First Impressions: SCP - Containment Breach (PC)

I am not sure where I first heard about SCP - Containment Breach, although it might have been through some mention on the Frictional Games blog or from the Precursor Games' forums, I am not 100% sure.  Wherever I heard about this game, I am thankful that I have.  In short, "SCP is a survival horror [free to play] game based on the works of the SCP Foundation", which really does not tell you much as to what the game is about.  The SCP Foundation can be summed up by their mission statement, which also puts you in the frame of mind for the game:

Secure: The Foundation secures anomalies with the goal of preventing them from falling into the hands of civilian or rival agencies, through extensive observation and surveillance and by acting to intercept such anomalies at the earliest opportunity.

Contain: The Foundation contains anomalies with the goal of preventing their influence or effects from spreading, by either relocating, concealing, or dismantling such anomalies or by suppressing or preventing public dissemination of knowledge thereof. 

Protect: The Foundation protects humanity from the effects of such anomalies as well as the anomalies themselves until such time that they are either fully understood or new theories of science can be devised based on their properties and behavior. The Foundation may also neutralize or destroy anomalies as an option of last resort, if they are determined to be too dangerous to be contained.

One downside is that the game is not available through Steam and does not seem to like to run through the Steam browser.  Each time I have tried loading/running the game through Steam, the game crashes after I finish with the setup window and says that there is a "Memory Access Violation."  There is a work around in the ReadMe file, but again, running through Steam does not seem to work, so playing is done the old fashioned way by double clicking on the application icon; so much work.

Part of what drew me into the game was that during the loading screen, I was introduced to one of the entities/artifacts located within the SCP Foundations compound, specifically SCP-012.

Just a picture and a couple of sentences containing bits of lore about an object.  It reminded me a lot of  H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen, albeit a bit darker with a modern flair.  I like there is the hint of deeper and more in depth lore than is being presented to the player

SCP is played in first person with WASD for controls, Tab for the inventory menu, and spacebar for blinking.  Yes, blinking.  Blinking apparently is a key function of how things operate and how some events are triggered in the game.  There is even a blink meter that will force you to blink when the meter runs down.  Or, again, you can blink by pressing the spacebar.  This is how I was apparently killed (and nearly browned my shorts) during my first play/die-through.  I blinked and the entity that was across the room, hovering over two mutilated corpses a second ago, was now standing in front of me and promptly did the same to my fleshy form.  You can also find objects to pick up and combine items to create new concoctions, but I will have to figure out how to not die the next time I go in.

So I played, maybe five minutes of the game before I was killed.  At first I thought this was supposed to happen, then I realized that dying is what happens, just like any game, when you do not do something that you were supposed to have done.  I take it as just part of the process of learning the game and mechanics.  It feels like this game is designed to be played over and over knowing that you could be killed at any moment because of the way a creature reacts to the player.  There is the feeling of constantly learning to not die the next time through.

I am also having the problem that when I try and take an/the elevator up one floor, I am assuming to the next area, the game crashes.  I have tried closing down all other programs and even tried running around the room with the elevator doors to see if the game will not crash for some reason, but every time, the game crashes during the loading screen on my way up to the next floor.  I will have to figure out what to do next or what is going on to proceed it would seem.

I know that I have just barely scratched the gooey surface of what this game is and what is contained within its locked vaults, but I rarely feel this excited about a game having played not even 10 minutes.  And because the game seems to be updated and patched every so often with content created by community members, the game could hypothetically go on indefinitely, unless there is an endgame in mind (such as escaping the facility), but that could simply be modded too. 



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
There's No Escape, That's What They Say

Left 4 Dead 2 Mod: Day Break (PC)

Earlier in the year, I began looking through the available campaign mods for Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam and after finding out and playing the awesomeness that was the "Journey to Splash Mountain" mod by Dives and SM Sith Lord, I was excited to find "Day Break" by DannBo.

Now, before I start ripping DannBo a new one, let me first make this clear.  What DannBo has done with various areas of the city of San Francisco is pretty amazing and seeing as how creating the two part, five chapter mod took him five years, I am not one about to bash the ever living snot out of Mr. DannBo.

You know, instead of critiquing everything about the game, let me just go through parts of the stages and bring up things that I happened to find note worthy.

This first stage takes place somewhere in downtown San Francisco.  My biggest critique of this first stage is that until you reach the Palace of Fine Arts, I did not feel that I was in San Francisco.  The city design felt that it could have been any generic city that I had already played in any of the L4D campaigns.  Now, this is not to say that the level design was bad or broken, just that I did not get the feeling that I was in San Francisco.  I should also say that I have been to San Francisco a great many times so I am not basing my experience from The Rock or The Princess Diaries.

During my first playthrough, I was mobbed during my approach to the Safe Room which I found greatly annoying.  Yes, I would expect there to be a tank, but we (myself and three bots) were attacked by one tank leading up to the Safe Room then another tank spawned a short distance from the Safe Room door.  Yeah, we did not make it.  The second time though we did not run into any tanks.  I am not sure what happened, but I was thoroughly happy that we all made it to the room.

The next couple of levels I really enjoyed.  Without going into too much detail, they included an approach along the Crissy Field towards the Golden Gate Bridge.  Seeing the bridge was a pretty epic site followed by a feeling of dread as I knew that we were going to have to cross the bitch.

The Golden Gate Bridge sequence, I found to be one of the most terrifying sequences in this mod and not because we were being swarmed by hordes of infected (although that was equally terrifying), but because of having to cross on I-beams 245 feet above the San Francisco Bay.

The last highlight in the Day Break mod was being able to "visit" Alcatraz Island.  How the players get to Alcatraz is pseudo-well explained so I will take no additional time on that front.  Ultimately, I was a little disappointed with the Alcatraz portion of the mod.  It consisted of the end of stage four and the final grab all the gas cans stage five.  In the end, I think I would have liked to have played most of a campaign on Alcatraz and not just running through a portion of the outside grounds and a cell block or two.

Day Break ended up taking me an hour and thirty one minutes to complete and I only died one time (incapacitated three times).  I can say that while I did have a lot of fun with what DannBo created here, I felt that the campaigned was bookended by stages that I was less enthused by when compared to the rest of the campaign.  Is Day Break worth playing?  Definitely and I would love to see more real world settings from the community.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Disinterested in the Writhe of the Lone Survivor


P.S.  I would like to share a couple of pictures that could be seen as spoilers when in or out of context, but I liked their concepts so much, hence the showing of them here.

I do not know why I had never seen this before in any of Valve's campaign levels.  Seeing the Safe Room arrows is always a relief, but when I came upon this no-longer-safe room, my stomach dropped, mainly because as you can see I was running desperately low on ammunition although I was far from being close to death.  Just not a scene you want to come across.

Just your average swimming pool filled with corpses.  It will probably need more than chlorine.

The depths of the Alcatraz Island cell blocks, now with improved roof access.

Left 4 Dead 2 Mod: Journey to Splash Mountain

This is exactly what it looks and sounds like.  Journey to Splash Mountain is a five level campaign mod lovingly created by Steam users Dives and SM Sith Lord created for Left 4 Dead 2 using Valve's Source Engine.  The campaign was posted to Steam's L4D2 Workshop on September 5th of this year.

For those of you not familiar with Splash Mountain, it's a water log ride in Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, CA.  You can tell from the amount and attention to detail that Dives really likes Disneyland.  There's a level of respect for the  park that you would only be able to find from someone who actually enjoys going.  It's not a campaign where you get to destroy Disneyland or defile it any more than the zombies have.  You can't shoot up standees of Mickey and friends and aside from the floral Mickey at the front gates, I don't recall seeing Mickey's head/face/silhouette anywhere else.  This must have been what the survivors in L4D2 felt when they arrived at Whispering Oaks.  

So let's get to the stats and details first.

Journey to Splash Mountain consists of five levels with the final level being similar to the last level of a lot of the main campaigns (Dead Center & The Passing).  On my first playthrough, I went through on Normal difficulty and it took me 1 hour 33 minutes with only dying once when I tried to see if I could swim across the river to Tom Sawyer's Island (you can't).  I was incapacitated twice and in the end we lost Francis as he was pulled up an inaccessible hill by a Smoker and we couldn't get to him to help him up.  And, it took a long time to figure out where the helicopter had landed.  

The levels themselves were very well paced and in classic L4D2 fashion, being pretty linear while never telling you where you had to go until you saw markings for the safe room.  When creating the campaign, Dives and SM Sith Lord don't come across as people who are trying to kill the players and inundate them with Tank after Tank after Witch.  There was one area that contained two witches who were pretty close together, but as that only happened once, it didn't bother me.  At least they weren't at Hard Rain frequency.  

Again, the entire campaign was a lot of fun.  I recognized most of the park that was accessible even though I haven't been to Disneyland since sometime around 2005 (I think).  There was enough detail that I didn't really question whether something should have been there or not.  Dives even uses music from the theme park in specific areas which helps create the perfect level of immersion.

Finally, for the person who has never been to Disneyland, the level should be just as fun as Dark Carnival, but without the clowns.

In closing, I just wanted to share some pictures I was able to take while avoiding horde after horde of infected.  I tried to not give away (too much) where the various levels go and what rides/attractions are featured although I had to include just one just because.  So be aware, pseudo-spoilers ahead.

Smart context for why you're even going to Disneyland.

Looking down Main Street.

Looking into the Penny Arcade.

The Congo Queen is the name of a real boat in the Jungle River Cruise.

The Bengal Barbecue is a mental staple for me when I think of Disneyland, although I've never eaten there.

The Cafe Orleans is my favorite place to eat in Disneyland.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Winter is Coming