemies that take a lot of shots and do the same as him. This creates a storm of bullets and no room to dodge any of them. THANKS!

The Bottom Line
It's very rare for me to give a game or 6/10, I normally either like the game and give it a good grade or hate it and pound it into the dirt, a middle-ground is not all too common. In this case however I do genuinely find myself in the middle of this game, I admire some of the mechanics it utilizes and the genuinely clever design that it displays, but I also dislike some of the rocky mistakes that sour the game up on many fronts.

If you are into indie titles and especially liked Super Meat Boy, then this little game right here is a great addition to your collection with possibly endless amounts of content. If you hang more towards the casual type of games, especially in terms of difficulty, then I wouldn't recommend this game at all.

By Asinine on July 17, 2012

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

A worthy sequel to Super Mario 64

The Good
If there is one thing I remember from Super Mario 64 it's the atmosphere, the awesome feeling you get when exploring the beautiful castle and discover new worlds. Would a second round in the same castle give the same feeling? I don't think so. Instead of the classic castle, we now get to explore space itself. Mario is taken to a giant observatory in space and has to visit various worlds to gather stars. The observatory and indeed all the levels still have a very entertaining atmosphere though, especially the observatory which functions as a HUB-world has a very soothing feel to it.

Because Mario has been taken to space as part of Bowser's latest plans, the designers of the game weren't limited to earth logic anymore. This results in all the levels been galaxies with various planets in them, each planet has its own gravitational pull, so Mario can freely explore the many areas. The designers also went all-out with the creativity, so the game boasts roughly thirty stages with various themes. Not having to make much sense anymore has clearly done the designers some good, as the depths of outer-space can contain literally anything. Aren't you excited about the prospect of been able to explore a galaxy where everything is made out of candy?

The controls have remained relatively unchanged from Super Mario 64 with only a few small tweaks. The first is, of course, the integration of the Wii-remote. By shaking the remote you make Mario spin. This can be used to knock over enemies or damage them, depending on which enemy you are fighting. It can also break scenery and when done near an interactive object (launch stars, vines and underwater) it will use that object. You can also use the remote to pick up "star bits" (which function as currency or ammo) or use some special items.

Every major level has a special challenge that randomly shows up as you play the game. These challenges will slightly alter the level and rules. Daredevil challenges will have you going through a level with only 1 hitpoint, Cosmic challenges will have you race against a clone, speedrun challenges will put you on a timer and Fast-Foe challenges will give opponents a speed-boost. If you're a real man, like me, you of course go for the 100% and do all of these extra challenges. Even if you do just a few of them, you'll notice that they are quite fun and give a good incentive for players to get better at the game.

Each galaxy only has five or so stars in it and some minor galaxies only have one. Why is this a plus? Well, I actually found that most of the levels in Mario 64 were fun, but started to get annoying very fast after you went for star number eight in that level. It would still be a good level, but the minor changes that game made for each new star were not impressive enough to keep me interested. Galaxy instead limits itself to three main stars, one hidden and a challenge star, resulting in much shorter, but also more plentiful levels. There are also no "6 red coins" missions and collecting a 100 coins is only used as an unlockable bonus mission after completing the game.

Finally, I must say that the characters in this game are genuinely enjoyable. Mario games have never been focused much on their characters, we all know and love Mario, but it's still no Shakespeare. Galaxy however does have some cool upgrades in this field though. First of all is the character of Rosalina who, despite her design been kind of a lazy Peach-rehash, is pretty awesome. If you want you can go into the library and read a whole book about her back-story, it's a nice lore, but not the most convenient way of telling it. The familiar Toads have also been upgraded and are now a core-part of the missions. They go to locations on their ship and track down stars for Mario. They are helpful, but never lose their characteristic cowardice.

The Bad
Because each planet has its' own gravity and is pretty small, you can go upside-down and walk all around the planet. It sounds good, but when you try to do this, the game runs into a few problems. Going upside-down is not a familiar angle for the Mario engine and it isn't sure what to do with it. The controls are sometimes reversed, but the camera can get stuck or the other way around. A Problem I ran into a lot was trying to go under a planet, but the second I got there the controls would reverse and Mario would turn around and walk up it again, going in an endless loop of reversing controls. You can also freak the game out a bit by long-jumping near the edge of a planet, this has allowed me to skip sections of the game on occasion.

The game wants to introduce a little story into the series, which isn't inherently a problem (Sunshine did it too), but the execution is very lacking. Every time you start a new game you'll have to sit through this very long story for children with some kind of lullaby in the back-ground. It's very obnoxious and it serves only to scare away older people who might be playing this.

The power-ups in this game are not terribly fascinating. By finding mushrooms and flowers you can transform Mario into different versions of himself (other suits), it sounds okay, but it isn't. The only three suits are a bee-suit, boo-suit and spring-suit, all three of which serve only for having Mario fly or at least jump higher. The boo-suit also allows Mario to pass through walls, but this is rarely used for good puzzles. This means that in a situation in which you are put into the spring-suit, you think something along the lines of "I could have done this same puzzle with those other two suits too". The flowers are an ice and fire suit for Mario, pretty basic, but functional.

Some of the hidden stars can get very obnoxious in this game, in the sense that the method of obtaining them is very vague at best. In one level you had to travel from planet to planet using the wind, but this was in a linear fashion, so once you went somewhere, there would be no way back. Some brilliant mind looked at this and figured "let's make the item you need appear only after the player has picked up five random coins in these winds". Can you see where this goes wrong? You have no reason to think the coins will give you the item and even then you'd have to do this all in a perfect shot or restart the entire level.

The game is a little too easy if you ask me, there are a total of 105 stars that you can obtain in a single play-through, but you only need 60 of them to unlock the last boss. This means the game can be finished in maybe two days time and you'd never have to worry about getting stuck along the way. I did this the first few times as well, but now that I went for a 100% completion, I suddenly found levels that I had never visited before and which happened to be totally freaking awesome.

The use of a live-system has perplexed me ever since I was little, it makes sense in arcade halls where you need to pay to play the games, but why use it on a console. What is the point of sending me back to the title screen after I die an arbitrary number of times if I can just click start and resume from where I left off? Here it's even more weird because Mario loses lives when he loses races... why? Do the lives represent Mario's ego? Also strange is that you can't save your lives, whenever you turn the game on and off you're back to four lives. This means that you can farm yourself crazy for hours and leave with maxed out 1-ups and lose it all with a literal press-of-a-button.

The Bottom Line
Mario Galaxy is, like I said, the true sequel to Super Mario 64 for me. Unlike Sunshine the gameplay felt much better, the atmosphere was a lot more enjoyable and the missions were all very fun and clever. I had a lot of fun with this game to say the least and getting a 100% completion is a recommendation for the fun of it alone. There are some flaws, naturally. power-ups aren't very fun, the physics are somewhat dodgy and the story could be better implemented, just to name a few.

I can recommend this game to many people; children, die-hard gamers, Mario fans, parents... just consider this a global recommendation.

By Asinine on July 15, 2012

Conker's Bad Fur Day (Nintendo 64)

Hey guys, guess who wrote the only negative review again!

The Good
- Graphics are the best you are going to find on the Nintendo 64.

• The music is quite entertaining.

• The game is fully voice-acted and I must say that it's done quite professionally.
  
  The Bad
  - Controls like a brick.

• Incredibly poor gameplay.

• Repetitive and childish humor.

• I genuinely don't want to play this.
  
  The Bottom Line
  Yes, I am doing the review in this style again. Partly because I have too little to work with and partly because I just got done moving an entire house full of laminate to the recycling-center. That aside though, "Conker's Bad Fur Day" is probably the game I have received the most requests for since I started reviewing games, but due to the price of the original cartridge (which tends to go for freaking 60 euros), I kept holding it back. Now that I have finally caved in, let's talk about the game and why I didn't like it.

The game actually started off pretty well, Conker the Squirrel wakes up in the middle of nowhere and has to find a way back home. The problems however become very obvious, very soon. After talking with a character I had to jump across a few platforms to reach a bridge, it seemed like no big deal to me because I am used to platforming, but Conker controls unlike anything I have ever experienced before. To jump you have to hold Z and then press the A-button, but at the exact right height you need to press A again to activate his hover (you won't get anywhere without that hover). It took me more than an hour to get used to this and when I looked up a Let's Play of other people trying it, they seemed to have the same problem regardless of whether they had played it before or not.

Controls are a constant problem in Conker and there always seems to be something buggering me about them. In the very first level you need to scale a giant tower at one point, in the same fashion as the carnival level from Banjo & Kazooie, but you always either let go, slip off or just miss the ladder altogether. Since Conker has no method of saving himself from falls (Kazooie's wing, Mario's ground-pound, Link's roll and etc.) this means you die instantly. Falls are also really weird, at one point I fell of a roof and took no damage, but after getting slightly higher on the roof and falling again I died instantly.

Okay, so the controls are terrible, but poor controls do not always mean that the gameplay itself is poor as well. Sadly, this time around it totally does. The first level of a game is supposed to draw players in and show off what they can expect later, therefore the first level is often not very difficult and involves little to no annoying mechanics. Mumbo's Mountain from Rare's true magnum opus comes to mind in this case. However, the farm-level that starts of Conker's Bad Fur Day is beyond tedious, the only thing you can do at the start is deal with a rat that is harassing some people. How do you do this? By walking halfway across the map to get some cheese for him, not spectacular, but not bad either. The problem? You have to do this roughly 3-4 times without dying in between!

That alone is simply retarded! Why would you start off your game with demanding that the player crosses the same obstacle course multiple times with no changes made to it? I was willing to forgive this by assuming that it was merely a way to open up the rest of the level and finally get the open-world effect that made other Rare games at the time so memorable, but once again this was not the case. What followed up after this aggravating fetch-quest was yet another one where I had to find 5-6 swarms of bees scattered across the map, this wouldn't be too bad, if they weren't placed at the most inconvenient points that make sure you die instantly when falling.

Writing all this down has made me realize that when people talk about this game, it is always about the humor (will get back to that later), but when you ask about controls and gameplay the conversation usually moves on. In some rare cases though, people praised the context-sensitivity buttons for been innovative tools that create variety in the gameplay. I can see where this is coming from, it's indeed clever that you can stand on a platform and press a button to get a new gameplay mechanic just for that moment. It makes sure that Rare didn't have to integrate a dozen or so actions in the standard control-scheme and indeed create any scenario they wanted without fear of restrictions.

What is my problem with them then? My problem is that they ruin any sense of thought, the second you walk into a new area and see that button, you have already figured out the puzzle. Let's just say you arrive in a room full of ghosts and see a context-sensitivity platform, the second you step on it and click the button you receive a flashlight. Would you, for even a second, doubt that the solution to navigating the room was using the flashlight on the ghosts? Now let's take the same scenario, but make the flashlight part of your basic equipment, along with several other tools and gadgets. The flashlight still seems like a logical solution, but if the other tools also relate to ghosts, you'd have to spend some time experimenting and maybe different ghosts react to different tools, meaning you'd have to switch and plan your moves.

Moving on to the humor... seriously guys? This is what caused hundreds of recommendations over the years? I don't mean to insult anybody, but this is a perfect case of liking something for the sole reason of it standing out, the same could be said about the insane praise given to Braid for been very artsy. Back on the Nintendo 64 violence and sex were very scarce and if they were in the game, they were very underplayed (no blood, no corpses and no openly stating that somebody was dead), so when a game like Conker comes out, everybody praises it for not doing this.

I would forgive this if Conker was genuinely clever, but frankly I must say that the humor will feel to most as repetitive and childish. Hearing a cartoon character swear or watching them get drunk may get a smile out of you once, but after a while it will lose all effect and become something that is just kind of there, to the point of it becoming awkward. Even more awkward is the constant vomiting and flatulence-jokes that show up everywhere all the time. Characters randomly release gas, there is an entire level early on dedicated to human and animal feces and even the intro shows characters vomiting. You'd have to be very young to get any enjoyment out of this.

While I would be willing to accept this all as merely the humor not been my thing, there is on flaw that genuinely affects the experience regardless of your age. This flaw is Conker's inconsistent behavior. Conker is at times downright psychotic, blatantly murdering anybody that he meets for no other reason than "because he can". Let's call this the Duke Nukem side of his behavior. I am sure some people would like this, but at various points in the plot Conker suddenly comes over as a genuinely sympathetic character. What kind of character does this leave you with? One moment he is using duct-tape to save the life of a wooden character he had met just an hour ago and a few moments later he is making jokes about the brutal murder on a baby dinosaur that accepted him as a mother he is about to commit. This behavior in turn results that Conker becomes a non-character, one that the player simply can't love due to the lack of any kind of characteristics. When Conker kills or at least witnesses the death of other main characters, all I could think of was how much rather I would have played as them.

So there you have it folks: a game that doesn't play well, isn't funny, requires no thought and is frankly obnoxious to sit through. I admit not always been immune to the powers of nostalgia, but to circle around a game whose only perk is that it stood out for been inappropriate for children at the time it was released is just downright silly. If they had worked more on making the game play more fluently and been less tedious, then perhaps Conker would fit right in with all the other high-quality puzzle/platformers from the 90's that people still love today, a status that while not as unique as it turned out, is at least a million times more admirable and rewarding.

By Asinine on July 12, 2012

Choice of the Vampire (Browser)

Vampire tycoon

The Good
I remember that when I was a little boy, I used to be a big fan of one specific writer. The man's name was "Paul van Loon", a man who specialized in writing horror stories that were meant for children. In one of his books though, Paul wrote a store in which a young boy plays a game in which he takes control over a vampire, picking from a list of dialogue options to determine which actions he wished to perform. At the time this seemed fantastic to me and as years past it remained one of the main concepts that I wanted to play in a video game on day. And now? Now we have Choice of the Vampire!

Choice of the Vampire is exactly what you think it is: a text-adventure in which you take on the role of a vampire and have to pick between several different ways to deal with various situations. Where the game shines though is it's eye for detail and the amount of variation it contains. You are not just constantly selecting between "suck blood: yes/no", but there are genuine moral questions that you will have to deal with and every choice has impact in one way or another. For example: early on in the game I told my master to go suck his own blood and left his care, moving to rural countryside and taking it over. Almost three hours later in the game, I received a message from my master in which he asked me to meet him for an important lesson he had never thought me. Can you imagine that? Three hours into a game and a decision is still affecting the overall story-line.

The game also contains a number of stats that are determined by what you train and how you react in situation. Statistics are your regular RPG-affair; strength, fighting, intelligence, agility and all the sorts. These statistics however determine what you can and can't do, there is no way you are going to infiltrate a party with a low sneaking for example, but beating up the guards and forcing your way in is an option if you have the strength for it. This adds a lot more meaning and depth to the game and makes sure your character becomes an actual person with lore and background.

The game is also good for multiple playthroughs, as the slightest decision can drastically change your position and standing. You can start in New Orleans for example and find yourself halfway across the continent by the end of the game and never does it feel out-of-place or unrealistic. Side-stories are everywhere and once I spend an entire two hours working my way through a fascinating love-story before making even the slightest progress in the main story-line. The funny thing is that I could have also approached this love-interest otherwise and probably spend the entire side-story trying to bring her down.

The Bad
The game has a very linear mind on when you have to move on, for example: I had a very good and stable farm-village set up along the Mississippi where I had remained in charge for a good fifty years. I had won the hearts of the citizens with my helpful and kind attitude and was a men worthy of respect. However, after a while the game must have realized it ran out of scenarios, so it pulled out of its ass that a priest showed up, won over all the citizens in a week and had me ran out of town on charges of heresy by the end of the month. With all my servants, land and income gone, it pretty much felt like a restart, but with higher stats.

The game can also be a bit vague at moments. After the incident at my farm, I moved north to some city under the rule of the federation. The place was naturally booming with soldiers, but when I got into trouble with them, I was unable to charm the derpy idiots. I had a character aimed completely at charming and persuasion, but when I most needed it, I couldn't even charm my way past some random twenty-year old private with a fake blunderbuss in his hands.

The Bottom Line
It's hard for me to review this game because I have no freaking clue how. As much as I have waited for a game like this since childhood, I have never seen anything like it and thus lack material I need to draw comparisons. I can't say that I was disappointed with the game though, it's fun, it's a worthwhile and satisfying experience, but it does have some lacking moments that made me shut down the game over and over again.

By Asinine on July 7, 2012

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (Xbox 360)

How to ruin a good game franchise

The Good
I admit that I am glad that this franchise isn't as dead as I thought it would be, Banjo-Kazooie was part of my childhood and is right up there with Super Mario and Legend of Zelda, that is part of the reason why I have delayed this review for months. I can sense that the true game in in there still, the dialogue and humor are still around and the graphics look great, I just wish there was a lot more of the original game in here.

There is a lot of depth to the building part of this game, not really much of a surprise considering everything else is as messed up as it can get, but I am still very positive about this. It's simple enough for kids to build themselves cars with, but the older people can also spend hours perfecting a new hovercraft or aircraft if they want to. Every bit of weight counts and the right weapons on the right vehicles can really make a difference when you're in a tough position.

I admit that levels are actually pretty damn good and at some points it can even be full of atmosphere. Heck, I'd even say that the second level is one par with levels from Banjo and Kazooie, I honestly like it that much. There is also a museum level that I swear is a treasure for spotting Easter-eggs.

The Bad
Oh dear... let's go through these one at a time:

racing mechanics

A change of core-gameplay doesn't necessarily have to be bad, Mario does it all the time and frankly it always worked out so far. Where Banjo however falls short is that the racing mechanics feel somewhat clunky and cars control rather funny. Very often I would drive over a slight bump in the road at a brisk pace, but my car would simply topple over. At one point I made a very light car with lots of engines, but giving even the slightest bit of gas launched the thing directly into the air. I have no problem with cartoon logic, but when we are asked to partake in races, it's pretty essential that the core mechanics are at least functional.

mission difficulty

The missions are rather difficult, even in the very first level, which strikes me as somewhat cruel. There are several feeds you can accomplish; either you do it top notch and get a prize + jiggy, you do well enough and get just a jiggy or you fail and don't get anything. In some levels though, I even found it near-impossible to achieve just a regular victory, let alone one where I get a prize for. This game is supposed to be aimed at kids, but I doubt children are interested in having to hand-craft a new car for every individual mission's objectives.

satanic AI

Quite often you will be asked to race against other characters or at the very least deal with some enemies, this sounds decent enough on paper, but the AI programming is so lazy that is borders on the unfair. The AI are programmed in a way that racing opponents only care for assaulting you, but the second that has been accomplished they just turn into mindless zombies. In one race in the second level they would constantly bump me off the road or into hazards, but once I was in last place they would form a nice line and calmly ride for the finish. Enemies aren't much better and the main problem is that every single one of them is designed to break off parts of your car, which of course is a major frustration factor when casually driving around.

empty levels

While the levels are quite beautiful and quite clearly what we expected from Banjo & Threeie, there is still a major flaw to be found in them. What we can expect to be levels designed for an adventure game, feel quite empty and hallow when used for racing purposes. You can walk around and explore every nook and cranny, but all you will find is scenery with no function or context, to the point that you can actually destroy most of it. Enemies have also been scarcely dropped around the map in a very random fashion, so it's not even worth exploring for the sake of combat.

Showdown Town

Like all the other Banjo games, this one too has an overworld. This time around however it's not Spiral Mountain, but instead a place called Showdown Town, where all games are made and come together. Well... that's the idea anyway. What could be a heaven for easter-eggs and references is instead kind of a bland and meaningless area with minimal interaction. There are villagers to be found, but they are all generic animals with no purpose in the story. There are crates to be found with new parts for your car, but they are so obviously placed that it's more of a chore than anything else.

Unrewarding construction

I mentioned that the process of designing your car is at least somewhat deep, but while that is true, it's still a very bad construction-simulator. I am not going to complaint about not having to study engineering to grasp this kind of stuff, that's of course a major plus, instead I would rather complaint about how little fun you get out of your car. At first you have only a few car parts, but you can still spend two hours creating your first masterpiece. Cut two levels further and you already have ten times as many parts and trying to upgrade your first model is impossible because you'd have to redesign it completely. What I am saying is: you can never quite stick with anything you have and are constantly changing around.

lack of adventure

This is the most obvious complaint, but that's why I kept it for last. Banjo and Kazooie, as well as its sequel, where both focused entirely on the adventure. You had to enter the levels and find out where to get the jigsaw-pieces with your own wit, but here you see a gigantic holographic sign showing you exactly where to go, followed by a character telling you exactly what to do. Gruntilda, the main villain of the series, is also in for this ride, but she doesn't seem that interested in the game either. She just kinda stands around and occasionally challenges you, she doesn't even respond when you fire a laser at her. She is also the last boss of every level, but that again goes in against her style, she would always wait till the last moment and massively hype up herself as a final challenge to overcome.

The Bottom Line
This is a horrible, horrible game and it's even worse because it's the latest game in one of my all-time favorite franchises. Aside from the franchise it's part of and a pretty nice "build your own car" feature there is just nothing remotely decent about this game, it's one of the worst I have ever played in fact. Banjo should have stayed an adventurer, it could be the worst adventure game ever with the most mindless puzzles and the laziest story ever and I would still rate it better than what we have in front of us now.

If you have little children, they might enjoy it, but everybody else will just see it for the bore it isn't even trying to hide. I am sad to bring this news to you, members of Mobygames.com, but this game is bad, really, really bad. Stay away from it.

By Asinine on June 30, 2012

Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2)

Is this a city or an enemy?

The Good
One of the things that rubbed me up the right way in this game is the main character. Sir, "whatever the fuck his name was" is not your everyday knight that you see in most medieval themed games. He is not on some holy quest, he is not even trying to get by, he is just been a completely pathetic loser. The story goes that this lad's girl dies and he can't for the love of God get over it and move on. Instead he brings her to a forbidden land and makes a deal with a demon, he is to hunt down 16 gigantic monsters and kill them, corrupting his body and soul in the process and throwing away everything he's got. Even the player can likely tell that his quest is going to be fruitless, but he is such an emotional wreck that he doesn't care either way.

Before we get to the meat of this game I'd like to EXPAND on the forbidden land in question (u c what I did thar?). This place is gigantic and very well designed, it is almost completely untouched by civilization and consists entirely out of natural beauty (or pixels). There were waterfalls, mountains, endless deserts, lush forests and even an area that looked like The Shire from Lord of the Rings. The few buildings you do run into make for an interesting change and they are often nicely fit with the area you were in anyway.

The world is not the only aspect that looks rather beautiful though, the characters are nothing different. While you will mostly be looking at "what's his name", that's not really a problem at all because his design is very good. He doesn't wear overly excessive clothing, but he does just enough to rise above standard clothing. Just like with Fi from Skyward Sword I loved the way his clothes moved in the wind.

But who the hell plays this game to look at that loser, we are here for the true stars of this game: The colossi. The best thing about these monsters is that they are actually gigantic monstrosities, not like most other fantasy games where "huge" is about the size of a house. The colossi are hulking giants that, as you might have guessed from the title, look like walking castles in terms of size.

Fighting these creatures feels fittingly epic and is way better than most other games where you just keep firing arrows at something like this or go through some routine to hurt him. Some colossi do require you to stun them and all of them have scripted weak-spots, but you will have to climb your way to them, jumping from ledge to ledge and desperately clinging to their hair as they shake you around. The grip-bar that shows you how much longer you can cling to the monster is a great way to force you to take chances and act riskier than you normally would.

Logically these monsters also pose a huge challenge and you will want to avoid getting hit by them. Even the trembles send out by their footsteps are enough to take a bit of health away, but if they manage to hit you with their attacks they will likely kill you in one or two hits. This is one of the rare games where I was actually sweating while playing it, the last one been the latest Zelda game for less fair reasons.

One thing I can't thank the game enough for though is the fact that it automatically puts up a checkpoint for you whenever you start a boss-fight. There were also some neat optional save-points set up all over the land that could come in handy.

Finally, I should mentioned the soundtrack. It was actually hearing the final boss theme that sold this game to me and there was a lot more where that came from. Overall it's the boss themes that make up the best songs in this game and they always helped keeping me hyped for the next encounter.

The Bad
I am going to get hate-mail for this, but I just hated that damn horse. Agro, as it is apparently called is your companion for this adventure and also your mount. I really tried to like her, but while the story tries its best, it is just held back by how utterly and completely annoying the horse is during gameplay. I think everybody can agree that a mount is supposed to get you from A to B as fast as possible, but Agro has to be arsed every second you are on top of her, to go at a reasonable pace and the slightest bump in the road will make her stagger. You also need to kick her like five times before she even starts moving to begin with. I am sorry, but I simply can't feel sympathy for something that annoys me.

Something that kinda makes me sad is that the Forbidden Land is naturally rather empty and this means that there are no characters. Aside from you, your horse, the imprisoned demon and your girlfriend who is apparently immune to rotting, there are no characters anywhere. This means that there is nobody to interact with and interacting with characters is my favorite part of any video games as it helps flesh out the world and immerse me into the story.

The only negative review I could find on this game on Mobygames mentioned the voice-acting was horrible, but I am not quite sure if "voice-acting" can be actually named here. The reason for this is that I am not even sure what these people are supposed to be speaking, it just sounds like complete gibberish to me and I didn't blame The Sims for bad voice-acting either. The language does annoy me though because it's crap like this that makes this game awkward to play when friends are near, like a family member walking in on you watching Star Trek in the middle of some Alien conversation.

While I mentioned that I liked the grip-mechanics there is one problem with them that just annoyed me. I was told that in order to increase your grip you need to shoot arrows into lizards and while I found a lot of lizards, I was never sure if I was actually getting more grip from them, the bar never seemed to increase. This made it even more difficult for me when I walked into a lizard paradise with over eight of the buggers in the same five square meters of ground.

The Bottom Line
I clocked a short five hours on this game and this was my first playthrough ever, but unlike say... Call of Duty this game actually feels that much longer. Shadow of the Colossus feels like a very rich experience whereas most games are long and stretched, this game is short and stuffed. Fighting the colossi is by far one of the most exciting things I have done in a game for a while and despite some flaws and a weak ending, I am really glad I played this game.

This game is not meant for the people who expect a game to be paced very fast, keeping you in the action at all times. Shadow of the Colossus takes its time to immerse you into the world and you will spend 70% of your time travelling instead. If you like immersive games than you owe it to yourself to check this one out. If you are a fan of platform games or you like the premise of killing colossi than you should be aware of the pacing and try this at your own risk.

By Asinine on June 28, 2012

Lone Survivor (Windows)

Just... meh

The Good
At first this game was very promising to me, from the second I booted it up it had my full attention. The reason for this was a very interesting opening which instantly set the tone for the rest of the game, a tone I like to refer to as "genuinely fucking scary". Unlike Resident Evil 4 and Left 4 Dead, this game actually serves you with a very horrifying atmosphere; areas are gruesome, monsters look distorted and the sound-effects send chills down your spine. I can easily see this game turning into the next main horror franchise.

Gameplay nicely balances fighting and hiding when you encounter monsters, unlike Amnesia: The Dark Descent. There are several hiding spots which you can enter and guarantee that monsters won't see you. However, you also have a gun which is very effective against the monsters, but also runs out of ammo rather fast. This makes sure that, as the player, I am constantly reconsidering my options: Shall I shoot this zombie or sneak past him by luring him with some meat and save myself some ammo for later?

The game does a very good job at steering you towards the locations that progress the story, while not immediately grabbing you by the nose and dragging you through.There is always plenty of room to explore the many chambers and areas you get to visit for ammo and other supplies, but at the same time your map clearly displays the next main objective and the character frequently mentions his intentions.

The Bad
The graphics have a very odd style that I haven't seen before, with which I am trying to say: "the game looks like absolute ass". Areas are hand-drawn, just like in Braid, but due to the pixelated aesthetic I can't make out any of it. Sometimes I'd even get headaches from having to concentrate on the very dark blocky graphics and this forced me to play the game in very short bursts.

The character has realistic needs, which means you will have to eat and sleep in order to stay alive. I agree that this is realistic, but the time it takes for him to remark on his hunger or sleep is certainly not. Sometimes you can barely walk across the hallway and back without him growing sleepy again and demanding you to return to home. Food is a slightly smaller problem because you can eat at any time, but it's still obnoxious when you're in the middle of combat and your character suddenly expresses his desire for some crackers.

A horror game is at its best when we can relate to the character and genuinely wish to keep him out of arm, on that note this game falls flat on its face. Aside from growing hungry or sleepy every ten minutes, the character is also not really informed on how survival works. On many occasions I ran into containers that maybe contained items that could be of use to me, but captain pancake here refused to search them because "This isn't mine". Not stealing items is definitely commendable, but not when the whole world is dead and trying to eat your face.

Quite often I didn't experience the game as been entertaining, but rather frustrating. Sure it's scary, sure the gameplay functions, but when I sneak and fight my way through four zombies, only to run out of ammo right after firing a single bullet at a zombie, there is no entertainment value to be found anymore. This specific problem relates back to the lack of a visual interface, but there are so many examples of frustrating moments in this game, such as thinking you're in a hallucination scene and can't actually die, only to find out this isn't the case.

To add salt to injury, there is no pause function. When you open your inventory or map the game just kind of goes on and all the zombies aren't polite enough to wait for you to finish your business. It reminded me of Resident Evil 5 in that regard, but in that game there was at least an actual pause button that did stop the game from moving on.

The Bottom Line
This game is the perfect simulation of what would happen if you were a mentally unstable person stuck in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. It's frustrating, obnoxious and it's likely to give you a good headache. A good atmosphere and functional gameplay are a good start for the game, but many of the design choices suck the fun out of the interaction and leave me with another abandoned game in my Steam list.

If you are a zombie fanatic then you can go ahead and give this a try, if you are not, then I would sooner recommend something like F.E.A.R. for your daily dose of horror.

By Asinine on June 25, 2012

Tropico 4 (Windows)

Would be really fun if it worked.

The Good
The game has a very original setting and one that I think is severely underused in this industry. The player takes on the role of an island dictator during the Cold War and is tasked with raising cities on several poverty-stricken island nations. It's refreshing to say the least and the Cold War immediately gives the player two large factions to keep happy at the same time and a serious conflict (invasion from either the USSR or America) to want to avoid.

I have always said that a bad city-simulator only has buildings that provide a set number of revenue or give a bonus to your stats. A good city-simulator on the other hand has buildings that open up new and interesting features to the player to play around with. Tropico does the latter and I often found myself making more buildings that give you new options instead of the ones that just generate revenue. Even the buildings that just give you money are more complex than usual because they often require certain resources to function, so you have to either import those or have other buildings make that resource.

Besides building and keeping people happy, you will also have to truly delve into the political aspect of this game. There are several factions, both national and international, that you will have to keep happy. Keeping factions happy makes the people aligned with them happy and will mean more people will vote for you in the election. The trick however is that many factions have conflicting ideals, for example: banning gay marriage makes the church very happy, but the intellectuals will dislike it. This means you will have to balance your choices out and keep careful track of what you are doing.

There are several random events that can ruin all your plans very easily. One that is consistently present are the rebels building up a force large enough to overthrow you. There are also natural hazards, elections and military coups that can occur and all these have a negative effect on your standing. You might have carefully planned all your expenses for the coming year, when suddenly and out of nothing, a tsunami devastates your tourist-paradise on the beach and demands repair.

Just like with Roller Coaster Tycoon, you can check every random person on your island for his opinion on the situation. Tropico however takes it further and displays the person's entire family tree, thoughts and political opinion, all in one screen. It's pretty informative and intuitive as well. If you don't want to click on random people, then there is also the book which nicely displays the overall statistics of your island and the progress you have made over time.

The Bad
All this may make it sound like Tropico 4 is a very good game and possibly an underrated gem, however there is one major problem that kind of sabotages it... namely that it doesn't freaking work. The game is so broken and glitchy that it borders on the unplayable. On one of my islands for example I had a problem with immigrants, they just kept coming and I had no room or work for them. I decided to build the building that allows me to regulate immigration and used it to shut off the entire island, but even then immigrants would come in like flies. Another huge problem was with the schools, where people would complaint about the lack of education, but I literally had two high schools and a grade school in my city center with their staff maxed out, that nobody EVER attended to.

This also relates to another problem with Tropico 4 and that's the lack of explanation you receive. At one point I had a very expensive cigar factory build, surrounded on all sides by employed farms that produced the resource needed for cigars. I was planning on making a killer income with it, but years later the factory was still not receiving the resource and therefore didn't produce anything. The resource literally vanished, the farms produced it, the teamsters picked it up and then nothing. Because of the cost of the buildings and the maintenance I also did irreparable damage to my island and had to throw away the save file, sounds like fun, doesn't it?!

Most of the variables that people demand (housing, environment, food, entertainment and etc.) also seem bugged and never increase. I could literally build the best houses available and set the rent to the minimum and I'd still get a lousy 50/100 for my housing quality. It didn't seem to matter what I build, people would always find an excuse to ignore it and claim that I am the one doing things wrong. I also build this gigantic sports center that everybody wanted from me, but despite it taking up 1/5 of my island, people still found a way to not notice it.

On yet another playthrough I had a problem with not receiving immigrants at all. I wanted my island to grow, but because of a high educational level and very good housing, most of my people had moved on to the jobs higher up, leaving my docks and wharves without basic workers. I wanted to have workers from abroad, but I simply didn't know how to pull that off, the game never once mentioned something along the lines off "Build X construction to regulate the immigration" or "Look under X to find such and such".

Basic strategy in city-simulators is to make sure that your people receive their basic needs first, but this brings along the problem that it takes very long for the first batch of food to come in from farms. In fact, everything takes very long to build. This was also the reason for why I hated Age of Empires 1, before you get your basic needs taken care of, you're already two days further. Another good example is building: when you start construction, you first have to wait for the workers to be arsed to go to the site, then they slowly start to work and maybe, just maybe, they'll finish it before getting bored and leaving again.

The Bottom Line
Tropico 4 is a game with a wonderful setup, but with such rocky execution that it becomes borderline unplayable. This would be alright for a first installment, not four main entries and several expansion packs into the series. I really wanted to like this game, it has an original setting and having to deal with multiple factions sounds fun, but thanks to the core-gameplay which flat-out refuses to work from time to time, it's impossible to enjoy this game for longer than ten minutes.

I know this game has a cult-following, but even to them I would recommend sticking with older entries in this franchise. I haven't tried any of them, but if they have fans, then they are already better than how Tropico 4 turned out.

By Asinine on June 25, 2012

Braid (Windows)

Poor puzzles, poor story and poor references, but hey, it's artsy so we have to like it.

The Good
The backgrounds in this game are very beautiful, every single one of them is hand-drawn and the aesthetic is very original. Braid focuses mostly on looking beautiful and I'll be damned if it doesn't pull that off very well. The art-style for the backgrounds also fits really well with the level-design and the style is consistently present, while also varying enough to stay interesting.

Likewise, the spriting is also done very excellently. I want you to jump on one of the basic enemies and then slowly reverse time, you will see the expression on the sprite change slowly instead of an instant-transition, that's pretty cool. Like with the backgrounds, the sprites fit really well with the overall aesthetic and this all creates a sense of atmosphere that I personally found quite endearing.

Like with "Banjo & Tooie" this game has you assembling puzzles, this time around in order to finish a level off entirely. I actually really enjoy this, I like making puzzles and when done virtually I don't end up with a million boxes and missing pieces.

The Bad
The story in this game is very poorly implemented, to the point of it been a few steps back in video game storytelling. Remember how I said that in "Bastion" the gameplay and story are perfectly put together? Braid does the complete opposite and gameplay and story are kept miles away from each other. Before you start each level there are a few books on pedestals that you can read, each containing an entire paragraph of ambiguous text that is supposed to form the story. Some call this poetry, but I call it retarded. I am not saying that a 2D platformer can't have a story, but when we have to go out of our way to read a load of text before we get to play, then that is clearly a failure. As for the content: I am underwhelmed. Every level just turns around the same thing: Tim is a whiny idiot, he is looking for a princess and the game can't go for a single level without referencing the atomic bomb.

On the gameplay side of things there is nothing groundbreaking to be found either, in fact, the gameplay feels very out of place. The story and atmosphere set the game up as a very dark or at least a dramatic experience, but once gameplay starts you are jumping around with cute creatures while cheerful music plays in the background. At first glance the first level appears to be doing a Mario reference, but you quickly realize that the entire game is a Mario reference. Every single level uses the piranha plants coming out of green pipes, goomba-like enemies walking straightforward until they hit something and weird-looking creatures at the end of levels telling you the princess is somewhere else. The entire game is like this, so I consider myself justified in saying that it's just Super Mario with puzzles and artsy bullcrap thrown into the mix.

Unlike what the creators claim, the puzzles in this game border on the horrendous. Their official strategy guide says that all the puzzles are fair and never involve guessing, but in the very first level I was confronted with a puzzle that demanded that I grew bored and started fucking around with the scenery (turned out you could move the picture frame, thanks for hinting at that, that clearly didn't leave me guessing for random solutions). There are plenty of examples all around and one of the most mind-bending of them is a puzzle where there are two doors and only one key, one door opens and the other breaks the key and forces you to repeat the entire stage. That is a returning puzzle, ladies and gentlemen!

In fact, there are quite a lot of stages that demand you reset everything if you make even one mistake. One annoying example was early on in a level where certain elements were immune to your time-reversing abilities. The only puzzle here was that two platforms were moving towards each other at exactly the right timing, but one was immune and the other wasn't, so in order to prevent a conflict I just had to wait... next to three enemies with varying attack patterns.

Also unfair about the puzzles is that they are incredibly overwhelming. Many stages contain various dynamic objects that start working the second you enter, this creates the problem that the player can never get his bearings before diving into the actual puzzle. Imagine if you're playing Banjo & Kazooie and once you enter Mumbo's mountain you don't start off on top of that hill without enemies, but next to that monkey throwing fruit at you and with no way to escape. As the game is normally, you can observe the monkey from a distance, but in this scenario (which is what Braid does) you are just going to run around in circles because you can't grasp what is happening around you. What Braid does can be done right, like in Ocarina of Time where you enter that icy room with the timer, it gives you a quick adrenaline-kick and forces you to think faster than usual, but when the entire game is like that...

The Bottom Line
Many people praise Braid because it shows that "games are mature" and "games are art", but personally I can only see a poorly-assembled mess of a game. I do believe that some games are mature and I most certainly believe that games art, however I also believe that you don't need to throw in pointless references or ambiguous paragraphs of text to achieve it. I think Bastion is a piece of art, the same can be said about The Path, "art" is not some kind of official stamp that government employees hold meetings over, it's an opinion that varies from person to person. I think Psychonauts is a piece of art, but on the other side I don't care for modern paintings.

If you hang out on websites like The Escapist were any game that a reviewer calls art is immediately consider to be 100% flawless, then this title should definitely be on your to-play list. Besides that, I can only recommend this game to the so-called "hipsters".

By Asinine on June 18, 2012

Bastion (Windows)

Thank you, Humble Indie Bundle.

The Good
The one thing everybody knows about this game is the fact that every action you perform is narrated by an old man. When I first heard about this, my initial reaction was "That is going to get annoying really fast", just like the animations in Pokemon Stadium. However, Bastion is a very good example of how narration is done well, for starters: The narrator never repeats himself and is constantly present. This means that unlike the commanders from Lord of the Rings: Conquest, you won't be hearing the same four or five lines over and over again, instead the narrator feels very real and human, almost like how a good storyteller would tell his tales around a campfire.

The narration also allows the game to focus on gameplay without losing points on its story. A lot of games these days think it's impossible to tell a story during gameplay and instead rely constantly on cut-scenes, so a game like Half-Life or indeed Bastion is a welcome refreshment. Because the narrator is constantly talking we learn a lot about the people and the world around us without ever needing to lose control over our character or read tons of dialogue.

The main goal of the game is to, after a calamity occurred, rebuild the city by gathering the cores and shards that kept it alive. Whenever you collect one of these items you can build or upgrade a building inside the "Bastion" (a restoration point for the city). This is a very rewarding process because each building has a specific feature that will help you out in a different way, an armory for example allows you to swap weapons. Upgrading the armory unlocks new special moves which can be a life-saving investment when in the tougher stages.

Fighting in this game is very fast and skillful, as The Kid you wield a variety of different weapons varying from hammers to entire mortars and there are tons of enemies coming at you from each direction. You can use Shift to hold up a shield, Q to perform a special attack and spacebar to dodge-roll. Dodging and defending become very integral skills later on in the game, the difficulty tends to rise and some enemies can really mess your day up.

Back in the Bastion there is a lot of customization that you can perform on your hero. In the distillery you can select a beverage every time you level up, these give you passive bonuses such as doing constant critical hits when you are below 30% health. At the forge you can upgrade your weapons with resources you found elsewhere and these have a small upgrade-tree. It's not nearly as complex as Civilization, but making a choice that fits your play-style can make quite a difference. Finally there is a temple where you can choose which gods to worship, worshiping gods makes the enemies stronger in a variety of ways, but also increases the experience bonus you receive.

For each weapon there is also a training facility where you can practice your skills. The goal is to kill as many enemies or possible or clear the course in as little time or attacks as possible. The better you do, the better the reward will be at the end. Training rooms aren't really rare in games, but I have only seen it done well a handful of times. Bastion makes sure that the three rewards you can get are actually worth the effort and they become more valuable the better you do, plus they are actually well designed, that counts for a lot too.

I finished this game the other day and had a blast with it, I especially liked the story that maintained emotional weight without ever needing to show cut-scenes to me. After the credits though, I was treated on a message that made me very happy, namely the hint that I had unlocked a Game+ mode that allowed me to start a new game with my old character. Sweet! I loved it when Borderlands did this and I love it again because Game+ mode is such an awesome idea, it increases the replay value of a game and provides a better challenge for those who choose to use it. Personally I'll wait a little longer and play through the rest of the games I got in the Indie Bundle.

The Bad
If the game produces a pie chart that showed the sources from which I took damage, enemies would probably come in second place. Why is that? Well because I fell of the level every ten seconds. Bastion has an isometric viewpoint and combined with the very elaborate and messy level-design it often creates the problem that you direct a roll in the wrong direction or stand on something that is not actually part of the floor. This was very obnoxious and a constant problem from the second I booted the game till the very last stage.

I am not a great fan of levels that have timers on them and while Bastion rarely did this, it did have a few scenes in which the level would fall apart and you have to rush through it. I found these to be very annoying because, while they are definitely not out-of-place, they did force me to stop my exploring. Like I said in my review of "Alter Ego", I hate it when I feel like I am missing out on interesting content and that statement applies here as well. I don't like it when I might be constantly running past valuable collectibles or secrets without knowing it.

The game has way too many weapons, almost one for every stage you visit. While they are definitely different in design, function and never feel like copy&pasted work, it did grow rather annoying that I could never settle with a particular combination of weapons. At the start of the game you are given a pistol, a few minutes later you're already rolling with a bow. When you get used to the bow, you get a javelin, a few stages later a scattergun and the one after that you are given a freaking rifle. It gets so annoying to constantly receive new weapons after a while and it makes upgrading feel rather pointless. I also hate it that you automatically swap weapons when you find a new one, especially since you can only change it back when you find an armory somewhere.

This might seem like a poor complaint, but I really thought that there weren't enough songs. The soundtrack is pretty long, but there are only two or three songs with actual lyrics and they all sound freaking gorgeous.

The Bottom Line
Bastion was a massive hit when it launched in 2011 and I initially missed out on it. I am very glad that I caught up now however because Bastion is a very worthwhile experience, it sets a new bar for indie-games on the fields of story-telling, graphics, music and gameplay. I am definitely going to revisit this game at some point in 2013 and hell, maybe I even go for a 100% completion then.

If you consider yourself a member of the indie-scene, then I don't have to tell you to play Bastion because you already have. People looking for a completely new experience, something that hasn't been done before, should also look towards this title. Come to think of it, even the die-hard gamers can probably get a good amount of satisfaction out of this title due to its chaotic gameplay and the lack of story-heavy cut-scenes.

By Asinine on June 18, 2012

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (Game Boy Advance)

The only truly bad game in the franchise

The Good
The music is of a pretty good quality for Game boy standards, combine that with the the masterfully composed songs that come with every Kingdom Hearts games and your ears are in for quite a surprise. The list of songs contains some new tunes such as "Axel's theme", "the 13th dillema" and "memory in pieces", as well as a handful of familiar tunes like "Dearly Beloved".

This is the first game in the franchise where Organization XIII was introduced, this is a group of people who have lost their heart, but were able to live on. In my review of Kingdom Hearts 2 I made the point that they never seemed evil to me, but to Square's credit, they did throw the most evil members of the organization at us in this installment. Larxene especially is an unimaginable bitch that you genuinely want to kill.

The game is quite strong in terms of graphics too, sprites are very detailed and the environments look top notch. I also like how most locations genuinely get the same atmosphere as on the Playstation 2 across, it shows that with enough hard work, a game can still make the jump to handheld systems.

The Bad
Instead of the awesome real-time combat we had in all the other Kingdom Hearts games, we get a mix between turn-based and real-time this time around. During combat we take direct control over Sora, but at the same time you have to select cards from a deck in order to launch attacks. Now, I want you to try this: Go into combat and constantly dodge attacks from 6-8 enemies while simultaneously browsing through a deck of cards looking for the spell that you want to use. It's not fun, it's not challenging, it's just very tedious and awkward to control.

You don't have a dodge or block move in this game, instead all the aforementioned cards have a number on them. When you and an opponent attack at the same time, the one with the highest number on his cards wins and gets to do his or her attack while the other is stunned. It sounds like a clever system, but this demands that you constantly combine high-level cards for devastating attacks. The combat is however still as fast-paced as it was in all the other Kingdom Hearts games, so you are at the same time encouraged to button-mash the attack-command, creating a massive conflict that is present all throughout the game.

Cards are also used to open doors: each door demands a card of a certain level and to open it you have to give a card of that level or higher. The card that you choose affects what the room you arrive in will look like. This may seem like a novelty, but in reality this makes the levels boring because it demands that each room contributes as little to experience as possible or else the overall story wouldn't make any sense. That aside though, it also created the problem that you need to luck out in order to find shops, this meant that four levels into the game I was still using the starter pack of cards and simply couldn't win from a boss that only used level 9 cards.

Okay, so the card-system doesn't work at all. What else is wrong with this game? Well the story is pretty much a cut-down version of the first Kingdom Hearts game with a new overall narrative. Sora finds himself in a castle where he slowly loses his memory and to progress through the castle he has to revisit his memories. This means that you have to replay your adventures in Wonderland, Traverse Town, Halloween Town and many other locations from the original game, but cut-down to like one hour of playtime each. The stories there are mild variations on the ones we already know and mostly circle around the characters not knowing each other anymore. It carries no emotional weight anymore and that really hurts the experience, hearing Sora and Aerith exchange awkward dialogue in an attempt to remember stuff is boring and tedious and the fact that nothing of it is real saps all the urgency out of the game.

The stories in each world are also very bland and mostly follow the same route we walked before. In Traverse Town you walk around a bit, meet with the Final Fantasy crew, visit Cid, fight with the giant Heartless. It doesn't sound too bad and maybe the game could stand as a nostalgia-trip alone, but the story suffers from the gameplay that is put in between. Every major event and cut-scene is hidden behind a special door that only opens to a very specific card, you get one card at the start of each stage and the next one is always given to you in the cut-scene. This means there is no exploration at all, all you need to do is drag yourself from cut-scene to cut-scene to get the next card and everything in between is just needless grinding that you can do.

The lack of voice-acting really hurts the presentation and it's obvious that a Kingdom Hearts game can't stand up without it. The biggest problem is the long and drawn-out cut-scenes that involve lots of dialogue. The explanation given by Yen Sid early in Kingdom Hearts 2 was also long, but because it had voices, you didn't have to put any effort into reading any of it.

The Bottom Line
As you might have guessed: I am not the greatest fan of Chain of Memories. I first played it right after Kingdom Hearts 1 and didn't get any of it. The whole card-business is so needlessly complex and forced that it took me four hours of playing to finally understand what I was doing and after that I quickly grew bored of it. For the sake of completion I decided to replay it, which was not very entertaining at all. While a lot of work has gone into keeping the music and graphics at a high level, the gameplay clearly deserved more attention and has fallen to the point of it becoming unplayable.

With that said: Is this game worth playing? For the casual gamer this is most certainly not the case, the game is far too awkwardly put together to be enjoyable for more than a few minutes. The die-hard fans of Kingdom Hearts however, may be able to look past this and enjoy the story that does lead up to events of Kingdom Hearts 2 and later becomes a part of the masterful 358/2 Days.

By Asinine on June 14, 2012

The Legend of Zelda: Time's Menagerie (Windows)

Pixelspeech's rant on mature-games: part II

The Good
- Improved graphics with hand-made drawings

• Animations during combat
  
  The Bad
  - characters and events only serve to annoy you

• Story has little in the way of twists and is really boring

• Villains won't stay dead

• Same problems as Fallen Sage, but worsened
  
  The Bottom Line
  You might be wondering why I am playing this title, after all, I did grind the previous title in this fan-series into the ground in my re-review of it. Well, I wasn't quite done with my rant, there were some more items I wanted to talk about. However, I figured that too much information in just one review would be a little too much for the readers and the message would get lost because of it. Consider this more like a part 2 instead of a separate entry.

To summarize my argument from the last review, "Undyingnephalim" made an overambitious game that failed to grasp the meaning of mature, resulting in a huge mess of a story that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I have always lived by the notion that you should never let the child inside you die, the reason for why I am telling you this is because after submitting my review on Fallen Sage I was verbally harassed by the creator over Youtube because I wrote a counter-argument to a statement he made on a video. That was when I finally realized what is wrong with the man, his inner child is not just dead, it has been thrown into an oven and slowly burned to death. I actually feel somewhat sorry for the guy, as he seems to be convinced that a Zelda game that isn't utterly and completely devoid of cheerful themes is somehow an insult to the franchise and must be purged, he even claimed the CDI games were better than Skyward Sword.

Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are clearly the games that he keeps coming back to whenever somebody tries to argue with him, but I think his nostalgia completely blinds him and he now lives in an alternate universe where those two Nintendo 64 games were the scariest games to ever come out the video games industry. I enjoyed both these titles and of course I remember stuff like the Moon crashing into Termina, Ikana Canyon and the first time I saw a ReDead. However, I also remember stuff like racing with beavers, running around with bunny ears on my head and dancing Gorons. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask had plenty of cheerful and comical moments as well, but Undyingnephalim seems to not see them, just like how he can't see stuff like satanic symbols in Wind Waker and he has stated Skyloft won't appear in Hyrule: Total War despite the fact that every man in that nation HAS to become a soldier.

So what is new in this game? Well the graphics have improved significantly and there is some really amazing stuff now. We see pictures of the actors when they talk and instead of battler graphics we get animations that show whenever you use an attack. Presentation and graphics-wise this game is a real improvement over the previous one. Most images are also hand-drawn this time around, so a character like Annara doesn't have to make use of a misplaced image that came with the engine. Undyingnephalim has always been an amazing drawer and I would recommend his manga, despite the fact it suffers from the same fate as his games, for the style alone.

I enjoyed the new graphics, they felt like a novelty to me, but even a novelty like this can be easily overshadowed by the big problem that this entry in the franchise has made even more apparent, namely the melodrama. Melodrama is when characters and events are created based on insanely exaggerated emotions. It's another problem which I believe relates back to the creator's idea of mature, but to everybody else it just feels like we are experiencing a story written by some 11-year old brat. Every single female in the party is sexually attracted to Link in this universe and every man in the story is attracted to Zelda for example, to us, the scenarios this fact create are so unrealistic to us that it becomes a parody instead of a serious story. The story itself starts off with Saria (one of the calmest and most kind of all people in the lore) freaking out and killing an entire army because somebody said she can't love Link due to her been a kid... These aren't even the first ten minutes of the game, this is literally the start of it, you boot the game and it's the first thing you see.

Then Liyer shows up and decides to try and kill the enraged Saria and this is the point where I turned off the game, fifteen minutes in and I turned it off. Why? Well because it was already clear to me that we were once again wandering the very narrow path of Undyingnephalim's sadistic fantasy. To me, Liyer was the character that caused all this stuff to happen in the first place, she repeatedly bullied Saria and ordered other people to leave her for death on multiple occassions, even going as far to mock her seconds after she died. To assume that everybody in the group, even Darunia, was going to side with Liyer is not in-universe logic, but it is the creator's logic, because Liyer was the main love interest for Link, so naturally she deserves to be the hero of this scene.

I eventually continued, but the story is pure blandness all the way through. One of the big problems is that Neph has three villains; Akazoo, Dark Link and Sulkaris, but can't for the love of god stop banging on about them. These three villains are constantly been ressurected, you actually already fought Sulkaris like five times in Fallen Sage, but Time's Menagerie reveals that she will continue to be revived as long as even a single Gohma is still alive (an arachnid race that shits out dozens of children every second). Dark Link also returns and I can't even tell you how many times you fight him, roughly two times every dungeon? The Zelda series is no stranger to returning villains, but most writers don't ressurect their characters twelve times a game. Saria herself also died like five times already and this time around we once again go on a quest to ressurect her, because apparently items that defy the laws of life and death come with the happy meals in this lore.

As I am finishing this review off, I do feel kind of sad. RMXP is an incredible engine, one that is both advanced and accessible at the same time. Genuinely great games have come out of this, like Yume Nikki for example. I also feel bad about myself, for as much as I am hating on this fan-series, genuine good things have come out of this as well. Majora and the Ooccaa are kind of cool, The Zora have a very interesting personality and just looking at the world map used for Hyrule: Total War makes a fan like myself feel like a tactical genius as I evaluate possible alliances and threats. Perhaps these two RPG's and the manga were made when the designer was still young and Hyrule: Total War will be the groundbreaking reimaging of the Zelda franchise we have been promised. You shouldn't play this title, you shouldn't play Fallen and you probably should also avoid the manga, but Hyrule: Total War still holds promise, so check that out when you have the time instead.

By Asinine on June 13, 2012

Team Fortress 2 (Windows)

Theoretically solid, technically flawed.

The Good
The graphics are just great, I really loved this animated style mixed with the insane chaos, it was like you were watching a cartoon on drugs. The graphics fit perfectly with the silly humor in this game; all the character are stereotypes, the taunts are very retarded and some of the power-ups are objects the animanics would come-up with. A random situation I ran into was when I played as a fat Russian (voiced by an American who tried to sound Russian), firing a turret I was carrying the same way somebody would carry a shotgun when suddenly my friend shows-up and jumps over me after drinking cola. Makes sense?, no, that's why I love it.

I already mentioned that this game in incredibly chaotic and I actually really like that. Nobody is playing to win the game, they are just playing to fire at enemies and mess around. The goal is to either capture areas or capture the flag, but while the area-capturing is alright, nobody captures the flag (or intel as this game calls it) unless they are grieving. Yes, you are grieving in this game when you are sticking to the rules. Most of the time it's just shooting, shooting and more shooting.

Most of the classes are really fun to play as and require a different approach than others. The Pyro for example carries a flamethrower, but lacking a long-range weapon forces him to stay in close quarters and surprise his foes. On the other side we have the Engineer which can set up mini-bases for the team to move forward with. There is a class for everybody in this game and you'll never find yourself stuck with a character you really don't want to play as.

The large amount of achievements may make this game a little too large to do a 100% on, but it does make sure you are occasionally rewarded for playing. Achievements vary from simple tasks, to grinding kills and all the way to insane accomplishments. This meant that when I started playing I was able to get all the easy ones, as I grew better I would start getting the grinding achievements because of the time I had put into the game and now that I am quite skilled I can start getting the tough-as-nails achievements.

The Bad
Lately the game has gone free-to-play and personally I am quite happy about that. However, I do feel that when you make the switch to F2P, you should properly reward the people that paid for it and that's where Valve fell short. The only reward you get for paying for the game is a hat, one of the million hats that are in the game already. Call me a whiner if you please, but when I am given a hat that I instantly lose in my inventory filled other clothes, then I am not awfully thankful.

Like most other games Valve also opened up a store in which you can buy items with real-life cash. I would be okay with a store where you can buy even more cosmetic items, but Valve also decided to put in ALL the weapons you can find in the game and this has genuinely affected gameplay. Let me be very clear: I will never buy items from in-game stores with real money, I think it's cheap and lazy. This decision however gives me a disadvantage compared to the hundreds of people who do not care and got all the best weapons the game has to offer. To challenge me even more, the game constantly gives you chests which you need to BUY keys for in order to open.

Let's put the switch to F2P behind us for now and talk about the core gameplay. I have always disliked the way servers work in Valve games, they never have any official servers hosted by the company itself, so we are left at the mercy of the individuals hosting these servers. I have no problem with connecting to a server to evaluate the settings they went with, this has occasionally led me to some downright awesome servers that I have played on for years, but what I do have problems with is that any server can automatically download files to your computer. When you connect, the server sends all its music files, documents and game files to your computer and we can assume you are not always aware of this.

Talking about files, the game has become quite bloated by now. What started out as a pretty fun FPS that come with the Orange Box has become a 11GB giant that is filled with insane amounts of needless content. The constant patches that bring new cosmetic items to the game may be fun for some people, but whenever I have to re-install the game, I lose several hours of my time. For some reason I can't access my favorite servers anymore either, because they are using older versions of the game and this makes me incompatible.

Those who paid attention probably noticed that I said "most classes" are fun to play as, that's because not all classes are like this. The spy may seem like a good addition to your team, but the learning curve is a dozen times steeper than those of all other classes. The spy can disguise himself as the enemy team, become invisible, instant-kill enemies with a backstab or sap enemy buildings to disable them. Invisibility may sound cool, but even with the best invisibility watches in the game, your invisibility meter will drain insanely fast, so you will always become visible again in the middle of the field. Disguises also rarely work because all players are hardwired to check everybody for been a spy, so even when everything seems okay, you will still get burned. Backstabs also automatically make your disguise go away, so when you stab an engineer his turrets will kill you before you can do anything back and if you sap the sentries, the engineer will pummel you to death.

The Demoman is also useless for everything aside from spamming. All his weapons have timed detonations that, while been rather strong, leave him without a direct attack. Even the Heavy and Engineer have a shotgun to help them when their class-specific roles can't be fulfilled.

The Bottom Line
A few days ago I saw a new review on this website for this game, the person who reviewed it was clearly a big fan and I am glad he's having so much fun with a genuinely entertaining game. However, I do think his review was to biased, as he claimed it the game was perfect while it technically isn't (though theoretically you could say it's flawless). While it seems like I am mostly complaining, I do really love this title and it's one of my most played games of all time.

If you are looking for a high-quality F2P game, then this should definitely be your first (and perhaps only) stop. Fans of the FPS genre should also look towards this gem. If you prefer a more structured kind of game though, then I am sorry to inform you that TF2 is most certainly not what you are looking for.

By Asinine on June 12, 2012

DinoCity (SNES)

How come nobody remembers this game?

The Good
You know a game is special when you go to the Mobygames page and there is no cover art, no accurate release date, no pictures and no reviews on it. This is however one of the first times that I am kind of confused as to why this is. The second you boot up this game, you know it's going to be special. It might have that distinctive Super Nintendo style where everything is slightly wacky, but combined with the great music, great use of sound-effects and the amusing enemies, it creates a very entertaining atmosphere that kept me in the mood to play this game, even if I died and had to restart everything, I would still play some more of it.

In Dino City you have to platform your way across the levels, something that plenty (and I mean PLENTY) of SNES games have done before and after this game. What makes this interesting though is the fact that you are riding on a dinosaur and you can separate yourself from it, just like in Super Mario World. Unlike Mario though, neither you or the dinosaur may die or you'll lose a life. As the dinosaur you can can kill enemies, but when playing as the person riding it you can jump higher and freeze enemies, something that becomes a necessity in some of the sections.

The platforming also deserves some praise because the level design and controls are great. Creativity is the word I would use to describe the levels in this game, every level has some clever mechanics and tricks and none of it feels like they are just going down a list of platforming-cliches. Very early on you will run into platforms that will start sliding downward the second you step on them, this can really save or ruin a jump. A few moments later you will have to time your jumps as water is constantly been frozen and molten as you try to cross it. I like it, it makes me feel like I am playing something that people put genuine thought and love into.

The boss-fights are also equal to the levels and I was constantly looking forward to them. You don't just spam attacks on their weak-spot until they die, you have to dodge their moves, wait for opportunities to strike and watch out for your surroundings. Even a very basic fight with a snake monster whose head was his weak-spot was made challenging because there were two of the bastards that could pop up anywhere on the field and had an unavoidable attack.

In terms of graphics this game is also one of the better titles on the Super Nintendo, featuring not only great sprites and animation, but a freaking day-to-night cycle. How many games had that in the SNES-era? Maybe four or five? It's not even scripted or anything, if you spend enough time in a level it will just happen, you will see the sky slowly changing until it's midnight.

Is it challenging? Yeah it is! At the same time however, I also found that this game was relatively fair towards the player. I never felt like dying was the fault of sadistic level-design (Super Meat Boy) or faulty controls (Ice Climbers), if I died it was because I miscalculated a jump or because I didn't pay attention to that enemy in the corner. It's not the hardest game in the Super Nintendo catalog, but it is sure to provide you a meaty challenge for both the casuals and die-hard gamers.

The Bad
One thing I always like about videogames is speed, I love going fast and a lot of games jump unto this desire. Mario runs, Sonic rolls, Link rides on horseback, Alex Mercer glides and so forth. Dino City on the other hand plays kind of slow, you move sluggish, jumping feels like I have a parachute and overall, I just don't get the satisfaction of racing through levels.

The life-system is really useless and I never grasped why developers are so persistent in putting it in their games. It made sense in the age of arcade-closets where people had to put in coins for every single life they needed, but surely the concept of a console was meant to have people pay money once for endless amounts of gameplay. Why have an arbitrary life-system that sends you back to square one every time you run out? It doesn't make the game more fun, it doesn't make it more challenging, it just makes it more frustrating.

As the girl or boy you really can't do anything worthwhile, freezing enemies is cool I guess, but it's only temporarily. Chances to incorporate this attack into gameplay and puzzles are ignored with a few exceptions, but overall I feel like this mechanic really did deserve more attention.

The Bottom Line
Like I said before, I have no idea how this game stayed under the radar. Maybe it was the fact that it was based on a movie, maybe it was because of the generic name and lack of marketing (who the heck is IREM?), but one way or another, this is a forgotten gem. The platforming functions very well, the graphics and atmosphere are breathtaking and it has a very fair difficulty, you can't ask for much more from a Super Nintendo title. Sure it doesn't have the polish and magnitude of the Mario and Sonic games, but I can't claim to know any other game from an unknown studio that has the same quality as DinoCity.

If you are a fan of classic platformers or a Super Nintendo collector, then by all means, look this game up sometime. I paid less than 10 dollars for this game and had a lot of fun with it, so I dare to make the assumption that others will as well. Perhaps it will give all you guys something to do while the Battle.net servers are dead again ;).

By Asinine on June 5, 2012

Doshin the Giant (GameCube)

Big yellow bellybutton

The Good
Doshin the Giant is quite a unique game when you consider how it came into existence. Originally a title for the Nintendo 64DD, this game never really shone in regions other than Japan and even there it remained completely unknown. The 64DD was an expansion pack for the Nintendo 64 that allowed for more impressive visuals and better performance, it had a lot of hype going, but to my knowledge the technology didn't sit well with anybody. In the end only nine or so titles were released for the system. A few years later Nintendo dusted off the IP and remade it for the Nintendo Gamecube.

So what do you do in this game? You play as Doshin, a very large, yellow giant who is a legend among the people on an island. As Doshin you can reshape the island in any way you want; you can raise and lower the ground, make mountains, move obstacles and break stuff. This is very cool because every single change you make is saved, which was the 64DD's main selling point. If you move a tree somewhere and come back several days later, that tree will still be there, but its leaves might have turned brown for example. It's a novelty, but very well implemented in the goal of the game.

The goal is to help a number of villagers build up their own towns. There are four groups of these peasants spread across the map, each with their own style of structures, that need Doshin's help with tasks they simply can't perform. When they want to build something, they will display an image over their head saying what they miss and you can get that for them. I personally found that helping these villagers had a very soothing feel to it, it was a means of relaxing to me.

Alternatively you can also decide to destroy their towns. By pressing the L-button at any point in the game will transform into a red giant with demonic wings, people will be afraid of him and they probably should. This giant can smash, burn and crush the people and their creations in mere seconds. This is on the entirely different spectrum of having fun, but it doesn't feel out of place at all. Sometimes you can also use it to your advantage, such as when a monument turned out wrong and you need to get rid of it.

Doshin himself has a certain charm to him, the design might look simplistic, but it hides more character than you could imagine. Doshin has a very clunky movement cycle and it looks very comical when he trips and falls face-first. I suppose you could say that he shares some similarities with Spongebob, especially what with the permanent smile on his face.

You can also make Doshin grow larger, which slowly unlocks new abilities. To grow bigger, you need to earn either the love or the hatred of the people on your island. If you help them, they will show their love and another heart is added to the border of the screen. If you scare them, kill them or break their stuff though, they will give you a skull which is also added to the border. Once either one of these makes a full circle Doshin will grow a size larger.

The Bad
The controls often felt very clunky to me and that was a real big problem. After raising some ground for a guy who wanted to build a farm, I had gathered quite a large crowd around me. I wanted to leave though, there was an opening and all I had to do was turn around and walk away. I ended up splattering seven people instead. The biggest problem is that Doshin doesn't always turn the way you want him too. Another problem is the hit-detection which sometimes has Doshin animating like he bumped into something when passing a nearby flagpole.

The villagers are way too easily antagonized and that makes them very hard to like. When I come close to a village, there are always a bunch of lads that want to come take a look, but the second they bump into me, they are instantly scared and start running off. This game is also the most fun when you get to actually help them, but the people would rather play around all day than do actual work and if they don't work, you won't have anything to do either. There was one group of people that just kept walking around and sitting down on rocks while their village had no buildings in it and was a desolate wasteland.

When the sun goes down, Doshin goes back into the sea and comes back the next day. This is kind of nice because it shows you some statistics which display what you have been doing that day. However, you also get some comment from the villagers and this is almost always negative. Keep in mind: You are a giant that goes out of his way to show up every single day to do the work of these villagers for them, yet every night they have nothing but complaints, telling you that you're a terrible person and they want more. Combine that with the knowledge that you can transform into Satan and you will find yourself to be much more inclined to do that instead of helping ungrateful assholes day in and day out.

The Bottom Line
Doshin the Giant is a game about relaxing and having a bit of fun, it's not particularly deep or well-written, but there is some entertainment to be found in helping random people build up civilizations or destroying them. The game is charming and gives you enough reason to keep coming back to the island, but I do feel like the villagers could have used a little AI-polish and the controls could have been a little less obnoxious. As it stands the game feels like a graphical update and while I clearly haven't played the original game, I think it's safe to assume that this port was a bit rushed-out.

That is however not a bad thing because the amount of people who could be insulted by this choice can probably be counted on one hand, which is also the amount of people I can actually recommend this game too. If you are a collector than Doshin the Giant is a hard-to-find, but also welcome addition to your collection, especially if you're American in which case you also gain the right to brag about it. Kids will also likely enjoy this game, but since it's rather obscure and difficult to obtain, I would sooner recommend other Gamecube games.

By Asinine on June 5, 2012

American McGee's Alice (Windows)

Would you like some tea with that?

The Good
People who read the stories or saw the movie (which I assume is everybody) know that Wonderland is rich with characters. The Mad Hatter, The cheshire Cat and of course the Queen or Hearts are all wondrous examples of interesting characters. McGee saw the opportunity to have lots of interaction with characters and jumped straight for it, creating an adventure in which you truly get to know the people around you. Psychonauts also did this and both games harvest the fruits of their labor, a game like Alice in which you regularly talk with other characters fascinates me more than anything else, sure there are dozens of games where you see characters talk in cut-scenes, but I prefer the Navi-like approach to how the Cheshire Cat works in this game a million times better.

Wonderland can be described as a place where everything is weird and unpredictable and it's nice to see that the conversion to a more horror-themed world has not done any harm to that fact. Whether I am watching Alice paint trees in the Disney Movie or fighting my way through the Wonderland Forest in this game, I always feel like I am somewhere new, somewhere where everything is unpredictable. Behind every corner could be another weird contraption or some kind of uncanny creature.

This game set out with the goal to make something disturbing, did it succeed? Yes, very well in fact. While I wasn't scared, there were times when I had to smile at how well the game succeeded. Death animations are a very satisfying example, the first time I took my knife to a card-soldier and cut off his entire top-half was quite amazing and unexpected. The game is also very clear on the topic of death and often main characters would be killed like they were nothing at all, no build-up, no silent hints, just one quick move and they are done for. Area design can also get rather freaky and at one point I was walking through a hall seemingly made of Human flesh. Good stuff.

A lot of games have the problem that their characters move insanely slow, something that might seem like a nitpick, but I always get rather bored when I need to traverse long areas and Marcus Fenix is taking his sweet time to do it. Resident Evil is also a great example and Raz was also very slow unless he was levitating. I usually don't hold it against a game, but here I feel like praise is deserved. Alice runs and quite fast too, this makes it less painful to platform around with her and it gives the game a good sense of flow.

She also uses several interesting weapons that gradually get better as you progress in the game. At first you get to handle a petty little knife and a set of cards, none of which are likely to kill the final boss for you. Later on through you will get the Ice Rod which freezes enemies and the Diabolical Dice which spawns very strong demons into the field. Most weapons really fit the Wonderland-theme and especially some of the later weapons clearly displayed the fact that American McGee used to work on a Quake game.

A nice balance between platforming and fighting keeps the game entertaining to play for me. Very long sections in which I either fight or jump across platforms usually bore me, I need a bit of variation to keep myself interested. In Alice you might be climbing up a hill while enemies hurl boulders at you, once on top you fight your way through some of the bastards before having a conversation with a character and leaving for some more platforming. The two elements are also nicely combined, so it doesn't feel like the game is pulling a big lever every time you need to switch and instead everything mixes seamlessly.

You know what makes Alice in Wonderland my favorite Disney movie? The Cheshire Cat, oh damn I love that pink bastard. I already mentioned that he functions as a Navi-type character in this game, meaning that he follows you around on your adventure and gives you advice or insight into the story. The voice-actor they hired to take care of everybody's favorite kitty is also really enjoyable and you can just hear the pleasure in his voice. With some genuinely good writing backing it all up, we get one of my favorite characters in all of video games.

The Bad
While the weapons are very much entertaining, the combat clearly wasn't meant for it. The game runs on the Unreal Engine, which as far as I know is more of a shooter-affair and not really meant for a platform adventure game. This results in very poor hit-detection and even when you hit an opponent it's very hard to tell if it did actual damage. Enemies don't really flinch whenever you hit, but only about 1/10 times and at all other times you are left wondering if the weapon is working. This makes combat rather clunky and a dodgy aiming-system doesn't help fixing that either.

Platforming is also rather imprecise and Alice tends to slip a little bit. Whenever I had to go through a platform-section, I would decide beforehand at which points I would save real quick before continuing because falling halfway through a huge climb can be very aggravating. When the problem is not slipping, it most likely ends up been falling through platforms, something I experienced a lot when standing on the edge of something.

Talking about saving a lot, that didn't function too well either. The save-system is very standard, but there is no way to override old saves, every time you save it makes a new file. At first I didn't realize this, so before I even grasped what was going on I had thirty save-files and I had to delete every single one of them by hand. Auto-saves are also rare and suffer from this same problem.

I don't really like games that are too open, especially when I end up getting lost or worrying endlessly if I am missing out on some kind of secret, but Alice does it wrong on the entire other side of the spectrum. In this game there is barely anything to explore, it's a strictly linear path with adventure ahead of you and dead enemies behind you. Even if there is a side-path or you find a hidden area, it can only contain the basic power-ups. I remember that in the sequel to this game there were a few collectibles which fleshed out the story some more, that would have spiced up gameplay a bit in this title too.

The Bottom Line
Some of the more observing readers might be wondering: "Why do you like this game, while you absolutely hated Zelda: Fallen Sage?" and that's a perfectly good question. Both these games do the same thing, they take something from my childhood and give it a mature re-imagining. Where Alice shines though is that there are also more comical and enjoyable moments in this title, such as the commentary provided by the Cheshire Cat, whereas Fallen Sage was an endless river of depressing events. This game ends with a very uplifting cut-scene that makes you feel like you truly conquered the obstacles you were faced with and Fallen Sage ended with a plot-twist leading up to an unnecessary boss-fight which completely ruined what would otherwise be a sweet ending. This game also does the conversion to a mature story right and we get to help Alice overcome her sense of guilt, thus addressing the subject of depression and traumatic experiences in a mature fashion, instead of more melodrama like in Time's Menagerie.

Who is this game for you might ask? Well, I keep seeing a lot of Goths play this game and many teenagers who grew up with the story seem to like it as well. If you are interested in a game that truly captures the style of the classic PC-platformer, then either this or Psychonauts would be a good choice, depending on what kind of atmosphere you are looking for.

By Asinine on June 5, 2012