Vanquish is a third-person action game that has little to offer in terms of plot or characters. Its story feels like every other Japanese console game. Devil May Cry 4 comes to mind, and if you liked that game, you have a problem. The dialogue is all painfully cliché and tries very hard to be hip with nerdy allusions to action movie lines and bad-ass hero shots. Pretty cringe inducing.
But all this is moot. This game is really about its fast-paced game-play and mechanics. While certainly not revolutionary, the ability to skid around the map at hyper-speed is fun and challenging. Add on top of that a little bullet-time and you have an enjoyable but mindless way to pass a few hours.
Somewhat self-aware low-budget slasher film about killer robots in a shopping mall. With the exception of one noteworthy moment, doesn’t quite deliver on the thrills or the gore. I was more interested in the 80s mall backdrop and feeling nostalgic for some of those old storefronts.
With the completion of VI, I’m getting close to having played all the games in the Ultima series. I own boxed copies of the Apple ][ versions of III–V, but when it came to VI, Origin switched to MS-DOS. In 1990 I was starting college, I didn’t own a computer, let alone a PC, and, as the years passed, history became legend, legend became myth, and for two-and-a-half thousand years, the Ultima series passed out of all knowledge… or something like that.
In the late 90s I upgraded from an Apple IIgs to a Windows 95 PC and was reintroduced to the series via a soundcard bundled version of Ultima VIII: Pagan. That game was mediocre at best and it didn’t finish it until years later—after having played through a CD-ROM Classics version of Ultima VII. VII was a pain to get running on a Windows machine, but it was worth it. It truly is the precursor to modern, open-world RPGs like Skyrim in both its scope and richness of detail.
The False Prophet almost achieves the level of refinement that Ultima VII boasts. It’s not quite there yet, retaining a bit of the Apple ][ era feel. Maybe that’s why I think I liked this a bit more than VII. It doesn’t try to hide the fact that it’s a game. The interface takes up half the screen, there are a dozen or so unique commands (like a LucasArts point and click adventure), and there still are actual RPG elements like leveling-up and turn-based combat.
Graphically, it has that weird, tilted perspective that was in VII, but the scale is small and more tile-ish. Some of the creatures, like rats and bunnies, are depicted with an amazing economy of pixels. Despite the scale, there is a tremendous amount of stuff in the world with which to interact. Many of the puzzles involve pushing, pulling and revealing secrets.
Like previous games in the series, it’s possible to get to secrets if you know where they are in advance. A speed-runner could probably race through the game in no time. But you’ll want to take your time interacting with the NPCs.
Conversations are at the core of Ultima’s game-play. The text-parser driven dialogue is something sadly missing from most games today. It forces you to pay attention to dialogue. Lazy gamers are even given highlighted topics which to type in so you are never stuck hunting for words in normal conversations. However, since you are not given a full multiple choice list, options can be hidden from the player only to be discovered by focusing and taking good notes.
I found the best way to play this game was to reconfigure the DOSBox settings to display the game in a large window that almost fills the entire screen output=opengl, windowresolution=1360x1020, also autolock=false so you can move your mouse out of the window). Then I used the remaining space on screen to have text file open in an editor. I noted every character I met, their job, and where they were located. If they mentioned anything that seemed remotely important, I would type it in to my notes. Having a searchable file really beats hand-written scribblings and makes puzzle solving a bit more manageable.
Still, this game is old school. Don’t be ashamed to use the included clue book for help and maps. It is probably possible to put the game into an unwinnable state if you lose and important object. You only are allowed one save, so be careful. The game bugged out on me literally at the final puzzle. To win the game you need a few special objects. I was missing one of those objects so went off to get it, leaving the others in the final room. When I returned to the final room, one of the necessary items had vanished. At that moment, I was ready to go into a serious, pon farr-level nerd-rage. Fortunately, there is a debug mode still in the game and I was able to regenerate the glitched object. All was well and I had saved Britannia once again.
Wait, there’s a new(ish) haunted house in the olden days movie from Hammer films? And it stars Harry Potter? Count me in! The story never gets too far beyond guy in haunted house who sees ghosts, but it’s effective and almost creepy at times. Of only they could have cast Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
This was a lot like John Wick in that it depicts a fantastical version of crime movie. But Brawl is a bit more of a slow burn and actually has action you can follow. It doesn’t go pure fantasy until the last third, and by then I was already sold on the lead character. The violence is over-the-top and it all feels like a sleazy 70s grindhouse film by the climax.
I was planning on watching this eventually but then Burt Reynolds had to go off die. I bumped it to the front of my queue. It’s a bit Lifetime Movie-ish, so it’s effective in pulling the heart strings in all the right cheesy parts. I have zero nostalgia for Burt Reynolds, except maybe Cannonball Run and Win, Lose or Draw, but I finished the movie caring a bit more for him and all the bad movie choices he made during his career.
This has all the markings of a standard Itallian poliziotteschi, but the first third of the movie plays as a screwball comedy. The premise is pretty much the same as The Rockford Files: a charming, but poor private eye who can solve crimes that the police can’t. The only difference is that the lead actor weird looking and not very charming. Oh, and the plot gets icky when it becomes about child prostitution. Not the ideal backdrop for comedy.
At this point I think we can all basically agree that every game that Wadjet Eye releases is going to be worth buying right away. This is Dave Gilbert’s first game as lead designer since Blackwell Epiphany. There is overlap with the Blackwell universe, but it is definitely a departure from those games.
Possibly taking a lead from Telltale, there seems to be a more deliberate attempt to make your choices affect the story. This manifests itself first in that you choose one of three origin stories for your player character. Then, throughout the game, each chapter ends with you deciding the fate of an adversary. The consequences of your decisions don’t really ripple throughout the game. They mostly affect the end-game sequence. Still, it’s a worthy attempt at adding a little variety to the experience.
The farther an adventure game gets from being a pure puzzle-solving endeavor, the more these types of ludic story-telling tropes become important. For the record, the puzzles of Unavowed are not very puzzley at all. In most cases, the path is pretty clear and, if there is any doubt, just talk to everyone, including your squad-mates. The game is mostly a matter of understanding the abilities of your friends and using them appropriately.
But all this is moot if you are just willing to sit back, click away, and let the story develop. There’s enough good story-telling and pretty visuals there to make it worth your while. However, I don’t think all the effort that went into creating branching narratives will really justify multiple plays. At least not for me. I think I’m fine with just turning on the commentary and racing through a second go-around. You know how much I love hearing about color theory and how voice actors are the salt of the Earth.
My expectations were high for Annihilation. I thought the director’s previous movie Ex Machinia was one best science fiction films I has seen in a long time. A lot of the right elements are there: solid characters, mysterious alien happenings, unique visuals and a squad of armed scientists sent to take on the unknown. However, the artsy, slow pacing hindered the movie. It’s really easy to get distracted and miss what is going on. I thought the movie was just okay the first time I watched it (in a large, somewhat noisy group setting). It seemed a tad silly at times and the trippy 2001-esque ending didn’t land well. I knew I was missing something, and re-watched the movie alone and I have since upgraded my opinion. I still think it pales in comparison to Ex Machina, but the themes of decay are interesting and work when you pay attention.
This is the 1974 version, not the Kenneth Branagh handlebar mustache version. Unfortunately, I watched this knowing the ending (spoiled by a “host a murder” game I played when I was a teenager). I don’t think that really matters much because, as with most of these types of murder mysteries, all necessary clues are not really revealed to the audience. The point is to get to know the suspects’ quirks and then wait to have Poirot tell the story of what really happened. Nonetheless, it was an entertaining, star-studded affair and I enjoyed Albert Finney’s Poirot.
