Full Review: Anodyne

Read the First Impressions

When talking about Anodyne, I can't help but say a little more about the ambience.  I want to compare it to a free-to-download indie favorite of mine: Eversion.  This is a little indie game that isn't afraid to get creepy.  It also vibes a bit Earthbound, for the SNES.  It's visually like Earthbound as well:  Anodyne is just between 8-bit and 16-bit style.  It sort of plays like the Game Boy version of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

Like Zelda games, there is a great variety of puzzles to solve.   Unlike Zelda, there are not a lot of equipment upgrades, however, the designers do a great job innovating new and different puzzles as the game progresses.  They also take care to make each stage or region look substantially different from the last, keeping the atmosphere strong, and reducing a sense of repetitiveness.     

The designers were ingeniously courteous in the way they designed the world maps.  They corral you into different winding corridors on the map by the use of locked gates.  However, as you progress, you double back and unlock the gates from the other side.  I don't know if you can beat the game without unlocking the gates, but that would make for one hell of an achievement.  The game itself seems to be only vaguely exploration based.  That is to say, I feel like I am covering every inch of the map in order to progress.  However, that said, I beat the game with 12 undiscovered Cards.

The game comes with a charming little Card System.  You collect various cards throughout the game, which correspond to the different characters and enemies.  Each card contains a caption and an image.  It's pretty cool,  I mean, pointless cards are nothing new, but this game has such a strange storyline, that I'm always very eager to see what the caption is on the cards, even if it's just a throwaway non-sequitur.  Also, the programmers decided not to make the cards pointless: there are locked gates that you can only get through if you have enough cards.

I beat Anodyne in 5.2 hours.  A little underwhelming by the end,  that is my only complaint.  And hey, it might just be my attention span.  There are 12 remaining cards and a secret stage that I haven't yet been to.  I always love these little easter eggs, however, I have not held myself to 100% completion before writing this review.

Is it worth ten bucks?  Well, that's like a trick question, since I got it in a Humble Bundle and also - I generally try to get games on sale, so I usually pay about 7.50 for a game, or even 5.  So, with that context, I still think it's probably worth ten bucks, but I recommend getting Anodyne, or any game, when it's on sale.  Bottom line is that this game is a labor of Love from a tiny team of 2 designers, and it shows.

-D


P.S.  Okay, now I went and reviewed it on Metacritic.  I gave it an 8.  My username is FeaxPotts.  Always nice to have a typo in your username :P  I think I want to go back through all my game reviews and review them on meta critic.  Especially those ones with metacritic scores that I disagree with.

Note:  This game came with an Android version as well.  I gave it a shot on my smart phone -- I don't like it.  Maybe I need time to adjust to having touch buttons.  The biggest problem is the control pad.  It's so slippery, and it's located on the lower left-hand side of the screen, and I'd like it a big higher.  I find that when I lift my thumb, I always set it down on the top of the pad, rather than the center.

Long Overdue: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC)

Disclaimer: The following article is written from the perspective of one who has only finished Skyrim and played parts (the beginning) of The Arena and barely started Daggerfall, so all judgements aside.  I would also like to disclaim that I am probably going to be all over the place and while this would normally fall under the "First Impressions" heading, after 35 hours, I feel like I've glided past First Impressions and moved to "OMG, here's stuff about how I've played the game," but that doesn't sound as classy.

I bought The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind sometime around the beginning of this year when it was X% off through a Steam sale (which is pretty much how/why I buy most/all PC games now), mainly because in the last year I've become a fan of the Elder Scrolls series.  I am also a fan of the composer Jeremy Soule, who a while back I found out was the composer for the Elder Scroll series, Icewind Dale I & II and the Neverwinter Nights series.

First off, So Morrowind was released way back in May of 2002 on both PC and Xbox, although I will only be referring to the PC release.  The in-game chronology takes place in 3E-421, whereas The Arena takes place in 3E-399 and Daggerfall in 3E-405.  For reference, Skyrim takes place in 4E-201 with the 3rd Era ending in 3E-433 after the events in the Oblivion Crisis (Oblivion 4E-433).  

Upon booting up the game, I was happily surprised that the Dragon Imperial logo was used here and I later found out is really the symbol for the Imperial Legion and Cyrodiil.  While playing Skyrim, I thought it was just a "oh, that's a nice coincidence that the Imperials have a dragon logo and LOOK!, there are dragons which have turned up for the first time in forever!"  That was my first thought upon starting up the game and I hadn't even played it yet.

With Morrowind, you can play in either POV or third person.  For me, most of the game I will play in third person but switch to POV whenever I use my bow (which isn't too often) or when looking through boxes for loot (the POV mode uses crosshairs).  The control scheme is pretty much identical to that of Skyrim, although I had to move a few of the keys around.  Since Morrowind moved away from the strictly POV mode that The Arena and Daggerfall followed, you now only have to "click" in order to attack and no longer have to drag the mouse to perform a specific attack.  However, you still have the option to chop/slash/thrust, which is determined by how you are moving at the time of attack.  Forward/back: thrust; left/right: slash; non-moving: chop.  Each attack, based on what type of weapon you are using bears different results and damage.  Like the previous and later games, you still have health, magic and stamina meters.

Now, for why you are all here, or maybe not, I now introduce you to my character the Nord, Valgrin of Markarth:

Hello there ladies. . .

His backstory is not very developed as I was not (and still am not) sure what the overarching story is here in Vvardenfell, the interior volcanic island in Morrowind, where Morrowind takes place.  You start out on a ship, travelling from the mainland of Morrowind to Vvardenfell and you are a prisoner, soon to be pardoned by Uriel Septim VII for reasons unknown to you and your parole officer.  The backstory I created, was that Valgrin was a prisoner in the Cidhna Mines in Markarth (in the Skyrim Province), possibly imprisoned for thievery; although chronologically this doesn't make sense, unless Cidhna Mine was used for prisoners before the Silverbloods took over after Ulfric Stormcloak retook Markarth in 4E-176, roughly 185 years earlier.  Because birth signs are an important part of your character, I will assume that Uriel Septim VII has been looking for someone born under a particular star sign and sending people off to Vvardenfell.  Maybe, I don't really know as I have yet to finish the game.

The first thing that I learned about Morrowind is that the game doesn't pull punches.  There's a cave right outside the starting town, I encountered a villain and was promptly killed.  I think I landed one blow on the foe out of many swings.  It turns out that my accuracy in hand-to-hand combat left something to be desired.  I quickly decided that I would play as a tank-like character, which was a good soul searching decision as that was how I set up Valgrin's attributes when creating him.

Unlike Skyrim, your character in Morrowind does not regenerate either health or magic.  Regeneration occurs only by consuming health potions, casting heal spells (which unless you have a decent Intelligence score, which is not below 30, you will fail casting your spell and thereby wasting your magic points) or resting until healed.  I'm sure a good portion of my time has been spent running out of a dungeon, finding a legal* area to sleep and sleeping off my injuries.  Every town I come to (which I'll get to in a minute) I always try to buy as many healing potions as I can.  And you have to be careful with those potions, as I have had potions "spoil" if I don't use them within a certain amount of time.  I think that's what is happening anyway.

*You can only sleep in legally designated areas, which means not on the streets of a town/village or within the near vicinity of a town.  If there is an inn or a guild that you are a member of you can sleep there

Another "no-holds-barred" example in Morrowind, is how often I have gotten stuck.  Stuck in multiple senses.  While climbing/walking over mountains, I have found myself in a rut that I couldn't get out of.  The only solution was to reload from a previous save.  I have since learned to frequently save before I go exploring.  I have been "stuck" in another sense when I was attacked by a blighted something-or-other.  I lost my strength, became encumbered and was unable to move.  I tried sleeping it off as I do with low health, but that didn't work, so I had to restart from a previous save.  Most recently (as in yesterday), I had to reload a number of times because an enemy I had to defeat so I could get to my bounty because he always summoned a creature that would drain my strength thereby making my carrying capacity down to 0.  After miraculously surviving the battle, nothing I used seemed to cure my ailment.  Reload.

This is either going to be a very long or very short battle.

Fast travelling!  Until recently, there was only one way of doing this and it makes sense in-game.  In Vvardenfell, there are large insectoids call Silt Striders, which have been domesticated and used to travel from town-to-town for a small fee (usually 35 -50 septims).  Upon looking up information about how to complete a certain quest, I discovered that members of the Mages Guild can fast travel to other Mages Guild houses.  If you're not a member, you can't use this free service.  Personally, I can't see Valgrin even attempting to be a mage, despite him knowing spells (healing spells).  So, the majority of travelling I do through Vvardenfell is done on foot.  Coming from Skyrim, that doesn't sound too bad.  In Morrowind, "by-foot" might bother a lot of people.  Un-modded, and without a lot of skill points put towards fast moving, this is what over 50% of my time is spent like:

Sorry for the not-so-great video quality.  I don't have a capture card, just a cellphone.

Yes, you have two modes of moving.  Walking and slightly faster walking/running.  Thankfully, when you run out of stamina, you are still able to run, but your experience in "Athletics" no longer increases.  Honestly though, this doesn't bother me at all.  I'm one for looking at the landscape and general adventuring.  However, there have been times where travelling from one end of Vvardenfell to the other has been tedious.

As you might be able to guess, having put 35 hours into this game, I am very much liking it.  And, even with all that I have said here, there is a lot more that I haven't even covered, such as leveling up, the vast number of skills and attributes, the way you have to talk to/persuade people for information (the scripting for dialogue), wear-and-tear on equipment, the different components for dressing (pants, shirt, body armor, greaves, L/R gauntlet/bracers, L/R shoulder pieces/pauldrons, helmet) and absolutely no GPS on your map (someone says "it's in the south-western region. . ." you have to go explore the southwest region looking for a cave).

So if you are looking for another game in the Elder Scrolls series that isn't Skyrim and are interested in a challenge with a very steep learning curve (your hand will not be held), Morrowind might just be what you're looking for.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Saw The Coming of the End

And Now: A Dramatic Too Much Shit's Happening Selfie

The game ideas just keep rolling

Alright, so I was reading our local homeless newspaper.  You know, the one that people sell for a dollar instead of panhandling.  I don't usually read it.  Sometimes I buy it and then throw it away.  But today I decided to read it, and it was pretty interesting.  Given that I am without a job, or a lease, I'm approaching it from a 'there but for the grace of god go I" perspective.

I'm sure between the title of this post, and the first paragraph, you can get where I'm going with this.  Homeless video game!  You play a poor schizophrenic veteran, scrounging for nibbles in the wastebasket, swatting invisible flies and getting roughed up by the police!  What's not to love?  Alright, so my idea has a little more to it than that, but I think you can see that emulating this lifestyle would make for a challenging game.

I think there is more sense to have a game following the efforts of a person on the brink, so to speak. I imagine this game using a role playing game engine.  Two key stats would be Charisma and Comeliness.  Charisma being a measurement of your ability to effectively relate to others, Comeliness your physical attractiveness.  So, your character has limited resources, but is able to stay at the local inns or whatever, until your money runs out.  Then, exposure, bad rest, bad diet will degrade your Comeliness and Charisma.  Basically, you get uglier, smellier, and who doesn't have a harder time relating to people when hungry and on little sleep?

As these two stats go down, you'll note that townspeople are less responsive to you, and some will out and out ignore you or, worse, tell you to get a job.  Shop keepers will refuse to sell to you, and you'll have to go to the seedier parts of town to have an overnight stay at the inn. A key change from the standard RPG is that you couldn't just go kill rats to collect gold.  But you might be able to rob people, but then the authorities would get involved. Really, this model could go on and on.  

But, like any good indie game, it would probably be best to keep the scope limited.  So, I propose a game with about three towns, allowing you to migrate a bit in case you get in trouble with the law.  I still don't know what the goal would be.  To rescue a princess?  I don't know.  But if the system were properly skewed, it would be  very tough to play the role of the wandering adventurer.  And I think that is pretty interesting.  Feel free to toss out ideas in the comments, if you come up with anything.

-D

Origin Stories Part II: Aeliana of Chorrol

Back in June, I wrote a post about the process and subsequently created back story for a character I created in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the sole purpose of going through the Civil War quests on the side of the Stormcloak rebellion.  Shortly after I completed that storyline, I created another character so that I could do the opposite side of the Civil War quests and join the Imperial Legion.  This character backstory saw greater change from its initial conception.

First, I started off with a general idea of where I wanted the character to come from.  In the Stormcloak quests, there was a mission to infiltrate an Imperial camp to deliver false reports/orders.  This is where the kernel of the new character was created.  I thought it would be fun to have a female soldier be chosen because she's a woman (but also happens to be a very capable warrior/soldier) in order to seduce an officer to wreck havoc in whichever camp she's infiltrating.  While it's true that on both sides, not all officers/generals are male, I found this idea to be amusing (albeit somewhat clichéd).  Thus began the process of creating a female character that would fight on the side of the Empire, how she found herself to be in the Skyrim province and most importantly, how she managed to be captured by the Imperials and threatened with execution at Helgen.

Since I wanted my character to be a supporter of the Empire and since I hadn't ever played as a native of Cyrodiil yet, having her be an Imperial was an easy starting point.  I also needed a city/village for her to originate in and not having played Oblivion yet, I had to do some research on the cities of Cyrodiil and find the right city.  Additionally, knowing that the citizens of Cyrodiil have Romanesque names, I felt that my character should have a name that at least sounded something akin to Latin.

The first story that I had concocted, was that the character (then unnamed) grew up in the city of Chorrol and when she was 7-8, she joined a local thieves guild and was involved in a robbery turned murder, left behind by her guild members and was arrested.  Due to the fact that the people who had been murdered [a noble-ish family (second cousins to the Countess) consisting of three children, a mother and two maids], she was sent to prisons of the Imperial City.  The girl was not executed due to her young age.  My idea was then to have her act as a patsy for a noble, but somehow "performed well" and was sent to a minimum security ward and every so often, she would perform "dirty" jobs for various nobles who needed things taken care of secretly and couldn't be traced back to them if she were to fail.  Eventually she would be offered a pardon if she would travel to Skyrim to help quell the ongoing rebellion there.

So where does the name come in?  I had wanted to have her forget her original name and be given a name while in prison.  Not knowing much/anything about Latin, I thought something like "Broken Child"  or "Lost One" Latinized would be cool sounding.  Alas, that was not the case.

As you can tell, the top half of the page was spent writing out the meanings of various words into Latin and a lot of what I was coming up with, not only did not sound very name-like to me, I also felt that I could not alter the names enough and still have resemble Latin and have a meaning similar to what I was aiming for.

Eventually I settled on the name of "Sola Rupita."  The "Sola" still meaning one or only, but I'm not 100% sure what "Rupita" was a conglomeration of, just by looking at what I had written down.  Perhaps the "Ruo" from "Fall" and the "Cantita" from "Broken?"

Either way, we all know that Sola Rupita ended up not being the name that I decided upon, as you can clearly see from the title of this post.  I'm not sure where I found the name Aeliana, but it is infact a real name, being the feminine form of Aelius, possibly derived from the Greek word for "sun," "helios."  This name, I apparently, and actually still do, find to be a better name than what I was coming up with.

The next stage of development was deciding that Aeliana would be in the Imperial City with her father, but still maintaining the fact that a family (now her family) was murdered.  In this iteration, Aeliana had always been angered that her family's murder was never avenged.  Aeliana and her father then lived just outside the Imperial City (why would they be in the Imperial City in the first place?) with Aeliana joining the city watch.  Basically the Kate Beckett story.  (I like to have a reasonable explanation as to how/why your character knows how to proficiently use weapons and fight in armor and this avenue gave me a good explanation for her abilities at the beginning of the game).  Her father then decides to marry her off to a pseudo-wealthy land owner.  Not wanting that life and the chance to avenge her family's death, she hides among a caravan headed for the Skyrim province; which doesn't then make a whole lot of sense.

The final iteration I wrote up, I did while at work and took some paper that we normally use for labelling washing machines and dryers.  I maintained that Aeliana's family was killed by members of a theives guild, but this happened while she was somewhere else (I guess I still never came up with a reason why she wasn't killed.  Successfully hid from attackers maybe?)  She was then sent to live with her Uncle who was known to have lived just outside of the Imperial City; Aeliana was around the age of 12 at this time (4E - 200).  At 14, her uncle deemed her too ugly to be marriageable and was allowed to join the city guard (in an auxiliary role).  When she was 15 (4E - 203), her uncle found a boy for her to marry (a young 11 year old boy who had a sickly mother and dead father) as he wanted to expand his own land and holdings (element continued from previous version).

I thought then that she would disguise herself and escape to Skyrim upon a caravan, which is where she befriended a girl from Chorrol (hence all the backstory now belonging to someone else and does not apply to our character), but I didn't ultimately like that idea.  I felt that being given the "okay" from a captain/sergeant from the city guard to leave with a regiment to Skyrim rather than be married off (as he felt that she would be too good of a soldier to lose to marriage).  The captain/sergeant knows of a regiment heading for Skyrim to assist in the ongoing rebellion and thinks that after a year or two, she can return to Cyrodiil and continue the life that she not only wants, but one that he can see that she excells at.  

I then changed the story so that the decision to have Aeliana as part of the regiment was a last minute decision, her name was not added to the "official" roster.  The caravan/regiment was then ambushed by Ulfric Stormcloak, seeing it as a way of helping to furnish the Stormcloaks and harm the Imperial Legion at the same time.  Ulfric then was ambushed himself and taken to Helgen.  This then gave me an explanation as to why your character's name is "not on the list" at the beginning of the game when you are about to be executed with the Stormcloaks.

With all of that in mind, I present to you Aeliana of Chorrol.

Yes gentlemen, here's a lady who's not afraid to get her hands dirty:

Marriage Material?

I plan on playing her as a staunch believer in the good of the empire.  While I might have her go through cities that side with the Stormcloaks, I won't have her spend money in those cities as she might feel that doing so supports the rebellion.  She's that kind of a person.  I could easily see her story becoming one where she sees the "dark side" to the empire, but that's not the story I want to tell with her.  Aeliana believes that what she is doing will help to preserve the good and the stability of the empire.

Unlike Gherard of Farrun, I don't see myself altering Aeliana's appearance as she grows as I don't think she needs to grow visually as Gherard does.  That's not the part of her story that is important.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Full Review: Gone Home (PC)

Gone Home is an story-based exploration game developed by The Fullbright Company based out of Portland, Oregon .  The story is set in a town/suburb near Portland (not that that matters, but it does pseudo-explain why it's raining the entire time when the game takes place in June) and takes place in 1995.  I feel that's all I can tell you without giving anything away.  I knew practically nothing about the game before going into it, aside from all that stuff about the game being developed using the HPL Engine and was planned as an Amnesia mod.  That along gives certain expectations as the Amnesia is a POV survival horror series.

If you do not want to know any spoilers about the game do not read further as I will be talking about certain aspects of the game which may very well contain spoilers.  So before I get down to it, I highly recommend playing the game before reading any further, unless of course you have no plans to play/experience this game.

~*CONTAINS SPOILERS*~

The story in Gone Home takes place in 1995 and I feel half of the game is reminiscing on that very fact.  While playing Conklederp asked me if the setting and amount of detail in the game for 1995 made me miss that time (I was 15 in 1995) and I said that while I didn't necessarily "miss it," seeing 1995 portrayed as Fullbright was showing us, it made me happy.

Samantha is the main character, whom we find out about through diary entries, notes between her and other students at the new school she is attending and teacher notes home.  All of the diary entries are read to the player by Sam, voiced by Sarah Grayson.  There is so much emotion and genuineness in her voice throughout the entire game that I cannot watch trailers or videos of the game with her voiceover and not have some kind of an emotional response.

The POV is through her older sister Katilin/Katie who has just returned from a year long trip around Europe, presumably shortly after graduation and she comes home to an empty house (that her family has moved to since she left for Europe, hence you the player not recognizing the "family home").  

The library we all wish we had growing up.

While exploring the house, you start finding items/notes/documents detailing your family's past, again presumably that the character of Katie may not have known, such as your father's failed book career from the 70's; his book career doesn't seem to be the hidden fact, only the fact that neither of his two books sold very well.  Or information that the house that the family moved into belonged to your pseudo-estranged uncle and was willed to your father after the uncle's death.  There are also hints that there's something wrong with the house, which you discover through diary entries from Sam and crumpled up notes found in trashcans.

When the game starts, you have access to both the bottom floor (with one door being locked) and the second floor.  Being who I am, I explored the ground floor first although I could have begun on the second floor, potentially "ruining (??)" the flow of the story.  Ah the story.  By starting on the ground floor, the story of your family begins in the 1970s with notes about your father's failed authoring career and how he lapses into alcoholism and an unfulfilling job of writing music equipment reviews.  You're then plunged into 1994, shortly after your family first moves into the new house and waves of nostalgia from the mid '90s flood your senses.

This, seriously, was what my Fridays looked like for most of the mid '90s.

There is so much that I can and want to say about Gone Home, but 1) There isn't enough "time" to give a play-by-play synopsis of everything that happened, and 2) The game is best experienced.  It really is like a 3 hour interactive movie of sorts, without any cut scenes.  There are no monsters to run away from, no jump scares or scare chords and only a few instances where you take a cassette and put it in a tape deck. You don't have to, but why wouldn't you?  The entire game is spent going from room-to-room, picking up slips of paper, receipts, notes from school, notebook entries, reading them and forming a picture about what has been happening with your family while you have been away.

Believe me when I say that you really feel like you know the family even before the game is over.  At one point, I turned to Conklederp and said something along the lines of "Jan [the mother] wouldn't do that, she's not like that at all. . ." and then realized I was talking about a person I had only read about for the last two hours.  I was very much emotionally invested in these people after only two hours.

Near the end of the game, I had this enormous pit in my stomach about how the game would end.  I didn't want what I thought what was going to happen, to happen.  I was emotionally afraid to find out "what happened."  I had been with this family for nearly three hours, seeing a family nearly torn apart by varying forces and start to bring itself back together and if what I feared were to have happened, I have no shame in saying that I think I might've lost it.

Instead, the "climax" happened and I had this immense wave of happiness, joy and relief wash over me.  I can't even compare what it would be like as I know that any analogy I used would include something about how the game actually ended and I would at least like to keep that partly a surprise.

The only way I know how to end this post, is that Gone Home is a beautifully composed experience wrapped inside of a video game.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Ball of Game Ideas

Listening to the Big Ideas episode of A Life Well Wasted podcast, and reflecting on an episode of the Experience Points podcast, Taking Action in Open Worlds episode.

In the Exp Podcast, they talk about the size of the world of GTAV, and all the mini games, and how many hours people can dump into this game.  And then, on the other hand, they also talk about how the mini games are okay, but not that great.  But apparently there are a whole ton of them.  I wholeheartedly endorse the inclusion of bunches of mini-games.  Okay, so combine the idea of an open world game, with an idea for a 3d browser I'm lifting from my friend Ghost, with another idea I had when I played Earthbound and went to the Arcade, and I have a new nifty idea.

So, the Earthbound idea was that I wanted to be able to play games in the town arcade.  I thought that would be so rad.  Like, to move my character to a pinball machine and then play pinball.  Or Tetris.  Or Ninja Turtles or a clone of those games.  I don't know why, but I really really liked this idea.  And I know it exists somewhere in that era... maybe Legend of the Mystical Ninja...No, that's not it...Oh, the Gold Saucer did this in FF VII.

This combines well with the game mechanic article I posted the other day.  The mini game is a game mechanic I always wanted to see more of.  Here's another article on mini games.  Looks like I got my wish, too!  Animal Crossing lets you play NES Games.  But this is a different idea.

Okay, so here's the  idea.  It's for Console makers, Sony, Nintendo, Valve or Microsoft.  So, the browser in your console -- is a game.  Right?  So, you boot up your Wii Z (fictional game system from Nintendo) and you control your little Mii around in some funny in-game world.  Perhaps like Animal Crossing.  Yes.  Exactly like Animal Crossing.  So, in your Animal Crossing world, you can set up your sweet living room with a TV, console and a bunch of games.  Or you can set up an arcade room, where all the games are represented by arcade cabinets.  And you just have to pull up to them, and play the actual games in your library.

But-But-But, the game is also Wii-Sports, and you just have to go to the bowling alley if you want to play bowling.  And, of course, it's the magic inter-dimensional Bowling ally that allows Miis from all over the world to bump into each other online and bowl.  Of course, you can have your own private alley to play with your friends who are actually physically with you.

Right?  This makes sense, right?  The file browser is a game, with its own mini-games a-la Wii sports and Animal Crossing.  But on top of that, you can access and play the games you own from within the browser.So yeah, there's the idea:  Animal Crossing is preloaded into the Game System firmware, and you can access your video game library through it.  All the Social Media of Animal Crossing, combined with your Console Browser.  I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't done this yet, especially with the huge success of Animal Crossing.

-D


P.S.  Also, here's a goofy Animal Crossing/Sim City game idea:  It would be hilarious if one of the disasters in Sim City was that a Katamari would come rolling through your city, snatching up pieces of it.  Same for Animal Crossing... But like, if the Katamari was big enough,  you could just walk around like normal, because it would have taken your whole town as a single piece.

Full Review: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC)

Story

First off, you have to understand that this is a game from the people who created Dear Esther, which means that the story might be a little confusing and mysterious.  This is also a game from the people who created Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which means that, as the main character, you're not going to know anything about what is going on because, shocker!, you have some form of amnesia, hence being an integral part of the story/plot yet as the player, not knowing what is going on and exploring the world for the first time.

After I completed the game, I was pretty sure I knew what had been going on, but I still had some questions.  The story in the game is told through your fractured psyche talking to you and finding sheets of journal entries and letters, and never in chronological order.  You might find a letter from December 19, 1899 followed by one from August 5, 1899.  Naturally this form of storytelling is going to be a bit disorienting especially since I didn't play the game in a single sitting.  Additionally, relying on the player to discover potentially key pieces of information before permanently leaving an area puts a lot of faith in the developers.  

Admittingly, I visited the Wikipedia page and read over the plot.  I had a number of "Oh, okay" moments and none of the "Wait, is that what happened!?" variety.  It has made me wonder how much I missed going through and where I missed picking up notes.

Presently, I could see myself going through the game again, knowing what I now know, which is what the industry calls "replayability," but I will probably hold off for a bit to let the game sink in some more.

Gameplay

Gameplay is very simple.  WASD to move, mouse to look, hold "shift" to run and left click to pick up and hold on to certain objects.  Pigs uses Frictional Games' HPL Engine 2, the same that was used for The Dark Descent so there is nothing out of the ordinary or out of place here.  

Because the game was developed by The Chinese Room (Dear Esther), you do a lot of walking although running is also an option, but I only found myself running when I encountered some unnamable horror; I know what they are, I am just choosing not to name them for the sake of not spoiling too much.

Unlike Dear Esther, death is an option, but as there are no save points (of which I was a little disappointed that the relic/artifacts from Penumbra and The Dark Descent weren't brought back as saving mechanisms, but the game does frequently autosave), you will "respawn" in the general area from where you died.

As stated previously, there is no inventory system here.  You also have no health or sanity meter.  There were a couple of times, like after a miss-step and falling down a ladder, that the screen took on a reddish tint, which I took to mean that I shouldn't do that again or I would be dead tone, but after a while the tint went away.  

Graphics

I showed a lot of examples during my First Impressions article about how the game looked while running it at near optimum performance.  But in case you missed that article, here are some more lovely screenshots of that beautiful machine.

Churches are always great places for horrible things to happen

Mapping in the game is achieved by map like diagrams.

Sound & Music

The music to Pigs was written by Dear Esther composer Jessica Curry.  I really enjoyed the score to this game, I think more than The Dark Descent (music composed by Mikko Tarmia) and Dear Esther.  Both of those, while both were very atmospheric scores, they were not very melodic and therefore not very memorable; not that the music wasn't good, it fit the mood and setting of those games very well.  The music in Pigs was really good.  There were a number of cues that I really enjoyed hearing, both as an atmospheric piece and as music that I could listen to outside of the video game setting.

Sadly, the soundtrack was not made available through Steam when I preordered the game, but it is available through Jessica Curry's bandcamp site.  So I may just have to pop on over there (again).

Final Thoughts
As you can probably surmise at this point, I really enjoyed this game.  I was confused at times as to what I had to do and what the overall story was, but maybe that was just me and not a fault of the game designers.  Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is definitely a game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys storytelling and survival horror games.  

One potential downside is that I was able to complete the game in 8 hours.  That might be a huge turn off to a portion of the gaming community, especially games like Skyrim and currently GTAV, both touting game times of over 100 hours.  I cannot see Pigs maintaining the level of horror/uncomfortability/confusion for more than the time that was given.  Eight hours is the perfect amount of time for this type of game.

Granted it's not your traditional survival horror, but it's one that I came away feeling good about, albeit with the desire to take a long lukewarm shower.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Into That Great Void My Soul'd Be Hurled

Monthly Update: November 2013

Happy November lovely people!  Jesus these months are flying by, at least they are on this end.  I've been somewhat busy, both on the working side and on the video gaming side.  Conklederp and I are also busy making plans of the matrimonial type, but there's many months to go before Convergence takes place, Altman be praised.

Since this isn't a blog about work, let's skip right to video games.

A couple of months back I posted about Donkey Kong Country Rerurns 3D, and I'm still working my way though the island that apparently has the tastiest bananas in existence.  I think the only lifeform that has yet to go after Kong's banana's are aliens, but I missed all the DKC after Diddy Kong's Quest so I might be mistaken on that front.  One thing that I forgot to mention in the original post was that I had to change the control scheme from the default to the alternative setting.  The default control scheme has you using the joystick to control DK, which I couldn't figure out why I didn't like it.  That is until I realized that the last time I played a DKC game was on the SNES, which still used a directional pad.  So that's what I'm using.  I've forgone the joystick for the directional pad and I'm a lot happier.  The only downside is that I now "have" to use the L/R triggers to do DK's characteristic slap-the-ground move and the newer blow when crouched, which is an ability that almost/practically useless.

Another issue that I've having with DKCR3D is that it's pretty difficult, especially the mine cart stages.  There are a lot of jumps that you have to make while ducking in the cart and if you jump a millisecond too soon you smash your head onto a spikey ceiling (and die) or if you jump too late you plunge to your death (and die. . .again?).  There's a reason why there are times in the game when you have close to 30 lives.  The game is designed with this in mind.  You are going to die.  Alot.  I would love to see a runthrough of someone going through the game on their first try without dying.  Actually I wouldn't, because then I might hate myself.

Next onto Ace Combat Assault: Assault Horizon - Extended Edtion, which I talked a bit about last week.  I would now like to make a correction.  In the post, I said that I had been playing on the "Easy" (or what the game slaps you with by calling you a "Rookie") difficulty setting, when in fact I was apparently playing on "Pilot," which is the equivalent of "Normal."  I realized this mistake when I booted the game up, went to free missions and noticed that I had a score when selecting "Pilot" as opposed to "Rookie."  So I started over again and wouldn't you know it, the game is easier.  Not a whole lot easier, I don't know if I would even attempt the game on "Elite" (aka "Hard"), but the game has now become fun again, although it's still pretty difficult, especially when you engage DFM (Dog Fight Mode) and the enemy plane plunges "below the hard deck" and you automatically follow, practically flying into mountains, creating a bit of lag because you shouldn't be able to fly through mountains.  Frequently your plane bounces of said mountains and you end up disengaging.  Despite the game being pseudo-less-hard, it's still pretty difficult for being on the easiest setting.

Back in mid-August, I posted about Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time and how it only came out on iOS.  Well, a couple of weeks back that all changed and was released on Android OS and just like iOS, the game is free with all the same in game purchases available.  Now, I'm not going to do an entirely separate First Impressions for playing it on my phone as it's the same game.  the only difference is that now my fingers cover more of the screen while playing, which has only been an issue a couple of times.(planting plants in the wrong spot or accidentally giving plant food to a plant while picking up suns).  I also decided to purchase the Snow Pea Shooter with my justification being that the game itself is free, and I've very much enjoyed it so why not show some monetary appreciation.

In the last couple of days in October, both Conklederp and I went through The Stanley Parable Demo, which was a lot of fun.  I don't want to give anything away, which I would easily do by talking more about the demo than I am doing right now.  I won't even say what it reminded me of or, really, anything else.  I should just stop right now.  Although I will say that (at least right now), the demo is not controller compatible, which is odd because it seems controller support would be perfect for this type of game.  Alright, I've said too much.  Go play the demo.

I see November being a similar month, gaming-wise, as October, although more turkey and most likely more running, which I'm going to get back into, tomorrow or at the very latest, Sunday.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Want To Touch The Other Side