First Impressions: The Bridge (PC)

I brought The Bridge a few weeks back, which was when I saw that The Bridge was on sale over at Steam.  It's a game that I first saw around the first of the year.  I was intrigued by the concept, the artistic style of the game and the fact that I love M.C. Escher's artwork.  So take all that and make it into a puzzle-platformer, which is what Ty Taylor and Mario Castañeda did.  This isn't a game made/developed by a company, but by two people who love what they do.  I'm assuming they love what they do, because the game is a lot of fun and looks great, it's really shiny!

Brass tacks time!  The game mechanics are pretty simple.  You move left or right with the directional pad (I'm using a 360 controller) and then you can rotate the world with the right and left triggers.  That's it.  There's no jumping.  Oh, when/if you die, you can hold B to rewind to any point in the level in lieu of restarting the level from the beginning   And you press A when you want to enter a door.  There is no jumping, but at the same time, you can't die from falling too far and landing but, you can die if you fall off the side of the level.  There is no running.  At least through the second world/map, that's it.  However, if you watch the trailer, you will notice that there are times when the world rotates at an incredibly fast rate, allowing your character to hover.  Presently, I can spin the world at a pretty slow rate (R/L trigger) and "sometimes" if I hold the joystick in the same direction, the world picks up speed, but nowhere near enough speed to keep the character hovering.  Will this be an ability that I will learn later on?  Maybe, although I feel that that would make some puzzle solving almost too easy.  I of course, say that now.

Each level begins with the camera showing you your goal (the door), the key (if the door is locked) and any obstacles.  Your character, who bears some resemblance to M.C. Escher is drawn into the world:

That sounds like a lot to preface each level, but it's nice seeing the level up close before the camera pans out so you are able to view the level in it's entirety.  

True, the game does bear some resemblances to And Yet it Moves, but only in the same way that Mega Man bears some similarities to Super Mario Bros.  They are both platformers, they both have enemies and they both use the directional pad to move.  They are two different enough games so that there really should not be any discussion of The Bridge being a clone of AYiM, of which I have heard/read no mention of this.  So yes.

Nine stages (I-VI and II-III) and 71 minutes into the game, I feel like I've gotten a pretty good grasp on what I am supposed to do and how I am supposed to achieve my goal.  The creators also do a great job of keeping the puzzles varied and interesting.  In the first level you are introduced to the concept of solving puzzles simply by walking and rotating the level.  By the time you reach the last level (I-VI), you find yourself having to position yourself just right before rotating, waiting for the Menace to move, rotate back, move, rotate again, avoid the Menace.  This of course is not a walkthrough, but you get the idea.  You learn skills and new obstacles are introduced that do not seem out of place within the world.  Wait, did I not mention Menace's earlier?  Ah well, you'll just have to find out what those are on your own.  Cheesy, but whatever.

1727, I see what you did there.

In closing, The Bridge is a very fun game that looks beautiful.  The background music is very subtle, but still noticeable to um, notice how well if fits in with the game.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

So Lost Here In A World Not Meant To Be

It Looks To Be Another Update Of Sorts

I'm only kind of at a loss as to what to talk about today.  I wasn't able to post this last Friday (8/9/2013) as Conklederp and I had some friends (Vorlynx and Mills Co.) visiting from Nor*Cal all last week.  There was a robotics conference up here in Portland and there was some river floating and blackberry picking that had to be done as well.  We also started the process of making blackberry wine (adapted recipe to follow) and now our kitchen smells like fermenting fruit, which in turn brings me back to my time working for R.H. Phillips Winery during the 2006 harvest season.  It's the kind of smell that would make you think some fruit somewhere has done something it shouldn't have, if you didn't already know where it was coming from.  Goodtimes.

I've (still) been playing a lot of Infinite Space, (still) and have acquired some more "abilities" such as having a docking bay for individual fighters (a la Battlestar Galactica's Colonial Vipers) which cause minimal damage to the opposing fleets flagship while slowing down the rest of their fleet; realizing that icons above each of the ships in your fleet correspond to weapons and each have their own max and min range; melee battles are a pain-in-the-ass and play like a constant game of  roshambo; ship modules of a certain type (such as bridge/red modules) can fit in other areas of the ship as long as they don't say they have to be in a specific location in the description; "Grus" is a word used in the game that is substituted interchangeably for both "shit" and "fuck" and any other variation thereof; the game is pretty mature, considering it's Teen rating, such as the main character cutting off a bad guys arms to get information and a main character shooting a bad guy at point-blank range in the face out of frustration/fear/anger.  There's a lot going on in the game and a lot of space to do it in, sometimes almost too much space.

I also played a bit of Portal 2 co-op with Vorlynx, but only so much before I had to leave for work (which was also before he had finished the single player campaign).  I've also put roughly six more hours into Torchlight, 2 hours into Half-Life and maybe an hour into Penumbra: Black Plague.  Torchlight is more-or-less just dungeon crawling fun that I continue with after Half-Life becomes too frustrating with having/needing to save after every encounter with enemies and then reloading every time I feel I've wasted too much ammunition or taken too much damage.  I want to play more of Penumbra: Black Plague (partly so that I can write up my First Impressions, but also) because I really liked the first game in the series, I like the company (Frictional Games) and I want to see how the story will end.  And semi-most importantly, I want to play it in the dark for maximum un-nervingnous.

I also went through a couple of the demos that I have on my 3DS, most successfully were the two demos for Style Savvy which will make their way to Demo Time in the coming weeks.  Yes, stop laughing.

I haven't kept up with video games in the news and what's been going on in that world.  I haven't played enough "older" games to warrant another Emulator Hour.  I kind of feel like a bad person, except that I don't.  Boo hoo me, I know.

With all the PAX timbits floating around, I'm very sad that I will not be able to attend PAX Prime this year (as I haven't been able to since PAX2010) due to work scheduling problems.  It doesn't help either that I live 600 miles closer than I did when I was able to attend, but things are in the works (loosely) so that I will be able to attend in the future, although I vaguely recall making a similar statement last year around this same time.

Oh hey look, The Bridge is on sale.  Time to go and take care of that.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Wonders Need Time