First Impressions: Dead Space 2 (PC)

I've started Dead Space 2 twice.  The first time, I made it 1h48m in then discovered that the Dead Space 2 game sold through Steam comes with three DLC packs pre-installed, which I did not know about, although it does not contain the Severed DLC which is a standalone prequel to Dead Space 2; Severed was apparently only released on PS3 and XBox 360 with no word as to a PC release.  The reason I restarted was because I had thought that all of the free items in the store (as a result of the DLC weapon/armor packs) were supposed to be there and I equipped myself to the teeth right before a mini-boss fight.  I would rather not play the game that way, so I started over with the intent of only buying items from the store as they become available in-game.

Always be wary when the best items for sale are free.

Dead Space 2 is fun at the present.  There are a number of jump scares with necromorphs bursting through walls or environmental elements springing to life as you walk by, minding your own business.  There are a number of modifications from the original Dead Space that I feel like I have to come to terms with in order to fully like this game.  

The first major change is that the game is no longer told in separate chapters.  In the first game, each time you boarded a tram to a different part of the USG Ishimura, you began a new chapter and you knew what your objective was.  In DS2, at least up to chapter 4, you are following the guidance of a voice on the other end of your radio as you make your way through Titan Station (built around the remnants of Saturn's moon Titan) with no clear break between chapters.  I recall seeing a "Chapter 2" pop up at one point, but I have not seen anything to denote that I had entered a chapter 3 or 4.  I personally liked the individual chapters as part of a larger whole that made up the first game as well as the mobile game.  The current less structured narrative makes me feel like I am just going from one area to another and killing hordes of necromorphs along the way, because that is what you are supposed to be doing in a video game.

"Oh hai dere!"

I do like the present variety in necromorphs compared to those in DS1.  It would make sense too (does it really!?) that not all off the mutated/transfigured humans would look like the same sprinting blood thirsty brute.  You are on a space station that is full of residential living areas as well as industrial, religious and private sectors so the population is going to be different, which is something that I appreciate.

Maybe it's just me, but so far, I am getting a very Bioshock feeling from wandering around the Titan Station residential and commercial areas.  It could be due to wandering through living quarters and that a space station with super-security-gorilla-glass would be somewhat akin to the glass used in an underwater city and the necromorphs are more perverted than the splicers, but they are still often sprinting monsters that jump out and want to annihilate you just because you have a prettier face.  The point is, I don't want to be playing Bioshock, I want to play the sequel to Dead Space and I am not getting that feeling with only four hours in.

A physical representation of a Marker that size is never a good thing to come across in this universe.

I was talking to Conklederp the other day about this and I decided that I am going to reserve my final judgement of the game until after I reach the end.  I am still enjoying the game, despite how I have sounded through half of this article and I am also interested to find out if I have been intentionally mislead and that my impressions of the game will change later on.  I am also interested to see how the previous stories from Dead Space: Aftermath, Ignition and Mobile all fit together and how they are presented, if at all, in this game that is a cumulation of all of those individual parts.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Awake From Madness

Game Review: Dead Space Mobile (Android)

I was planning on doing a full on review for Dead Space Mobile, but the more I thought about it, I felt that I was too close to this story and franchise.  If you've been reading our miniscule particle of the internet, you'll know that I love the first Dead Space game, which I came to five years after the rest of the world.  After finishing the game, I wanted to consume everything in the Dead Space universe although I was a little worried about the touch screen control scheme when I heard there was a mobile game.

Let me get this out of the way before I start gushing.  The touch screen controls work.  There were a number few times when I couldn't get Vandal (the main protagonist) to run, possibly because of the grease/sweat that found its way to the screen causing my thumb to slide or much up the contact.  I also chalk it up to the point of my thumb, as to its face only being in contact with the invisible directional pad.  It took some getting used to, but that is really my only criticism.  The point is, Dead Space Mobile is a great game.

"In Your Hands." Eh, eh!  Now that's, comedy.

Now, why I think it's a great game, but first some context.  You play as an engineer with the code name Vandal (given by a voice over the radio whom you are forced to take orders from through a series of events), is a recent convert to the Church of Unitology and is employed as an engineer on Titan Station (aka The Sprawl) prior to the events of Dead Space 2.

Being on a mobile device, I knew that the graphics were not going to be PC/console quality, but for a mobile game, the graphics looked good with smooth animations, the sound quality was crisp when it needed to be and muffled when it was supposed to be.  The only other negative thing I really have to say (aside from my sweaty palms) was a graphics/engine glitch that happened in the end of the game that I will get to later.

What I really want to talk about is how the game messed with the player in a way that I haven't felt since Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, but in a less fun but not less entertaining way.  In Eternal Darkness, you had a visible sanity meter and you immediately knew (in most cases) that the game was messing with you.  Dead Space Mobile does not have a meter and all of the sanity events are programed to happen at a specific time and place.  Some of the events happen for a specific amount of time while others are triggered by your location and last until you leave that location.

Take the above screenshot for example.  Here the character Vandal is walking through a medical wing and I notice this other person on the other side of the glass.  I see them moving when I move and I think that it's a reflection, but it doesn't line up with where I am.  And, when I move, the character/reflection moves in the opposite direction.  That is it.  That is all that happens.  You can circle the window all you want and the reflection will always be there moving in the opposite direction, but nothing will happen.  It wasn't so much scary as it was confusing, intriguing and a little unnerving.

Another event happened when I passed through a door into a "plus" shaped room.  Upon looking around with only a single bloodied corpse, I noticed that where once there was only one corpse, three others had appeared.  Additionally, the door I came through had disappeared and was replaced by another corpse with "TAKE US" scrawled in blood above the body.  After taking out a couple of necromorphs in the room (one at a time), the room went dark and I found myself standing outside of the door I thought I had just entered.  It had been all in my head.  No sound cues to let me know that the bloodied room had been an illusion.  Just a shake and a holding of the head by Vandal.

There was another instance while walking down a hallway and directly under where I had my right thumb, the one that controls the aiming and firing of your weapon, a grotesque "evil" looking face faded on/into the screen.  When I noticed this visage, I pulled my right thumb away as if there was something physical on the screen for a few seconds before remembering that it was only an image and nothing physical that could actually do me harm.  And then I thought I was about to be ambushed by one or 73 necromorphs, but no.  Nothing came for me.

There was even a Lost Woods section while trying to get to Point B.  Unless you were to follow your RIG's locater mechanism (follow the glowing line projected onto the floor), you will walk around in circles, entering the same rooms even when going in a straight line.  When this is used in The Legend of Zelda, it somehow makes sense, that the forest is keeping you from finding your way to Point B.  In Dead Space Mobile however, I got the feeling that the ship was not trying to manipulate me (a la Event Horizon) but that this was all happening in my (Vandal) head.  To an observer, I'm sure that I would be seen walking through one door, turning around then come back or just walking around in circles in the same room.  It was very unsettling.

There was another instance where I walked through a door and all of a sudden I was somewhere else, off ship.  I walked forward as far as I could, thinking that the hallucination would eventually pass, but it didn't.  So I turned around the way I came and went back through the door, only to find that I was now on the other side of the hallway that I entered, as if I had walked in a straight line the whole time.

The only other negative thing that I alluded to happened during the boss fight (of all times and places).  About a minute into the fight, something emanated from the boss towards Vandal, but it was looked more like a smear of pixels and it didn't move so much as it shimmered.

By the end of the fight, almost half of the screen was being obscured by whatever glitch this was that kept up its fleshy colored shimmering undulations.  It was very distracting and if I hadn't just spent the last 30 minutes to get there, I would have turned the game off to restart the chapter (12:12).  Thankfully the glitch left enough room for me to be able to attack the boss' obvious glowing yellow puss filled weak points.

I should note that I played the game on whatever the equivalent of "Easy" is since I wasn't sure about the control scheme before starting to play, plus I just wanted to experience the story with just a the right amount of "Oh shit I'm going to die, I'm going to die."  There were still quite a few times that thought I was going to die.

So there!  I can't recommend Dead Space Mobile enough if you are in the market for a survival horror game in the truest sense of the term.  The game is reasonably priced (I happened to buy it when it went on sale) for having 12 chapters which take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes to complete, depending on your desire to explore.  There is no saving aside from finishing a chapter, which might be a turn off to some people, but it was nice to know that with each chapter's length being fairly consistent, I knew how much time I could invest if I wanted/needed a half hour to kill.

Speaking of killing. . .

Now it is on to Dead Space 2, for which I am eagerly awaiting the same level of craftsmanship when it comes to "sanity effects," something I felt where the first game a bit lacking.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And Life We Joyfully Drink

MIDI Week Singles: "My Heaven" - Silent Hill (PSX)

"My Heaven" from Silent Hill on the Playstation (1999)
Silent Hill Original Soundtrack
Composed By: Akira Yamaoka
Record Label: Konami
Game Developer: Konami

Confession time.  I have not played Silent Hill yet.  I have the game on my PSP, but I would really like to play the game in a darkened room with headphones and I haven't had too many times available that would not make me look/seem like a creep.  But I did acquire the soundtrack awesomely enough from a Silent Hill community website.

So not having played the game, I have no emotional or nostalgic attachment to any of the songs, which was somewhat nice when I first listened through the soundtrack.  The song "My Heaven" stuck out to me among all the other great styled songs that you would be happy to find on any well crafted horror soundtrack.  I think what it was for me was the static/white noise/drone that ran through the song while rusted metallic drums were frantically drummed in the back/foreground. 

I could probably analyze this song and infer meaning where there isn't, especially not having played the game.  And then there's the obvious contrast between the sounds in the song with the title.  I just think it's a great, unsettling song.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
All I Heard Was An Unearthly Silence

First Impressions: Mansions of Madness (Board Game)

Conklederp and I received Mansions of Madness from Salty Liver and her newly acquired hubby for our own wedding, which will be taking place in less than two weeks.  Last night, we finally broke into this monster of a game.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to play this game in particular was because despite its size as a board game, it can be played with only two players without losing any of the attempts to create fear and dread.  The other reason I wanted to play Mansions of Madness was because it is based on various stories by H.P. Lovecraft and I have already covered my issues with playing games based on Lovecraft with groups of people unfamiliar Lovecraftian mythos.  So far, knowledge of Lovecrafts stories do not seem to be dependent on having fun with this game.

That being said, Mansions of Madness is an overwhelming game.  Just look at everything that is included with this beast as mere word could not do it justice:

Picture courtesy of: http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Mansions-of-Madness-1.jpg

The board is made up of double sided heavy-duty cardboard with wonderfully detailed rooms with hallway sized rectangular pieces, large room square pieces (hallway x 2) and one large main hall/front yard piece (hallway x 3).  There are I don't know how many permutations that could be created with these pieces.

Anyway, we are here to briefly talk about the hour long play session that Conklederp had last night.  We did not finish either, but came very close.

I played as The Keeper (the DM in D&D terms) while Conklederp played as the one Investigator (PC in D&D).  Being out first time playing, there were quite a few moments when I had to look at the rules to know what to do with certain cards (if an artifact could be kept after being used or had to be discarded), if the Investigator could search a room when a monster was either in the same room or space or if unlocking a puzzle/lock counts as an action the same way searching a room counts as an action (it does not if the Investigator succeeds in unlocking the puzzle/lock).  

Again, "overwhelming" comes to mind.  It would be like starting a game of Dungeons & Dragons for the first time and anyone who knows what that is like can understand the feeling of performance anxiety, even if it is with someone who is patient and understanding.  Conklederp and I were patient with each other as we asked questions about what to do or clarifying information on cards.  Still, I felt we both had a lot of fun.

Playing as The Keeper, I have to have bits of information kept secret from the Investigators, know which cards I have and when I can play them (cards kept secret) all the while holding down a poker face so I do not give away the fact that I could cripple an Investigator with the drop of a card.  I didn't.  Some cards are event specific while others are dependent on the Investigator being in a specific room or a room with a specific feature (An altar, ventilation grate, hiding spot).  It is a lot of information to take in and keep track of all the while maintaining a sense of fear for the player and role playing the story and keeping the events interesting for the player.

I love it!

Like I said, Conklederp and I played for about an hour, maybe an hour and-a-half with rule clarification happening, but not including the time it took to set up the board, place the room cards in their specific locations, and gather which specific cards I needed for the story that I was telling.  Set-up took about 30 minutes.  Overall, the game is supposed to take about two to three hours from start to finish and I can confirm that with at least two people, this prediction is pretty accurate, although I can understand this being a turnoff for a good segment of the board game playing population.

An hour in, and I have control of only four monsters.  Plenty to drive Conklederp's character insane!

Before we started playing, I also quickly created a playlist of instrumental background music that I set to shuffle.  This list included music from Bram Stoker's Dracula by Wojceich Kilar, Castlevania 64 by Masahiko Kimura, Motoaki Furukawa and Mariko Egawa, Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Mikko Tarmia and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem by Steve Henifin.  At times the music seemed to mirror the actions in the game, but I never noticed that the music was out of place, but then I was also paying attention to the music when it changed while I cannot say the same for Conklederp.

There is a lot that I have yet to cover such as horror checks, trauma cards, combat, how the choices The Keeper makes during setup affects and changes the story and how events unfold during play, and how the game is won.  I will say that while it is The Keeper's objective to prevent the Investigators from achieving their objective (which is revealed to them through the course of the game/story), if an Investigator dies, that is not the end of the game, but the player can bring in a new character (one that has not yet been killed) up until the final act in the game.  I love that this is a game designed around everyone having fun but still knowing that in the end, someone will have to come out victorious.

I am looking forward to concluding this one (of many) possible storylines with Conklederp and more so to playing with our friends next weekend.  The one downside is that the game is designed for 2-5 players and apparently can be very cluttered and may not be playable if more than four Investigators are playing as the Investigators end up just stacking up in rooms without being able to either do much "investigating" or they spread out too much, uncovering information that would have been uncovered a turn or two later, progressing the story at a slower, more manageable pace.

The point is, there is a lot to this game and I cannot wait to delve deeper into its tentically depths.  Perhaps after we are finished, Conklederp will do a write up about her experience as an Investigator playing Mansions of Madness for the first time.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Something It Appears Has Changed

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

Full Review: Alone in the Dark (DOS/PC)

So a few weeks back I gave Alone in the Dark a spin because 1) I bought during Gog.com's winter sale earlier in the year and 2) I wanted to play something that I have never played before and 3) a game that I had through my Gog.com account that I did not have access to on my Steam account.

First off, before beginning to play, you have the option to play the game as either private investigator Edward Carnby or the daughter of the recently late Jeremy Hartwood,  Emily Hartwood.  From what I can tell, the game does not change at all depending on whom you choose to play, but that may not actually be the case as I have only gone through the game once and with Edward Carnby.

Some background first though.

Alone in the Dark was released in 1992 by Infogrames originally using the DOS operating system, later ported to 3DO, Mac and RISC.  I played the DOS version of the game and upon opening the game (post installation), it automatically opened up DOSBox and I had no issues at all with the game running an it never onced crashed.  I had some issues with the controls, but I will get to that later on.  One thing that surprised me was that the game was already in a semi-wide screen mode, although I am not sure as to the specific aspect ratio, but it was wider than the standard 4:3.

If you are anything like me, you probably have not played Alone in the Dark, but are aware of its existence as a video game.  I also knew that it was a horror game of some sort and only right before purchasing the game did I learn that it was the progenitor to the Resident Evil series of video games (1 through Code Veronica X anyway).  Yes, I know that Sweet Home is the granddaddy of survival horror, but as far as a "haunted" house with a person locked inside full of creatures, puzzles, fixed camera angles and plenty of instant death events.

The first of many times you can die instantly.

STORY
Regardless of whom you choose to play as, your initial motivation for entering the massive house (named "Decerto") is to locate a piano that either has immense value or was a family heirloom, again depending on your choice of characters.  Once you find yourself locked inside the mansion, your sole objective is to escape by solving a number of puzzles involving found items throughout the mansion.  You know, like in Resident Evil.

The depth of the story however is found by reading/listening to journal and diary entries found throughout the mansion.  With the exception of only a couple of books, these journals are not required to further the actual game play, so you could hypothetically go through the entire game without knowing anything about any of the characters, monsters, villains or the motivation behind anything else that is going on.  Combined that with the fact that you have a limited inventory, there is a good chance that a book picked up will immediately be put back down to make room for an item that might be needed later on.

One thing that I picked up on was how much of the material was reminiscent or directly borrowed from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.  The "that book" that is brought up in the book (on the right) is later told to be the Necronomicon, a fictional demonic book created by Lovecraft.  Even the name "Abdul Al Azred" is a variation on the pseudonym that Lovecraft created when he was five years old after reading 1001 Arabian Nights.  Fellow weird author Arthur Machen (whose stories and autobiographies I love) is also referenced as the editor of one of the books in the game.  It is little details like this that I love to see in video games.

GAMEPLAY

How to play the game is probably what took me the most getting used to.  Keeping in mind that the game was played through DOSBox meant that moving was with the arrow keys and the controls were not customizable.  It actually reminded me a lot of how the first Resident Evil played, if you were forced to use a keyboard instead of a controller.  I am not 100% sure when WASD became the mainstay for pc gaming, but Alone in the Dark used the "more traditional" arrow keys to move around (I know now).  Moving around is what I did for about 90% of the time.  

Running though is probably what caused me the most problems, with reference to a couple of specific areas.  In one particular stage, your character is required to run across a bridge that begins to crumble and fall once it is touched.  Thankfully there was a bit of space to start running on approach to the bridge.  In one instance it took me 2m45s (I used a timer) before I could start running.  Running is achieved by pressing up a second time after your character is already walking.  The problem (apparently from what I have read) is that modern computers run faster than those of 1992 so it is not as simple as pressing Up Arrow twice, but has to be timed correctly.

Actions in the game, such as picking up items, opening doors, searching objects was all done with the spacebar, but each action had to be selected separately via the ingame menu.  Later in the game, jumping became an available action which, again, had to be individually selected by going to the menu, highlighting actions then going down to "Jump," going back to the play screen and pressing the spacebar when you wanted to jump.  This aspect of the game took quite a bit to get used to, especially when faced with a killable monster.  Oh yes, some of the monsters were either impossible to kill with your conventional weapons (Saber, shotgun, revolver, dagger) and had to be killed via solving a puzzle, such as placing a mirror in front of a Gorgon-like demon.  

The biggest problem that the controls presented was that timing when attacking enemies was crucial.  When swinging a knife/sword, the character would bring the weapon back and somewhat slowly, swing the weapon in the facing direction.  A miss would often mean that the monster would get their attack in first and since the character staggers with each hit, will usually mean that escape is impossible as their attacks happen faster than you can recover from their initial attack.

Losing key story items, or placing an item down that I felt was not useful was something that I constantly feared.  Granted items that I placed on the ground could be retrieved later, but finding out which room that knife that I thought I no longer needed was something that I rather would not do.  

GRAPHICS
As you can tell from the the previous pictures, the graphics for the game are antiquated by the graphical standards of today.

But keeping in mind that Alone in the Dark was released in 1992 and that the file size for the entirety of the game is 253 MB in size.  That the game could fit on four hard floppies.  You know, a 3.5 floppy.  However, after a few minutes I was able to acclimate to the graphics pretty quickly and I was not bothered by the sharp angled pixeliness of the world I was playing.  

There were only a couple of screens where Mr. Carnby was so far away from the camera that he appeared to be only a colored mass of pixels with little resemblance to his actual body shape.

SOUND & MUSIC
The music for Alone in the Dark was composed by French composer Philippe Vachey.  Unlike a lot of the previous survival horror games I have recently gone through (Outlast, Penumbra, Dead Space), the music here is somewhat more memorable, not that I could immediately recall a song without listening to the soundtrack, but after listening through the entirety of the 28 minute album, I can recall specific cases when the music was cued up.

There were a couple of purely atmospheric tracks such as "Growing Fear," "Terror" and "Watery," but that is to be expected, especially in a survival horror world.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I really enjoyed playing Alone in the Dark and from beginning to end I probably spent about three hours playing, even with the frequent instant deaths just from exploring.  I quickly learned that I needed to save after I did almost anything that required the use of an item.

I will confess that I used GameFAQs a bit while going through simply because I did not want to screw over myself by running out of lantern oil, of which there was a limited supply and at least three rooms/areas in the game that required you to have your lantern lit otherwise the game would not let you enter those rooms.  I did not feel like I was cheating, with the exception of looking at a four screen map that I had to navigate by lantern in an otherwise blacked out maze with the only lit area being a circle around you, Dragon Quest style.  There were additionally a few puzzles that I could not solve without ManiacMansionFan's help, but I still see it as asking another person, in-person, for help or advice, like what we used to do with NES and SNES games.  But in the end, I still feel good about myself, so it could not have been that big of a transgression.

In the end, I am glad that I played through Alone in the Dark despite its graphical and control limitations due to the time the game came out.  It is like going back and watching the first season of The Simpsons, you know it is that you are watching and even though it is still pretty rough around the edges, it is a fun game that helped create a genre that I absolutely love.  And soon I will get to Alone in the Dark 2.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Vengeance from the Grave


P.S.  I thought I would leave you with a screenshot of how I felt upon safely completing the game.

Yes, it's the classic 1980's jump of victory!

Full Review: Outlast (PC)

Whew!  This post has been a decent time coming, but that is the way things work sometimes.

Outlast comes to us from Red Barrels Games located in Montréal, Quebec and was released on multiple platforms in September of last year (2013).  Apparently a number of people who worked on this game had previously worked on other AAA titles such as Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Army of Two.  With the exception of having to occasionally climb up the side of a building and leaping across gaps across boards on multi-story-high scaffolding, I do not see much of the aforementioned games in Outlast, and honestly, that is perfectly fine with me.  As previously stated, I see a lot of Penumbra and Amnesia in Outlast, which I just read is pretty accurate.

STORY

The initial story is pretty straight forward and is told through text just as you start the game.  You are told who you are as well as your motivation, somewhat cleverly inserted into the usual horror game disclaimer.

The story holds up pretty well throughout the entire game.  One thing though that story and character development kind of hinge on is that the player is going to find and read the various documents scattered around the asylum/hospital.  As was the case with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, if you do not find/read any of the documents, then there is a very real chance the player will be lost in the story or just not interested.  It is nice to know though that game developers (maybe not all) have enough faith in their players that they will read while playing a video game as opposed to watching exposition heavy cut scenes.

One thing that I really liked and appreciated was that not every inmate in the hospital/asylum was out to kill me.  There were really maybe 10 in the entire game, but god damn when one of those ten came at me, I was high tailing it out of whatever room I was in.  Or in some cases, under a desk.

Yes, even a grown man will hide under a desk.  Especially when being chased by that guy!

*Bit of a Spoiler*

I will say though that I was happy that aliens or the supernatural did come into factor into the story, although their inclusion would have fit in with the world that was created.  Everything that happened was explained as well as could be and that I appreciated.

GAMEPLAY

Outlast is a semi-surprisingly simple game when in comes to game play.  Being only equipped with a video camera, there are not a lot of options for the control scheme; at least for me as I was using the mouse/keyboard combination in lieu of controller support.  Moving is standard WASD with Q and E for peering around corners and R for reloading the battery required for the night vision on the video camera.  Left Control is for ducking while  Spacebar is for jumping either vertical when you are standing still or horizontal while moving.  Left Mouse is for opening/closing doors and the Right Mouse is for raising/lowering the video camera.  Lastly and most importantly, F turns the night vision off and on.

I did have some issues with closing doors although I got beyond Miles slamming the door when I felt he should be trying to be quiet while being pursued.  My problem was that while frantically running away from whatever it was that was chasing me, I would sometimes be on the wrong side while trying to close the door.  Eventually I had to kind of over correct by running backwards through a door frame then going forward to close the door behind me.

Hiding was also a nice touch considering you were unarmed throughout the entire game and weapons simply did not exist for you to pick up.  Be it under beds, under desks, in lockers, up in air ducts and even around corners.  If you could cram your body into it and were out of eye line, there was a  pretty decent chance of momentarily escaping the pursuer.  However, there were times where I was dragged out from whatever hiding spot I had chosen so I did like any grown man in that position would do.  I either ran or was brutally killed.

GRAPHICS

I thought that the graphics were great, considering 80% of the game was spent looking through a video camera display and about 40% of that 80% was spent looking at a black, green and white screen.  I should also say that I only had the graphical settings set at Medium where as they went up to High and Very High.  I just did not want to run the risk of the game skipping or momentarily freezing while an enemy/sound bite/music cue began only to come back a second later to find a rather disturbed inmate with a butchers cleaver embedded in my cranium.

Maybe not the best representation of the games graphics, but you get the picture. . . eh!?

In the end, I did not experience any lag in gameplay due to hardware limitations and honestly, the game looks great even at "Medium" graphical settings, so if your computer can run at a higher setting, it will look even better (at least it should).

SOUND & MUSIC

The music for Outlast was composed by Samuel Laflamme.  Both Conklederp and I commented on the quality of the score before I even entered the haunted house/asylum.  There was a very movie feel to how the music was used, both as background atmosphere and in the use of scare chords.  There were even times when I could have sworn the music cut out all together, which is never a good thing in a horror setting.

The soundtrack is even available for purchase through Red Barrels for less than $10.  The one thing about horror game scores is that they tend to be atmospheric and unless something oddly heroic happens, there probably will not be an exciting song in a major key.  Still though, a great score that fit perfectly within the game and the world.

FINAL THOUGHTS
A lot like the lantern oil in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, I became very aware of how many batteries I had left and I would not use either source of light when I did not have to.  And as was the case with A:TDD, once I realized that dying was not as bad as I thought due to the game semi-aut0-saving and bringing me back a short time before I had died kind of killed the sense that dying was the worst possible thing that could happen and became more of an annoyance, which could be perceived as the swan song for a horror game.  Outcast however excelled at jump scares, even when I was sure that there was going to be something coming around the next corner.  The game also did a great job with the feeling of dread when you would see a pair of inmates behind a set of bars talking shit to/about you then walk away with a determined, "Let's go!"

The motivation of Miles Upshur is to get the hell out of Mount Massive Asylum, and really that was all the motivation I needed to keep playing.  I could not in good conscious leave him (myself) in there and you can be sure that there was an overwhelming sense of relief (in-a-way) upon completing the story.  The 8 hours I spent with/as Mr. Upshur were well spent indeed and he will not be forgotten.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
They Hide In The Dark So You Can't See Their Fears

First Impressions: Outlast (PC)

Outlast is a game that came out last September (2013) and that I purchased, I think, around December during a Steam Winter sale.  A while back after watching a fairly decent (not great, but not bad either) film on Netflix, I developed the odd urge to start this game up.  Conklederp also asked me if there was a game that I wanted to play, so there was that too. 

Outlast reminds me a lot of the Penumbra and Amnesia series in that the game is in first person, you are a man going into an unfamiliar location where there are things that can kill you and since you are unarmed, your only option is to run and hide when said aggressors decide that your death would make their day so much better.  The manipulation of objects is not as detailed as it is in either of the prior mentioned series as objects are immediately picked up and doors/drawers are either opened or closed, no slowly opening them just a little.  Either doors are slightly open, open all the way or slammed shut.  Yes, your only option while in a psychiatric hospital filled with a lot of murderous minds is to slam doors, even when you know you are supposed to be quiet or are attempting to hide from your pursuer.

The story so far, is that you are a reporter who was tipped off about all sorts of things going wrong/bad at this building that is/was a psychiatric hospital.  So being the wanna-be Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, you head to said hospital in your jeep armed with nothing but a video camera with night vision and two extra batteries that power said night vision.  Your one choice for when you run into hostiles is to run and hide and hope that the baddies were not close enough behind you to figure out that you happen to be hiding in either a storage locker or under a desk.  Thankfully said antagonists are not too bright (although they do seem to have reflective retinas) so when running into a room with say, two lockers, they might check one, grumble something then walk out of the room.  Or they will scour the room, eventually find you then start wailing away on your squishy body with a not-so-squishy crowbar.

One aspect of the game that is a bit odd is the video camera.  When it is up and you are filming, you have the chance of making observations in written form, but when the camera is not up, no notes will be taken.  This I did not find out for the first hour into the game, during which if there was enough light, I did not use the camera.  The main purpose of the camera is to use the night vision in dark areas, of which there are a lot.  The night vision is powered by a separate battery (as opposed to the infinite main battery of the camera) that has a life of two and-a-half minutes before you have to change the battery.  If the battery runs out, you have a limited night vision, only being able to see a couple of feet in front of you, as opposed to the, say, 15 to 20 feet with the night vision activated.  

The visual quality between having the camera up and not using the camera is very negligible.  And you are able to zoom in with the camera up, which is a nice added bonus when you do not want to be killed by whatever that thing way over on the other side of the room.  Why then is there the option to have the video camera down if there is no added benefit?  Just a thought.

Presently I am about 4 1/2 hours into the game and I am in an area where I have to avoid at least two violent inmates at either end of a building.  Both areas are dark (ie: pitch black without the night vision function activated) and I have six batteries in reserve, so I am not doing too poorly.  

I will say that about two hours into the game, the protagonist, one Mr. Miles Upsur finally came to the conclusion that I had within the first 30 minutes.

That.  Exactly that.  Mr. Miles decided to scribe this note shortly after being chased by two very large men who wanted to do all sorts of unspeakable things to his body and then having run into a guy strapped into a wheel chair yelling about something-or-other.

I am getting the feeling that I am about halfway through the game and there are maybe five more hours of gameplay left, which would be perfectly fine with me.  I do not know how long the game would be able to keep up its sense of fear and dread without becoming old and frustrating, what with the being killed every so often and all.  But in the meantime, I am having a lot of fun playing Outlast and there is the DLC Whistleblower which was released back in May of this year, so I will have that to look forward to once I finish the main campaign.

Here is to surviving that long.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Only The Good Die Young

DayZ and the Unfinished Survival Genre

The survivalist horror genre, if it is indeed a genre, seems to be a big thing right now, either that or I just happen to like the genre enough to notice games cropping up here and there to think that it is becoming "a thing" in the video game industry.  And just to clarify, I am referring to "open world survival" games that center around your character surviving out in the big bad scary post-apocalyptic world where you have to scavenge supplies in order to survive from either zombies or the more deadly, other humans.  I do not plan on touching on the forebears of the survival horror genre (Sweet Home, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Silent Hill), so aside from their obvious name dropping, I will not cover those games here.

The games that I do want to cover are, coincidentally enough, are all "Early Access Games" through Steam.  Before I get down to it all, I want to mention that the only game that I will be bringing up here that I have played is DayZ as it was the first game I heard about in this genre back when it was still a mod for Arma II; yes, I intentionally made a hipsteresque comment.

To date, I have only managed to put in about two hours into DayZ, thirty of those minutes I put into the game just before writing this article.  The fact that I have not put as many hours into this game has made me a little sad.  Ultimately, the game that is available to play, albeit an early alpha build of the game, is not very fun.

I understand that the game is based heavily off of a mod for another game and that the game is played on one of dozens of servers with anywhere between zero and 30-50 other people.  In a game where the goal is to survive both zombies and humans, people are going to be very competitive.  In a recent podcast of The Patch, it was "reported" that there were certain aspects that were broken, such as people server hopping after looting an area and becoming overly powerful with respect to people, like me, just signing on.  

Somehow, not normal behavior for a zombie.

To date though, I have not run across any other survivors.  In my last playthrough, I ran across a total of four zombies.  No, make that five.  The first one beat/ate the crap out of me while I tried to climb a ladder up to a roof.  I later threw myself off the roof rather than go about a slow death bleeding out.  One zombie ran through the wall of a house and became stuck in the floor.  The other three mobbed me one after the other after I came out of a house.  The first I clubbed to "death" within a couple of hits with a massive wrench I recently found; the second took way too many hits and I then thought that I had to "target" the head, but that was not the case; the third kept chasing me into the house I had recently vacated before I could manage to close the door behind me.

I must admit though that the player is warned before each playthrough that the game is not complete.  The disclaimer states that "This game is in Alpha and will be for some time.  This means you will experience bugs, unfinished features, problematic design decision, and many more things that disrupt your game experience.  We will be working with the community to fix these. . . Above all, please remember that this game is not finished, and is a work in progress."  I think I may just give DayZ some time to work things out and check back every few months to see how the development is going.  Steam even recently updated their FAQs for Early Access games (possibly due to the Earth: Year 2066 debacle) to state that "You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game. So you should only buy an Early Access game if you are excited about playing it in its current state."

This now brings me to the other games that I did not mention, but as I did mention, there seems to be a fair amount that fit within the DayZ model of open world survival and most importantly "not finished."

• 7 Days to Die
• Beasts of Prey
• Dead State
• The Dead Linger
• The Forest
• The Nether
• Planet Explorers
• Project Zomboid
• Rust
• Starbound
• Starforge
• The Stomping Land

A lot of these games tout their "procedural worlds," which makes me wonder if that means that the world is being constantly created while the game is being played and can be different on each playthrough or for different people, which is kind of what it is, in laymans terms.  Crafting is also a very big aspect in almost all of these games.  Be it crafting weapons, shelter, bandages or cooking food, "creating" is a big aspect here.  I cannot tell from the trailers of the above games if eating/drinking is or will be as important as it is in DayZ, where you can actually die from starvation and dehydration, but I would not be surprised if maintaining your health is another part of these games.

This looks to apparently be "a thing," an idea I thought about in the last couple of days due to Extra Credits' posting about the effects of future games from a generation who have grown up on Minecraft.  These series of games just might be the link between massive worlds where you build stuff to survive and the Left 4 Dead zombie action game.

But, they do not pay me to make assumptions.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And I Believe In The Promised Land