I enjoyed his fantasy series, so I thought I’d try out Brown’s crime thriller series. This is the story of an ex-military/ex-con who gets caught up in a kidnapping plot when all he wants to do is make good with his life. The book reads like an episodic television series without much deep characterization but lots of action. I appreciated Sam the Mormon, bible-loving sidekick who, for a change, is not depicted as a zealot freak or a dimwit.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve played through a game on the Wii. Pandora’s Tower is certainly one of the best looking games on the platform. It follows the standard console action/adventure game formula: a series of areas to explore, a new ability added in each area, and a boss at the end of the section that requires mastery of that ability to be defeated. Wrapped around this is a sappy story of the girl who has been cursed and must now be fed monster guts in order to cure herself. I’m really not one for the Japanese anime-style of story telling, but it wasn’t as horrible and convoluted as the genre can be. I especially liked the scenes of Elena gobbling up gore… well, at least I did the first dozen times I watched that cut scene. The 39th time… not so much.
The unique game play mechanic is your chain weapon. It’s a little bit like Link’s hookshot in that you can use it to grapple around the environments, but its primary function is to bind up monsters and rip them apart. As you do so, you collect more and more chunks of beast-flesh to feed to Elena. The weapon is well-suited for the Wii-mote control scheme: point at a target then jerk the controller back to extract meat and cause damage. The longer you pull against the chain before jerking, the more damage you cause. Ahem, phrasing?
One the key threads of the game’s narrative is your relationship with Elena. There’s a meter running up the side of the screen which gauges her affinity towards you. The way to build your relationship is to keep giving her gifts, chatting with her, and, most importantly, not letting her become a cursed monster by dawdling too long in each castle. I’m sure otaku anime fanboys will love this, but I couldn’t be bothered with what essentially is a dating sim. Because of this, I got a mediocre ending despite all my work ridding the world of end bosses. Now, I should feel challenged to play through again and get the best ending, right? Hell, no! That’s what YouTube is for.
In my limited listening experience, all Bernard Hermann scores sound pretty much the same. I got this mostly based on Laika and the Cosmonauts’ cover of “Scene D’Amour.” Along with that track, there are a few exciting moments on this CD, but for the most part this is forgettable and samey.
Long before he directed Journey to the West, Stephen Chow starred in this version of the Monkey King’s story. The story is divided into two movies: “Pandora’s Box” and “Cinderlla.” I enjoyed the first part which felt like a lighthearted Chow film with fun characters, slapstick humor and a simple plot. But the second part is a confusing mess of time travel and body swapping. By the end, I literally had no idea what was going on. Chow’s The Monkey King is just a Cantonese attempt at recreating Jim Carrey’s annoying character from The Mask.
Okay, first things first. Machinarium is a beautiful game with excellent art direction, sound and music. However, something about this point-and-click adventure just didn’t… er… click for me. It could be the fact that the game erased my save files halfway through my first attempt. I didn’t pick it up again for at least a month after that. But I think this is just a little too puzzley for my tastes. At times I really didn’t have any motivation other than there was a guy who had an object that would obviously be useful somewhere. I can tolerate that in a Professor Layton game where there are funny characters and back story to reveal, but here it felt like tedium. Still, I’ll give it higher marks than I should for trying and being pretty. Oh, and the inability to use right click to drop objects annoyed me to no end.
This short novel tries to show how it was possible for normal German’s to just sit back and let the Nazi’s take over. Apparently all it takes is for one history teacher to treat his students like a drill instructor would and you have an instant fascist movement. I never really bought the whole concept. It was kind of like reading an ABC After School Special.
You can download and play Teenagent for free from GOG.com, and, because of my obsessive-compulsive nature when it comes to completing games I own, I felt obliged to give it a whirl. It took about 45 minutes of frustration for me to realize that this point-and-click adventure really wasn’t worth the logic-defying effort. This game commits all the puzzle design sins of 90’s adventure games. It’s the type of game design that pretty much killed the genre. The puzzles make absolutely no sense and I can’t believe anyone got very far with this without a walk-through. On the plus side the dialogue and humor isn’t bad for a game created by a bunch of non-English speakers. Also, even though the art design is crap, there is a ton of clever animation and sight gags to ogle, just don’t waste brain cells trying to figure the puzzles out.
Outlast is one of the most nerve-racking games I have played. The game delights in distracting your attention then blasting you with a heart-stopping jump scare. The first couple of hours, when you don’t really know what to expect, are the worst. This is a stealth game in which you have no weapons, no means of defending yourself. Your only tool is a video camera with an infrared mode to help you see in the darkness. Other than that, the available options to avoid being killed are either to hide or to run. As the game progressed, I realized that running was far more useful than cowering under a bed or in a locker.
The sound design and music are really effective in mounting the tension. As danger approaches, your character starts to breathe heavy and shiver and the music gets more and more intense. I only which it took better advantage of surround sound. It would haven been nice to be able to listen to where those footsteps were coming from in the moments before I got clobbered into a bloody pulp.
Most of the tale is told through found notes and documents. I really didn’t read too deeply into anything, but it really doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that you are alone in an abandoned insane asylum, creatures are trying to kill you, and you need to find a way out fast!
I was initially drawn to the isometric art style of this turn-based RPG. My hope was that it would play like Wasteland 2 but I wasn’t sure what to expect. The combat is similar, but it has nowhere near the depth and strategy. I some ways that’s good. Shadowrun Returns feels much more casual and less nitpicky with things like ammo and inventory management. But, even though it’s party-based, you only really control the development of your one character. The other combatants are just expendable hired hands with little to no backstory.
As a smaller, episodic type game it works well. The game ships with development tools and has a rather large Steam Workshop page, so the idea probably is that this is a framework to build on. The story here is very linear. I was surprised that there was no overworld to explore or major side quests to complete. If it wasn’t for the fighting, this could almost be considered a point-and-click adventure. Thankfully the story works well enough as a cyberpunk take on a film noir: A friend from the past has been murdered and, as a last request, he has a video message hiring you to find his killer. It’s nice that an RPG doesn’t need to have a “save the world from evil” plot (although it veers that way towards the end). Overall I liked the game, it just needs a bit more refinement and polish to make it great.
At first you’d think Home was a retro-looking point and click adventure, but that would be giving it too much credit. It’s really one of those trendy, arty indy games that supposed to be a deep meditation on interactive storytelling. In other words it’s a bore. Like Dear Esther or even Photopia (although Photopia is actually good). The pixel graphics are neat and it seems to be a nod to Atari’s Haunted House in the way it treats stairways and the use of atmospheric sound. It’s just not fun to play. Thankfully it takes less than a half hour to finish, so good riddance.
