First Impressions: Slender: The Arrival (PC)

Slender: The Arrival is a full fledged version of the free game, Sleder: The Eight Pages that scared the shit out of the internet back in 2012.  For those of you all who are not familiar with the Slender Man mythos, you can read about it either on Wikipedia or any other numerous websites, but in short, Slender Man is a variant on a bogeyman who takes children.

Original pictures by Victor Surge, 2009.

So, what started out as a couple of short sentences in a "create your own paranormal image" thread has turned into a pseudo-legitimate urban legend with it's own cultish-type following, as well as two video games, Slender: The Eight Pages, in which you wandered around an enclosed forested area and picked up eight pages placed randomly on landmarks all the while avoiding the Slender Man.  And now, it's current full fledged iteration from Blue Isle Studios, Slender: The Arrival, which was released back in March, 2013.

I gave this game a go a few weeks back at the request of Conklederp wanting me to play a scary/horror game that had a story.  Both of us really enjoyed playing/watching each other having a go at Slender: The Eight Pages, so I began this new iteration only knowing that the full game had been expanded but not much else..

Slender: The Arrival, like it's predecessor is an FPS/POV horror game where you have to collect items/pages/documents as you progress through the level/stage.  You can walk briskly and sprint, look around with or without a flashlight (once you find one which is a nice touch) and pick up papers.  The game itself is pretty basic and the mechanics have pretty much stayed the same from the first game to this one, which is nice since they are trying to keep, maintain and grow the original fan base.

It turns out that my first playthough (I did not make it through Chapter 1) I accidentally accessed a secret hidden level, which Conklederp and I thought was a really elaborate glitch, but equally creepy and unnerving in it's own way.  The second time playing, I completed Chapter 1 and made it through part of Chapter 2 before I was "caught".  I feel like I am now stuck at Chapter 2, but just mentally stuck.

Chapter 2 is a modified version of Slender: The Eight Pages.  The chapter title is even called "The Eight Pages."  But what's that you say?  Isn't the whole game a modified version?  Well yes, but The Arrival is like an expansion as a whole, where as Chapter 2 in The Arrival, you are in an enclosed wooded area where you have to collect, I assume, eight pages before you can proceed while being "chased" by the Slender Man.

This is where I become mentally stuck.  I played The Eight Pages quite a few times and each time I failed to collect all eight pages as I would either be caught after locating X:8 pages or my flashlight would go out and inevitably be caught as I stumbled around in the darkness.  I would like to assume that this area in the game is easier than the whole of The Eight Pages, otherwise I just ran into a brick wall that I am not willing to spend a whole lot of time on figuring out how to climb over or dig under.

Jesus I hope I can't see it!

So that is where I am currently at with Slender: The Arrival.  I like that there is an attempt to create a story where there was very little to begin with and what I have played I really enjoyed.  The graphics are well done and the controls are your standard FPS PC WASD set up so as long as you're comfortable with the Left Shift being used for sprinting, then you are all set to go.  As long as you don't mind being scared by static, as if kids these days even know what static is.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
You Better Get Up While You Can

First Impressions: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC)

I've talked a bit about the people at Frictional Games and The Chinese Room a number of times over the past year, be it about either the Penumbra or Amnesia series.  Last August, the newest game in the Amnesia series, A Machine for Pigs was available for preorder.  This was the first game that I have ever pre-ordered through Steam.  For the first few weeks after pre-order I was always checking back to the store page to see if the game was somehow released early, which it wasn't.  Then I seem to have forgotten about it.  I guess I thought that there would be some type of notification or the game would automatically download.  It didn't.

So over a month ago, on September 10th, 2013, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs went live (is that the correct verb?) and I did not notice.  It wasn't until two days ago that I found I could install the game and begin playing it already.  So I did.

A:AMfP, which forthwith I will just call Pigs, uses Frictional Games/ HPL2 engine, which I've talked about a couple of times regarding Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Penumbra series.  So keyboard moving and mouse looking.  The mouse is also inverted.

But for why you're really here, not to read about me talking about control schemes, but for the pictures and my thoughts.

First off, this game is beautiful.  There was some concern as to whether or not my system could handle playing the game but I have it running at near optimum with only the shadows at medium, because that's what the game suggested based on the hardware I'm using.  I would then like to say that the game is running just fine.  I have only experienced lag once or twice and was very minimal and while I did notice it, I didn't find it distracting.

With three hours in, there are a couple of things that I've noticed and forewarned, I bring up some things that might be considered by spoilers by people who don't want to know anything about the game before playing.

Appearance of gramophones a reference to Amnesia ~Justine~ ??

First, the game feels somewhat familiar to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you play a character named Oswald Mandus who is looking for his two children who seem to be lost, but talking to you either telepathically or via some other supernatural force.  Since you are thrown into this world without knowing anything about it, you discover story points and back story by locating documents that are scattered throughout the buildings.  I have a feeling that I will be slightly confused as to the overall story until the final act, just as I was with A:TDD.  I had previously read from the creators that Pig while it is not a direct sequel to A:TDD, it does take place in the same universe.

Second, while you do have the infamous lantern as a primary light source, since the game takes place in 1899 London, your lantern is electric and at least presently, does not run out of power.  This is something that I am both thankful and only slightly annoyed about.  I'm thankful because of all the hunting I had to do in A:TDD for lantern oil and tinderboxes.  However, at the same time, I feel this may have been done because of the same reason that I was thankful.  At the moment, I have no fear about running out of fuel.  Similar to what Resident Evil 4 did with removing the need of typewriter ribbons in order to save your game.  And speaking of saving the game, in Pig, you can save at anytime and don't have to look for one of those odd artifacts.

Thirdly, you have no inventory for items.  What inventory you do have is dedicated to personal journal entries and notes that have been discovered.  This has me questioning how certain mechanics in the game will work.  No more collecting items?  Will you now have to carry every single item from one room to another?  I however think that both Frictional Games and The Chinese Room know that since they've created an inventory-less game, that these types of go-to/standard puzzles won't work or at the very least will be very tedious.

Fourth(ly??), I have noticed that I cannot interact with the world as much as in previous Amnesia and Penumbra games.  Books, bottles, tables are all stationary.  For whatever reason, you are able to move any chair you come across and you can turn lamps on/off, but you cannot move them.  There might be a reason for this that hasn't been made apparent yet, but I am a little sad by having my actions limited when before they felt almost limitless.

It's never a good sign when the game reminds you how to run away.

Lastly, because Pigs was also developed by thechineseroom who did the artistic game Dear Esther, combined with the lack of a usable item inventory system, I do wonder at times how threatening the world is.  True, I have jumped a couple of times, but I have yet had to run away from anything chasing me.  I am not sure if Pigs will be taking a Silent Hill / Monty Python and the Holy Grail "Run AWAY!!" approach to enemies/aggressors as I have yet to come across anything hostile, but I feel that time is coming very soon.

I am very intrigued with the story and my love for what both companies have accomplished is helping to fuel my quest through this world.  Part of me is waiting for that gut punching moment when all the story bits fit together and I can no longer run from the horrors of the world.  And I am hoping that from past experience, that I will not be disappointed when that moments arrives.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Somewhere Fate Went Wrong

First Impressions: Among the Sleep: Pre-Alpha (PC)

No, thank you for letting me play!

With Krillbite Studio's Kickstarter (which has less than 24 hours remaining) for Among the Sleep fully funded, the public now has access to a pre-alpha release of their game.

I just played the extent of what was released on Wednesday, May 15th.

It. Is. Awesome.

I can't really say much about the storyline for the game other than you're a toddler, a two year old I believe, your crib topples over.  Oh, and your teddy bear seems to be sentient.

In the beginning, you're just wandering around your house.  Keep in mind you're a two year old, so you're visual perspective is from that of a child who both crawls and walks.  And, and, AND!, you can see yourself:

Yes, at anytime you can look down, see your little bebby belly getting a good scratch.  This looking down perspective comes pretty handing though when walking across platforms, which I won't talk about aside from here so that I don't give anything (much else anyway) away.  This looking down and seeing yourself is one of many little things that was included, that didn't have to be included, that make this game amazing.  

What's that?  You can't make out what that writing says?  Of course you can't, you're two years old.  You can't read.  Yes, you can make out individual letters on the blocks (as in the above picture), but those are individual letters, not words, which your brain probably can't even comprehend yet.

Another thing, when you press Esc/pause, you cover your face with your hands.  Fucking_Brilliant.

Onto other things now.  How does the game handle?  It handles just fine.  I didn't have any problems with the controls.  I did change the mouse to inverted controls and the only other thing that doing that might have affected was which way you had to move the mouse in order to open up doors, drawers and cabinets.  For instance, to pull open a drawer, I had to click the drawer and push the mouse forward.  After figuring this out on the first time, I was perfectly fine.

And remember, you're playing as a toddler.  You can't reach that door knob, so you have to find something to pull over to that door, climb up on said object and then open the door.  This type of perspective was one of the major draws to the game for me.  I play a lot of horror games, but playing one from a toddler's perspective, seeing the world through their eyes, albeit with an adult's mind and how to interact with the world, it's like seeing things as brand new all over again.  I don't remember the first time I ever saw a washing machine and I can almost guarantee that my little brain couldn't process what that big white thing did.  It might've even frightened me somewhat.  That's what Among the Sleep did to me.  It made me wary of a washing machine that was running at night.  That's something.

The music, what little there was that wasn't there for atmospheric purposes was very nice, but the sound editing was great.  A lot of the ambient night time noises that you'd hear around a house in the middle of the night seemed amplified, especially the ticking of that damned ominous clock.  The lullaby too, that the mother sings to you as you're falling asleep, reminded me of the lullaby from Pan's Labyrinth: beautiful and motherly with a very slight undertone of foreboding.

The playable pre-release demo-esque of Among the Sleep played for about 20-25 minutes on my initial playthrough, but a lot of that time was spent just looking at my surroundings and seeing what I could interact with.  On subsequent playthoughs, when I was going around getting pictures, but trying to also see how fast I could finish, it took me, maybe 10 minutes.  You and all your friends with a computer should really go to the Kickstarter page and download the pre-alpha demo-game-thing and play it.  Then, play it again.  I'm really looking forward to sometime around December when the full game is released.

Lastly, I'd like to leave you with this little nugget from the game, when shit began to get weird:

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
A Long, Long Time Ago. . .

First Impressions: Cry of Fear (PC)

I'm one of those people that does judge a book by it's cover.  Does that make me proud that on some level I judge things solely based on their appearance, I guess you could say so, but there have been times when being of that mentality has paid off.  Recently on Steam's front page, down in the Featured section, I saw a thumbnail of a gloved hand trailing against a dank looking wall with the title Cry of Fear looking like the title above this paragraph.  Below said thumbnail was "THIRD-PARTY."  The combination of the lack of price and thumbnail intrigued me to click and find out more about this game.

As it turns out, Cry of Fear was originally a mod for Half-Life 1 developed by Team Psykallar.  Now available through Steam through their Greenlight release series, Cry of Fear is it's own stand alone game, without requiring Half-Life 1 in order to play.  And, and AND, the game is free.  Yes, a free game.  You're welcome to donate to the company, kind of like one of those Humble Indie Bundle or Indie Royal Bundles, but you can play the game first.

And play it I have.  At least for about an hour anyway before deciding that I should stop, write out what I have here to say then head to bed for the night/morning.  I'm going to have pretty awesome dreams too if I don't wake up screaming, although to give the game credit, I was warned ahead of time.  Resident Evil was the first game I saw that had a disclaimer before the game started warning of impending violence and gore, which read as follows, "Warning This game contains strong language and scenes of explicit violence and gore."  Maybe these were more common on PC games, but little 23 year old me hadn't been exposed to too many M rated games; I had some, just not many.  The disclaimer at the beginning of Cry of Fear however, takes the warning up a notch with, "This game contains violence and gore, and can cause fear, depression, heart failure and suicide.  Users and viewers discretion is advised."

Now that's a warning if I've ever read one prior to playing a game before and for whatever reason, I did not feel that it came across as the developers stroking their own horns.  Sure they are to some extent, but to me, it sounded more original than saying that "This game will make you shit bricks and cry for your mommy.  Pussy."  It was all about the language used.

Back to the game.

Cry of Fear is an FPS horror game set somewhere, possibly somewhere in Scandinavia although I don't think the actual setting will be too important.  All it means to me so far is that I can't read any of the newspapers or graffiti that is used as set decorations.  That's pretty much all I know about the setting of the game.  I have come across some enemies who have managed to kill me a few times, which may have also contributed to deciding to write out my thoughts earlier than I may have originally planned.  So, the game looks like this:

Yes, the graphics are a little grainy, which could be an artistic choice or it could be because the game was originally a mod from a 1998 PC game.  Either way, I feel that the graininess adds to the overall atmosphere, which is pretty flippin' creepy.

The game was easily controlled with standard WASD keys and I was able to invert the mouse, which I am always thankful for.  I tinkered around editing some of the other keys such as crouch, but everything else felt like standard FPS PC controls.  At the present, I only have two equippable but each of those items has duel functions, something I haven't seen a lot of since Perfect Dark and something I feel should have been almost required at this point, especially for FPS games.  Your cellphone acts as both a phone and as a flashlight and your knife can either stab or slash; I don't know if there's a tactical difference but I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

The music, from what I've heard so far is pretty standard fare for a horror game in that it's mainly background ambient music intended to set the mood.  I haven't come across any areas where the music cuts out entirely as sometimes happens in the Resident Evil games.  The environment noise is very well done.  The voice acting isn't great and seems kind of stilted at times, there always seem to be bright yellow subtitles permanently on, although I typically have subtitles off, so in my case I find it a little distracting.

That all being said, I highly recommend trying this game out if you like either FPS and/or horror (including survival horror) games.  It's free after all, but that doesn't mean you don't have to show the developers some love in return for their hard work.  Any game that can cause me to jump in my seat and make me sit back from the keyboard in momentary fear is the type of game that I personally would love to see more of.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Feeling Good

P.S.  
***SPOILER - THE WINDOW***
I will give one pseudo-spoiler, but as it happens near the very beginning of the game, it won't be much of one, but more like a walkthrough/hint/tip.  Once you take control of the character, you will eventually come to a window.  Now, this window is a bloody damn pain in the ass to get through.  I don't know if it was an oversight or if it's intended to teach you how to jump through windows, but the point is, I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  For me, I was had to crouch first, then jump while moving forward towards the window.  I don't know if there's an easier way as two of the youtube videos I watched don't actually explain what they're doing.  But, just take your time, and you'll make it through that window.  Only to wish about a minute later that you could find your way back to it, board it up an build a thick-ass cement wall so nothing will come through it ever again.  Yourself included.

First Impressions: Penumbra Overture (PC)

Penumbra Overture is the first game in a trilogy from Frictional Games.  I previously reviewed their lastest release, Amnesia ~ Justine ~ which was a stand alone expansion for Amensia: The Dark Descent.  After I finished Amnesia, I looked up the company and found that they had released the Penumbra trilogy three years prior in 2007.  I only recently started playing at Conklederp's request, although it didn't take long for her to convince me.  Now on to the game itself, although I'm going to be making a lot of comparisons to Amnesia as that was the game from Frictional Games that I played first, so you'll have to bare with me on that front.

Having already played Amnesia, Penumbra Overture. felt very familiar.  They're both exploration games in and fps world.  Manipulating objects is also the same as in Amnesia, in that you move the cross hairs over a particular object such as a door or a chest and the cross hairs change to a hand.  By clicking on the object, your hand grasps the item and you're able to pick up, open, throw said item/object.  One big change I noticed with Penumbra Overture was that objects here seemed to have more weight than in Amnesia, which was odd considering that this game came first.  In Amnesia I could lift boxes and barrels, hurling them across the room as if I was throwing a baseball.  In Penumbra Overture, if I can throw a barrel, it's most likely because it's empty while I can only just lift a machine motor (and move slowly while doing so) because it's made out of dense materials.

There is another major departure between Penumbra Overture and Amnesia:

Yes, you are wielding a pickaxe.  Granted it's not the most graceful of wieldings, but it does the job when you come up against the stubborn boarded up door or air vent grate.  It's not as useful against feral wolves, but it has proved effective on at least one occasion.  Yes, you have physical weapons and there's more than one way of wielding them.  Let's stay with the pickaxe for the time being as it's still right there.  You're able to slash from upper right to lower left, back hand slash (upper left to lower right) and jab with the top part of the pickaxe.  This is done by holding the left mouse button and mimicking the motions you want to do.  Now, before you start thinking that by being armed with a pickaxe, you're a death dealing miner from hell.  As any normal person swinging a weapon at an attacking feral wolf, you're somewhat clumsy.  I don't feel that that's an error on the part of the programmers, but this isn't an fps action game, it's an fps exploration/adventure game and the safer thing to do, would be to either run away or hide.

Now hiding is a big part of this game, so big in fact that you have your own visual cues to let you know how well you're hiding.  "Hiding" is activated whenever you crouch.  When you stop moving, a thin blue "fuzz" circles the screen, which lets you know that you're kind of hiding but when the screen looks like this:

(by "this" I mean when the foreground is all blue and saturated), you know you're well hidden.  Bare in mind, that doesn't mean you're invisible.  If a wolf were to come around that far corner, it would be far less likely to see/react to me than if I were standing.  If a wolf came around that nearby corner, it would spot me, stop, growl, back up, then charge and kill me in three bites.

To answer that question, yes, you do have life, although it's a slightly arbitrary health meter.  You have a outline of your body standing, highlighted in green as well as a textual description such as, "I'm as fit as can be expected."  Health can be regained by either staying put for a short while or by taking pain killers.  The only problem with this approach, is that in the amount of time it takes to open up your inventory (which doesn't pause the game mind you), and take the pills, you could almost, just as easily find a corner to duck into until your health reaches full.  As in Amnesia, death has become more of an annoyance than something that I fear.

Death now brings me to saving.  Until I began writing this, I was not sure at all about what/where the save spots in the game where.  I knew that the game kept a number of auto saves, usually when you go through a door that requires the loading screen, but an obvious place to save?  I figured they didn't exist.  It turns out that whenever you encounter an odd, creepy looking lantern that seems like it's burrowing into your soul/subconscious, the game saves.  There's no hitting "escape" then clicking "save & exit," which to some extent makes me fear for wondering when I'll come to the next transition door.  It does feel a bit odd though having/needing to go to the "Auto Saves" file to find where I want the game to load from.

One really cool thing that I've been doing while playing is keeping a notebook.  The character in the game has a notebook and I figured, why shouldn't I?  It has come in pretty handy as well.  Now instead of going to the in-game notebook to look at the page with the Morse Code cipher to figure out what the pass code is for the key pad on the other side of the area, I can just look at my own notes while listening to the radio transmission and write down the sequence.  That way when I go to the keypad, I'll know exactly what to press.  It's also been very handy for making maps.  There are in-game maps, but those are in the form of a map being on the wall of the mine and you looking at it.  You can't take it with you, so I thought it best to carry one with me.

Now, I just realized that I haven't said anything about the story and that's mainly because I'm still trying to figure out what the story is.  Similar to Amnesia in that I only was able to put all the little pieces together near the end of the game, I feel like Penumbra Overture will operate in a very similar manner.  This game also involves a lot of reading, either from notes, diary entries and newspaper clippings from topics ranging from Inuit culture, Greenland mythology, to the ravings of a man eating spiders.  It's all about creating the world and mood.

In closing, Penumbra Overture is a very creepy, atmospheric survival horror game where you go to open a door, and shit like this happens:

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

We're Gunna Need a Bigger Boat

Horror games and preview of the Chzo Mythos

is this mansion... spooky?

Happy Halloween everyone.  Or at least, Happy Halloween month.  Being October, the month of all Hallows eve.

I'd like to review a horror game for October, but unfortunately I am not able to review my game of choice,  due to some platforming restrictions combined with a lack of time, dedication, and computer competence.  But I'll talk about the game, or series of games, and maybe it will pique your interest and maybe you'll try them out for yourself.   In the meantime, I'll also direct you to a previous post about a survival horror game I gave impressions on:  Lone Survivor.

The series of games I would like to refer you to today are called the Chzo Mythos, by Ben "Yahtzee" Kreshaw.  Kreshaw is well known for his Zero Punctuation series of game reviews at The Escapist.  These videos tend to be hilarious, and exceedingly harsh.  I highly recommend them. I was delighted and intrigued to find out that he had tried his hand at game creating, and had produced a whole series of games in the psychological horror genre.  They seem to have received accolades of some kind. 

Ben Kreshaw put together the first game in the Chzo Mythos - 'Five Days a Stranger' - In 2003, long before he began his reviews for the Escapist.  I think it is noteworthy that Chzo Mythos makes use of the Slender Man mythos and imagery. I am very curious to see how these games will play, and even more so, knowing that such a harsh critic was the progenitor for this series of Psychological Horror - Adventure Games.

idunno, looks pretty sweet to me.

Psychological and Survival are definitely my two favorite subgenre's within the larger Horror genre of games.  I don't care much about blood and gore, or action.  What's more important is fear.  Terror.  Some third word I can't think of.  That is the draw to horror games for me.  These games can scare me even when I'm not playing them, like, when you reach a point where you just don't have the guts to go any further, and you turn the game off and despair.  Silent Hill did that for me.  I ran like a sissy and hid the game at the bottom of stack of heavy boxes.  Then I crossed myself and begged forgiveness for all of my sins.

But to create and maintain such a strong psychological response to a game takes real skill.  We've talked before on this site about losing immersion in a game.  Some games can lose immersion and it never really comes back.  Like when there's just too much ammo, and you don't fear running out anymore, or when you figure out the trick to a game is to just low kick everybody.  Or when the enemies die in only three different ways, and they bleed out the neck when you shoot them in the foot.  

A careful management of the known and unknown is important.  As the player adjusting to a new game, you can't know what you can get away with.  If you are susceptible, like me, this will lead to you moving very carefully and jumping at every shadow.   But eventually, you might get tired of being scared, and just get suicidal.  Running headlong into the night to see if there is, in fact, anything down that alley.  This can break immersion pretty heavily, if you find out that there really isn't anything to be scared of.

This is why the games flow is important.  At different points along the way, the designers will have to put the smack down on the cocky fucks who think they don't have to be scared anymore.  GIVE them something to be scared about.  Make it different from what has come before, and thus unpredictable.  The Unknown is where the fear comes from.   Exploit it!

Okay, I think that's all I have for right now.  On a separate note, I just watched Cabin in the Woods.  That movie was great fun.