TL;DP Reviews: Community Edition (formerly "1 hour in" game reviews)

Mantid wrote:
doubtingthomas396 wrote:
Eleima wrote:

Yeah, about that scale... I never used it because I've never played a Dark Souls game not do I care to and it really doesn't have much meaning to me. :)

None of that stopped me!

One day I will review Dark Souls for the TL;DP and the recursive scale will break the internet

I'm going to be disappointed if Dark Souls can't rate at least one Dark Souls on the scale.

By the time DS actually makes it into my library, it will probably be;

Spoiler:

Yes, this is the Dark souls of its genre, but it's no Bloodborne!

Mantid wrote:

I'm going to be disappointed if Dark Souls can't rate at least one Dark Souls on the scale.

And I will be suspicious if it gets more than one Dark Souls. (Or more than two for Dark Souls 2.)

Game: Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger
Platform: PC (Steam)
Sponsored by: budo99
Gifted on: June 25th, 2014

Faster than 6 shots from a Schofield:
Red Dead Redemption meets Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, mashed with Call of Duty

12 well-aimed headshots from a Winchester 1866:
I've been on a bit of a shooter kick recently, and honestly, Call of Jaurez is exactly what I was looking for.

The gun play is tight, but the shooting is a little on the arcade-y side. You can tell there's "monster closets" around each map, which direction you're supposed to go to move forward, and when the next set piece is going to activate.

But then you have this little bit of spice on the back of your tongue, and it's called "the humoring revisionist narrator". The whole premise of the game is that it's actually 1911, and you're a cowboy-turned-bounty hunter that knows the world is changing around him. So you've bellied up to a bar, and start spinning some tales for the patrons in exchange for some booze. Each mission in Call of Jaurez is told as you taking control of the narrator and wandering through his memory of the events. And much like a death in Sands of Time is met with "oh no, that's not how it went", so too is the retelling from our narrator - "Suddenly a barn appeared", or "and then I noticed a way out" are sprinkled into the downtimes following some intense horde-style arena battles.

While he may not be the narrator from Bastion, he does a pretty decent job. At the same time, you don't really have much in the way of options (at least, it doesn't feel like you do...), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The more games I play, the more I'm coming to respect the output of Ubisoft - this is a solid A-AA game, well worth a few bucks. The graphics are beautiful, the gunplay is solid, and (amazingly) the voice acting and story are well done.

If you've got an itch for a Western, I'd strongly recommend firing this up.

Will I keep playing?
Spoiler alert: yes. I...may...have already put in 5 or 6 hours, thanks to the excellent pacing. It's just one of those games that makes you want to keep playing mission after mission. Edited to add: apparently I'm already a strong 2/3rds through the game, and only have 3 or 4 missions left to go.

Permalink for Call of Jaurez: Gunslinger

McIrishJihad wrote:

Game: Just Cause 2

What can I say, this is really up my alley. I personally love open-world games when I'm given free reign to do what I want. But there are some downsides - most notably, everything related to the controls. Everything just feels "backwards", and I'm not really interested in spending a few minutes to map my controller.

Which controller are you using? Because XBox360 controller is basically plug-and-play in JC2, down to the on-screen button-press hints.

I have some 80 hours in JC2 and refuse to go for the final Agency mission - still polishing off the side missions and clearing villages/military bases. This is my "I have 15 minutes of spare time and want to blow things up" go-to game.

wanderingtaoist wrote:
McIrishJihad wrote:

Game: Just Cause 2

What can I say, this is really up my alley. I personally love open-world games when I'm given free reign to do what I want. But there are some downsides - most notably, everything related to the controls. Everything just feels "backwards", and I'm not really interested in spending a few minutes to map my controller.

Which controller are you using? Because XBox360 controller is basically plug-and-play in JC2, down to the on-screen button-press hints.

I have some 80 hours in JC2 and refuse to go for the final Agency mission - still polishing off the side missions and clearing villages/military bases. This is my "I have 15 minutes of spare time and want to blow things up" go-to game.

Using an Xbox 360 controller. To me, it feels like the first five minutes of play I'm spending time going "oh yeah, grapple is LB not RB, whoops, just threw a grenade".

Game: War of the Human Tanks
Platform: PC (Steam)
Sponsored By: My questionable love of visual novels

TL;DR: In the fictional land of Japon war is fought with artificial intelligent weapons that resemble girls because... Japon? The game play reminds me of a cross between Battleship and Stratego combined with some unit and research management and a dash of Final Fantasy's active time battle system thrown in for good measure. This is tossed together with a very silly cast of characters, a slightly more serious story, and a much more serious soundtrack to create a board-game-like, leisurely, absolutely silly, tactical game, or a b.l.a.s.t. for short.

The Longer Review: I have had my eye on this one for a couple years now, but never got around to buying it. With its release in Steam, the combined forces of convince and Steam sales finally put it in my hands.

Starting up a new game, you are quickly introduced to a war outside is steadily losing. Not that your character, who may or may not be a legendary commander, cares much. Your unit has been ordered out of the war and he is more than happy to stay home and watch anime.

Desperation forces the Japon leaders to reactivate your unit to protect the Capitol from falling. You first mission is to take out a well placed artillery unit overlooking the city. Good thing your character has the last surviving Infinite Range Artillery unit in his collection!

The first battle, a simple tutorial, makes things really easy for you. Just find the enemy commander (with your equally infinite range scout) and shoot her with your Artillery. They even tell you which area to look in. Still it gives you a good run down of exactly how the game plays. You have a map with only your tanks' limited visibility. You can use your tanks to scout on foot to find enemies, or ping locations with your scouts and artillery to find/destroy the enemy tanks. Every tank takes one hit to be destroyed (except special units, like armored trains), so spotting the enemy first is extremely important.

You next tutorials introduce unit building and research choices, both of which are pretty straight forward and simple. Getting more resources isn't much of a issue either, you can replay mission to gain more. Since there is a limit on the number of units you can deploy on each mission, you can't add too many troops, though the research upgrades do help.

Each mission is book-ended with lengthy, silly dialog among the characters with a few morsels of plot tossed in here and there. With the way the Human Tanks are treated, the game certainly could go into commentary a variety of social issues, from slavery and equal rights to commentary on war itself, but I doubt it'll touch too heavily on any of those. An hour in and it just doesn't lend itself to any too deep.

The game also sports replay-ability with multiple endings and a New Game+ mode.

Dark Souls Scale: Two Shock Tanks and one Scout! The game is pretty easy to pick up and learn, but the nature of the battles means the game can get very challenging if they developers let it. Will have to delve deeper into it to find out.

Front Post Link: War of the Human Tanks (Mantid)

Game: Irisu Syndrome
Platform: PC (Freeware)
Sponsored By: The generosity of the Internet
Download Links: Irisu Syndrome (Green "Download Now" button); English Patch

TL;DR: I'm not sure how much time I actually spent playing this game. Addictive puzzles games have a way of making you loose track of time. Combined with a sweet terrifying questionable story of a cute disturbed confused bunny girl told in a unique and indirect method makes for an intriguing experience. Just do yourself a favor and don't look up any spoilers. You may want to play through six puzzles before you look up how to play (if you don't figure it out as you go along).

Tips:

Finding the Story:

  • Be sure to click on the pictures in the Album as you unlock them.
  • Check photo.png after every puzzle.
  • There are other things you'll find as well...

How to play:

Spoiler:

You have two tools to use: a white block you can throw to knock pieces around (left click), and a grayer block you can throw even harder (right click).

Your goal is to match the colors of the falling pieces. You can do this by knocking them so they land on blocks of the same color, making them hit other falling blocks, or knocking blocks that have already falling up to hit the blocks as they fall. The more they hit before vanishing, the more points you earn.

At the bottom of the playing area you have a life bar. Every time a black lands and does not touch a block of the same color in a short period of time, you loose life, or when a block falls out of the playing area. Every time you clear a block you gain life.

Endings and Milestones:

Spoiler:

Play six games, don't score over 20,000.
Play six games, score over 20,000 on at least one game.
After completing the above, score over 100,000.
After completing the above, reach level 100.

Dark Souls Scale: One dead bunny. The game isn't terribly hard once you understand how to play, though the last two milestones can be a challenge. Also, some people have claimed to be too freaked out to finish it all.

Main Page Link: Irisu Syndrome (Mantid)

Game: Star Wars TOR
Platform: PC
Sponsored By: The fact that they decided to do THIS instead of a proper ****ing KotOR game. (I'm not bitter)

TL;DR
Not having much fun... Full VO is a nice touch, but it's still an MMO and doesn't at all feel like the KotOR games. The FTP hooks aren't super invasive.

Full Review

I've put more than an hour into The Old Republic. I've made it to level 10. I figured that I would play a little longer than I would have, otherwise for one of these simply because of the nature of the game.

When TOR was first announced, I was a bit frustrated. Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel are two of my favorite Star Wars games, and on my list of favorite RPGs. Bioware promised KotOR 3 - infinity with this game, but I knew, deep in my heart, that the game would play almost nothing like KotOR and there would be a ton of MMO hooks that I just wouldn't be into. I was interested in the story, and the Blur trailer was fantastic, so I was slightly interested anyway. Then I found out that it would be a subscription based MMO, and I immediately wrote it off.

Now, since the game has gone free-to-play, I've decided to give it a shot. I wanted to give the game a fair shake and see if any of what the developers promised had come to fruition. Sadly, what I've played so far has been exactly what I feared the game would be when it was announced as an MMO. There isn't any party members (I don't play socially. Only interested in a single player experience), you can't pause combat to queue up moves, the inventory system is archaic, and the game looks abysmal - even for a game that came out in 2011.

- for the purposes of the review, I'm playing a jedi. I guess you could be a rogue with a blaster, but I assume most people want to play the Jedi role and so did I.

You begin the game as a padawan, as you expect, and you have your starting zones based on what faction you join - Jedi or Sith. Then you take missions and click on things and wait for cool-downs and hit number keys until things fall over in boring, canned animations. On the surface, it seems like combat isn't so different from the KotOR games. If I'm honest, all you do in those games is click on things and wait for attack animations and dice rolls to happen. However, the ability to pause combat and plan/queue your moves, and the inclusion of an actual party make both KotOR 1 and 2 vastly superior and more fun to play in my opinion. The loot grind is a bit disappointing. The armor doesn't look much different from one piece to another, and even when you get your lightsaber, it doesn't really feel like you've gotten anything special.

The story is... well, I haven't gotten too far off the starting planet, so I can't really say much about the overall story, but the starting quest bits were uninteresting and were only impressive because of the full VO work they put into it. The quest structure is the same as WoW; click on guy with glowy thing above head - go kill x number of Star Wars themed fauna - return to guy with glowy thing above head - repeat.

I might be too hard on this game. I know it's an MMO... what did I expect? I knew that the game would look awful because it's a huge, online world and it's difficult to create all those assets and have them look great on a wide range of machines. I knew the quest structure and combat were just going to be your standard MMO stuff. Also, the music is alright... It brings in enough of the John Williams score to give you a vague feeling of Star Warsiness. Why do I dislike it so much for things that I know I'm not into anyway? I guess it's because Bioware said we were getting this instead of a new KotOR game. When they said this would be KotOR 3 - whatever, it seemed like they were trying to win over existing fans and make them believe that they weren't just making another MMO with World of Warcraft's exact structure.

Then again, all of my complaints about this game are the same things I hate about WoW. So on its own merits, without the disappointment of it not being the Star Wars RPG sequel Bioware promised, it's still a bad game that does little, if not nothing different than MMOs that have come before it. At least the free-to-play elements aren't too scummy.

On a scale of 1 - Dark Souls I give Star Wars TOR a WoW.5. It is definitely NOT the DS of the genre.

Will I keep playing?
I don't really know. I'm not having fun with it. The loot grind isn't special in any way, and the story doesn't drive me to want to see it through... but I just got off the first planet and I feel like I should see if it actually goes anywhere or gets fun in any way.

Link: Star Wars: TOR (JillSammich)

Can't really disagree with most of that except I think the game looks pretty decent. It's no Guild Wars 2 though.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Can't really disagree with most of that except I think the game looks pretty decent. It's no Guild Wars 2 though.

Yeah, you're right... It's not an ugly game per-se, but I'm just not a fan of the look of it. The fidelity of the graphics is fine for an MMO, but some of the actual design decisions are less than inspired imo.

One Hour In: Lichdom: Battlemage
Sponsored by: Me

Short Review: I think it would be better if they removed the story...
And sped up the walking...
And took pruning shears to the crafting...
And rethought enemy toughness curves...
Actually, just scrap it all...

Long Review: Despite what the short review seems to say, I am having fun with Lichdom... it's just that the fun bits are interspersed between parts that are either boring or blindingly complicated.
The story is quite simple, an evil count with henchman shows up at your jewelry shop and kidnaps your sister to sell her into slavery. An unknown length of time later, and you are awakened from a magically induced fugue-like state that's gripped the entire city/country (not sure which), caused by the same evil count. Your rescuer calls you his "dragon" and tells you that you now have magical power and unlimited life, so get to the revenge thing. Along the way, you're given the video game standard of a "helpful" sidekick (called Gryphon... makes me wonder if there's a "Snake" and "Ox" out there too, we just never meet them), and a blindingly complicated crafting system that will undoubtedly appeal to accountants and hardcore Diablo 3 players. Levels are completely linear with nothing destructible or intractable in them (other than a few very obvious things). There's very little point in exploring, because there's almost nothing to find, and the button that shows a burning trail in the direction you're supposed to go is pointless, since there's only one way to go.

"Helpful" sidekick #3085 does the usual trope stuff of telling you which way to go (in a linear game... down a hallway with no turns or side passages...) and takes on the super fun task of standing around and shouting down 5-7 repeated "helpful" lines while you fight a boss.

Hey! It looks like he's annoyed now!

No S*$%T? I guessed that from how he's charging me and trying to turn my spine and head into a flail. Why don't you grab a bow or something and HELP?

It's also a point that, at the beginning of the game, you get to chose between a male and female dragon, and whichever you don't pick becomes "Helpful" sidekick #3085. Thus setting up a forced romance between two characters that will spend most of the game hating each other that everyone with an IQ above room temperature can see coming from miles away. (Obviously I'm not at the end of the game, so if that doesn't happen, I'll feel quite silly).

But the plot and characters are completely secondary to the combat. Combat is front and center in Lichdom, and it can be very fun. You get three "elements" that you carry and can switch between, and each element has three spells. 1) a shield (which I never use because the shield lets you negate some damage, while the dodge they also give you negates all damage) 2) an AOE spell and 3) a utility attack spell. Somewhere in the first level I gained the holy triumvirate of magic: fire, ice, and lightning, and I honestly can't see myself getting away from those three (I've also seen kinetic and corruption).

While you always carry around a spell of each of those types (you can't, for example, carry around two attack spells in the same element), you get to modify how each spell behaves, and the statistics of that spell via the crafting system. Which needs a lot of refinement.

In a nutshell, you collect spell parts as you kill enemies, watch in-game cutscenes, etc. (think the loot drop from any of the Diablos). Then you combine an element, an attack behavior, and an attack type to form new spell. Then you look at that new spell, figure out if the new spell is better than your old spell, and if it is, you equip it and kill more enemies.

Honestly, after a certain point, the crafting becomes irrelevant, other than to up the damage of each spell. Once you find spell behaviors you like, you're unlikely to ever get away from those ever again. For example, for the AOE spell, you can have the spell proc the instant you release the triggers, or you can turn it into a trap, or you can turn it into a persistent ground effect. Once I found the 3rd option, I was set for my ice attack, so I'm unlikely to ever need instant proc or trap again.

And really, there are too many numbers and variables in crafting. If you're the type of person who enjoys squinting at the numbers to determine if they're marginally better than the numbers you already have, along with how number b interacts with number w, then Lichdom is for you. I, however, am losing patience with that system, which is bad as it's pretty much your only way of improving your character.

Getting back to the fun part, the actual act of throwing around spells and killing (or re-killing) the undead is a lot of fun. It's great to trap a group of melee enemies with my ice AOE, then hurl grenade-like lightning balls into their midst, watching them disintegrate when they die. If I didn't have to stop and do the crafting periodically, and if the archer enemies didn't triple hit you the instant you stop moving, I'd enjoy it a lot more.

That said, enemy difficulty is strange. Your standard, unnamed enemies die easily, but when you encounter someone with a name (lieutenants, mini-bosses, and bosses), they are bullet spell sponges, and can soak up the damage while also dishing it out in immense numbers, far more than their standard counterparts can. For example, I went through the entire first level with no problems, killed hundreds, slowing only occasionally to deal with named enemies, then died four times to the first boss...

Overall, Lichdom has some great core concepts that are weighted down by a inaccessible crafting system, and marred by a bland story, bland locations, and even blander characters. I could see Lichdom working as a multi-player arena type game, but for a single-person story? Nah.

On a scale of 1 - Dark Souls Dark Souls was punishing, but fair. If you learn the enemies and your own tactics, you can beat anything. Lichdom throws waves of easy enemies at you, then suddenly sets you against an enemy that can kill you in three hits while taking a hundred to die. It's not the same type of difficulty and Lichdom feels cheap in that regards, where (as I said), Dark Souls always felt fair.
So that said, I'll give Lichdom a 2.

Will I Keep Playing? I suspect I will when I'm not in the mood for anything else I have. If I finish Lichdom by summer 2015, I'll be surprised.

Link: Lichdom: Battlemage by Taharka

One Hour In: Alien: Isolation
Sponsored by: Idle Thumbs podcast

Short Review: It took 35 years to authentically capture the atmosphere of the first Alien movie. Also, walking.

Long Review: The extended version is not going to be much longer as the first hour of Alien: Isolation is primarily exploration and world building with little in the way of significant events. This isn't a bad thing at all as I purchased the game almost exclusively on nostalgia for the first movie coupled with reports that the execution of sense of place is nailed unlike any other Alien game. The latest Idle Thumbs podcast talked the game up in such a positive light that it pushed me over the edge and inspired a launch-window purchase (I think this is the first AAA launch game in a good 2 years).

So all I can really say after the first hour is that the game has already paid for itself in OG Alien movie atmosphere, both visual and sound design. It feels like being in an Alien movie. The down-sampled technology on board the ships (CRT monitors everywhere, reel to reel tape recorders, vintage LCD handheld games laying about) make me feel like I've been transported back to 1979 when I first saw Alien in the theaters. It's incredibly affecting. Lighting is gorgeous, giving low-lit corridors (stretches of dark illuminated by a single bulb, etc.) a minimalist and claustrophobic feel. And I love that there's ash-trays everywhere! Even built into the foot of each Hypersleep Chamber (ah, the good old days).

So I understand the game has downsides, with pacing, unfriendly save-system and erratic enemy AI. I guess we'll see how it goes. But for someone who still owns their cherished '79 copy of the Alien: Movie Novel (remember, this was pre-VHS days, kids), I'm loving the game so far.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/Pl0bkfI.jpg)IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/M60GZi8.jpg)

Will I Keep Playing? Sure will. Worth it for the trip down memory lane alone.

On a scale of 1 - Dark Souls After an hour, 1 out of 10. I've just been walking around! I do suspect that the insta-deaths and poorly-spaced save points will change that, though. :p

Link: Alien: Isolation by Aaron D.

One Hour In: Sleeping Dogs
Sponsored by: Xbox Games With Gold

Short Review: Crime games in the strict mold of Grand Theft Auto will always suffer the same problems, but with a world written much straighter and the mayhem dialed (slightly) down, Sleeping Dogs is a solidly enjoyable grab bag of action movie experiences.

Long Review: I'm actually about 20 hours into it now, but round about the 2-3 hour mark I went from thinking the game is stupid, to really liking it. My reasons for that haven't changed since then, so I feel I can fake this easily enough. And with the Definitive Edition out now for PC/PS4/Xbone, it seems like the right time.

SD tries to tell a straight crime story, but it's undermined partly by cliched writing, and mostly by the right hand not acknowledging what the left hand can and probably is doing—a problem inherent in any game that wants its cutscenes to convey the idea that death is singular and grievous, but also fills its open city with fast cars and slow pedestrians. And that story is assuredly meant to be told: main story missions amount to testing how well the player can follow constant granular directions: walk there, trigger this cutscene, drive here, trigger that cutscene, follow them, stop there, fight those guys, do this, do that, blah blah blah. The world might be open but the main narrative is anything but.

It's all the supplementary stuff that has me hooked. In fact there are times when I could be happy if this game was nothing but doing Tran's car-stealing jobs (get to the marked car, hijack it how you see fit, drive it back to the garage carefully) and buying more clothes. But then I would miss the street races, the favours, the lock box beat-ups, the drug bust shoot-outs, martial arts training, escapes from the police, car and clothes shopping, all the bite-size action scattered around this dense, good-looking, and quite believable Hong Kong. The believability of the city also goes a long way: there's no tiresome GTA "humour" pervading the landscape and soundscape with its juvenile idea of satire. Standing on a street corner, or cruising along listening to HKLUB Radio, it feels like a real place, where I'm happy to spend my time.

Once I accepted that this would probably have been a stronger drama if I couldn't participate in every cutscene in my underwear (ironically, the most agency I'm allowed as a player in the main story), but that everything else about the game, including the ridiculous dressing up, is fun despite that dissonance, my opinion turned right around (as right around as every car's ability to do an immediate handbrake doughnut, a perfect touch for those action movie 180-degree burnouts).

Will I Keep Playing? Oh probably! The story missions seem like they will always grate, from both ludonarrative dissonance and writing quality, but everything else around the game is a playground of competent open-world fun.

Does It Have My Car? Its fictional Cheer is a stand-in for the first-gen Honda Fit, which is pretty close to my second-gen. Not purchaseable, but certainly hijackable whenever I come across one.

On a Scale of 1 - GTA5: A solid Team Fortress 2. If you wanted less dick jokes and more hattes in GTA, this is your game.

Link: Sleeping Dogs by Gravey

Three Hours In: Child of Light
Platform: PC with two controllers
Sponsored by: That Steam sale where I bought a bunch of local co-op games

Short Review: Choose your half-player with care and you'll soar through the air.

Long Review:
I've been looking for co-op games for a while.
Playing with friends and family is a great way to spend time,
And playing together instead of against each other makes more people smile.
That there aren't more good co-op games is a real crime.

Child of Light is a game for one-and-a-half players.
You can play it by yourself, but that misses much of its charm.
As a platforming jRPG, the game has several layers.
Only in battle mode will most of the enemies cause harm.

The second player controls the firefly guide.
The guide can hold back enemies and fly through the air.
But it is with the main player that most of the control does reside.
So choose who holds which controller with care.

I've got more experience with RPGs,
So I took the more hands-off role as the guide.
Holding yourself back might take all your energies,
If you're not the kind of person who can patiently walk beside.

I liked doing it that way as a gentle introduction,
Since I could help out without overwhelming,
But it may be flawed for someone who is skilled in destruction,
Or otherwise feels that they need to be helming.

The game itself is a fairy-tale story,
With a melding of jrpg and platforming,
It seems pretty open within its territory.
The battles are challenging without being swarming.

Feeling a bit like Aquaria; I like playing together,
Though the firefly is definitely subordinate.
If your relationship tends to stormy weather,
I'd be careful if one player tends to dominate.

Will I Keep Playing? Well, it's more up to the other player, to be precise, but when last polled they were inclined to acquiesce.

On a scale of 1 - Dark Souls Has more rhymes than Dark Souls has death chimes.

Link: Child of Light (Gremlin)

Well done, Gremlin.

Well done indeed!!!
And reminds me I need to get to that one sooner rather than later.

Game: Cloudbuilt (45 minutes)
Sponsored by: The 2014 Steam Summer Sale

Cumulus Review
A techy-style parkour platformer. With things that shoot at you. And a finite energy meter which always runs out when you need it most. And plummeting to your death. LOTS of plummeting to your death.

Cumulonimbus Review
I honestly may not have much to say here, but let's give it a go. The game is pretty straightforward: you're some kind of cybernetic super soldier, traversing treacherous landscapes in your mind while your horribly-maimed body lies in some kind of coma, pondering the meaning of war or some sh*t like that, I found it hard to get immersed in the story. At least, that's what I gleaned from what I've done so far. The landscapes you're traversing have foregone stairs and elevators and other more traditional forms of elevation in favor of forcing you to perform cybernetically-enhanced parkour maneuvers: running up vertical walls, running along horizonal walls, jumping between walls, many of which are floating in mid-air... that's about it. You have a boost meter, which allows you to jump in mid-air, to dash while you're running on the rare flat surfaces, and to gain/maintain height and momentum while wall running, allowing you to run up very tall walls or along very long walls. There are also hazards peppered throughout the landscape: turrets which will take shots at you, mines which will pop out and injure you if you pass over them too closely, other hovering drones which you must dodge in mid-air, etc. You do have a weapon, which fires plain homing bullets or can be charged for extra damage, but it has a finite clip which can be reloaded infinitely.

As seems to be the recurring theme for me these days, this game is HARD. In an eerie repeat of my Bleed review, I found the gamepad controller scheme awkward: twin sticks to move and look around/aim, LB to jump and mid-air jump (and to cling in place on a wall, did I forget to mention that ability?), RB to shoot, LT to dash/wall boost, and RT to snap the camera so you can see the wall behind you that you want to jump towards while you're clinging for dear life. If you're hanging from a ledge, you can press LB to climb up or press the A button to drop down (yes, the A button, which most games assign to JUMP, I mixed this up on a few occasions in a frantic panic). Also, you carry deployable checkpoints, which can be dropped by standing still, pressing X, and waiting a second or two. Checkpoints are essential if you're not some superhuman freak: you'll fall, miss every solid surface and plummet to your inevitable death (or actually hit a solid surface and die on impact, as happened to me once), or you'll get shot to death by a turret, and you'll need to respawn. Once you pass the tutorial stages, you have a finite number of lives, the cap for which is raised when you beat levels. Reaching or deploying a checkpoint will restore you to six lives.

I found myself getting very frustrated, which is never a good sign. I was bad with managing my boost energy while trying to traverse a series of wall runs, which would cause me to plummet to my death. I never really got the hang of jumping from wall to wall without accidentally double-jumping or dashing, causing me to burn a lot of boost energy, which would cause me to plummet to my death. I would forget to destroy the mines ahead of me on some non-flat surface I was trying to run across, and attempting to navigate with the left stick, keep up my momentum with LT, frantically try to jump with LB in a panicked reflex, aim with the right stick and fire with RB is more finger acrobatics than I can manage, causing me to get hit by the mine and get knocked off the wall, which would cause me to plummet to my death. The worst is when in a panic, I would hold LB, clinging to a wall, with zero boost left, so when I let go, I slide off the wall, then actually have to wait to die because I'm not reaching the "death" depth as quickly; some kind of "quick respawn" button like ESJ would be nice (you can do it from the pause menu, and maybe there's a keyboard binding, but I was too annoyed to pay much attention). The LB/LT combo is very strange, I haven't played Xbox with any seriousness in a long time, even with the controller for my PC, for me it's really awkward to try to hold the controller in such a way that you have fingers on all four LT/RT/LB/RB buttons at the same time, I just don't have the grip I need. That usually means having to go between LB and LT, which might explain my high incidence of accidental double jumps and dashes. The stage checkpoints are often spaced very far apart, and I regularly found myself getting stuck on one set piece, only to then die at the next one and have to go all the way back to the previous checkpoint and that last annoying set piece. So once I clear it, I deploy a checkpoint, possibly because I'm low on lives... only to find it's still two or three more set pieces to the next checkpoint, each just as annoying as the last one. A lot of times, the maps don't make it clear which direction you're actually supposed to go, which in one instance caused me to jump in a giant circle back to my spawn point. I'm not sure if this is because they want you to be searching around and blindly climbing your way up and across things, or if they expect you to be going so fast that you're not really thinking about where to go next. You receive a rank at the end of the level based on your time, deaths count a penalty to your time, better scores earn you more 1UPs on your life cap. Not sure if the clock is always running or if it resets when you respawn at a checkpoint. Didn't seem to matter, I ranked C on every level. It's disheartening when your best time is two and a half minutes and people are beating the level in under 30 seconds. Practice and priorities notwithstanding, it makes me feel like I'm losing my edge.

Will I keep playing?
Doubtful. I had a similar experience to Bleed: there were moments where I felt in control and like a badass, then I hit a rough patch, started panicking, making bad decisions, dying a lot, and I flipped my sh*t. I actually found myself wishing I would run out of lives so I could reach Game Over and rage quit that way. I was aching to quit after 30 minutes. There's very little story revealed at the outset, so I didn't feel any emotional draw to the game either. I don't know if using an alternate control scheme would alleviate my frustrations, it doesn't appear very forgiving either way.

Dark Souls?
Yes. It's the Dark Souls of parkour platforming. It tells you it's going to hit you in the mouth and then does it. Gives you all the tools you need, then beats you senseless if you can't use them properly. I'm afraid that's just not the experience I'd like to sink a lot of time into.

Bubs14 wrote:

I honestly may not have much to say here, but let's give it a go.

I'd say that's a pretty good go.

Yeah, frustration has meant I also haven't gone back to Cloudbuilt. Though maybe it'll be better with a controller, we'll see.

One Hour In: The Evil Within

TL:DR: Yawn.

Long Review: Ok, kiddies, get your clipboards and favorite drink out, 'cause we're going to play a little drinking game called, "Spot the Horror Trope"! It's very easy, whenever you spot a horror game or movie trope, take a shot.

Last one alive has to clean up the mess, but we'll all be dead by about chapter 3, so this won't take long...

Let's see:
-Brain dead main character? Check
-Gory butcher? Check
-"Saw" like trap hallway? Check
-Chainsaw wielding insane guy? Check (due to budget cuts, the role of "Chainsaw Wielding Insane Guy" will also play the roll of "Gory Butcher")
-Creepy, seemingly abandoned hospital? Check (Bonus shot, it's a psychiatric hospital)
-Randomly placed full sized lockers to hide in? Check
-Massive and totally out of place sewer system? Check
-Dismembered bodies EVERYWHERE? Check
-Dream sequences meant to make you question what's real? Check (pulling double duty as the upgrade system)
-Dark, deep forest? Check (bonus shot, there's a thunderstorm going on!)
-Crows? Check
-Cannibalism? Check (Dead yet? We just made Chapter 2)
-Insane and mutated villagers/zombies? Check
-...

Seriously, this isn't a horror game, it's a collection of horror tropes tossed in a blender and poured into the mold of a game. There's no rhyme or reason to most of it, and it doesn't come across as "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?", it comes across as a jumbled mess... With some poor mechanics thrown in for good measure.

The main character, who's name I forget because it's not important, displays even LESS than the standard amount of intelligence of a horror game/movie main character. Case in point: Pretty early on, he grabs a key ring from Gory Butcher and proceeds to open the only door out of the Butcher's lair. He then proceeds to, apparently, throw the keys on the ground and leave the door open... Never mind that he could have locked the Gory Butcher in the lair and skipped his way out of the hospital while whistling Dixie... At that point I pretty much said, "well, you're an idiot and you deserve the horrible things that are undoubtedly going to happen to you."

Sure enough, less than 1 minute later, his achilles tendon is cut by a chainsaw (at least, that's where the cut seems to be, but I couldn't tell because of the camera) and he gets dumped into a pool of blood and decaying bodies. Congratulations. Even if you do survive, you now have every communicable disease known to man, and will die a slow, agonizing death anyway.

And for good measure, he then jumps into a not-incongruous-at-all putrid sewer, giving him dysentery and a few other things that aren't blood borne.

Bearing in mind that, after the blood bath (literal, not figurative), he's not being pursued, yet does not stop to rip up his shirt and bind his wound... that'd be too easy. And then he wouldn't leave this lovely trail of blood wherever he goes (about 4 humans' worth of blood)... not that anyone apparently notices. And a good thing he didn't tear up his shirt too, because the wound disappears the instant chapter 1 is done. Its purpose was served, it was only meant to hobble you while you get around Chainsaw Man (worst... superhero... EVER...)

To complement this mess of a story is a mess of mechanics. Stealth is particularly confused, because you get the standard "eye" telling you if you're hidden or observed, but it's irrelevant and bears no resemblance to what the enemies actually see. At one point, Chainsaw Man sees me, so I hobble my way back to the nearest locker and get in. The "eye" tells me that from the moment I turned away from Chainsaw Man, I'm not being observed. Yet Chainsaw Man marches straight up to the locker and vivisects me and the locker both. That eye might as well do a tap dance routine across the top of the screen for all it matters.

Aiming a gun is done over the shoulder, but you can't switch shoulders and it's irrelevant where the reticle is pointing, cause the bullet's going to go wherever it pleases (the reticle can join the eye in the tap dance number).

Throwing items is done by the same button presses as aiming and shooting, so you can have your gun or a distraction bottle/grenade, but not both out at the same time. And throwing bottles only serves to alert enemies to where you are, not where you want them to look, so the bottles can join the tap dance number too.

The only thing that can't join the tap dance number is the main character, 'cause his stamina is gone in 2 seconds (no jokes, we're all mostly adults here).

Ammo and resources are limited and scarce, which is fine, and stealth kills are instant kills, which is fine. But since you can't reliably stealth around, you're going to be shooting your gun an awful lot, compounded by the fact that you're meant to fail some stealth portions and just run (for 2 seconds), but they don't give you any indication of that, so you're going to waste ammo. Problematic when you get to a bit you have to shoot your way out of.

The nail in the coffin, for me, is the camera. It's quite close in to the character, and there are two black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. You're left with a usable viewing space of about 35% of the total screen, and the camera turns like it's on salary. Maybe that was meant to add to an atmosphere of fear (fear of what you can't see), but it didn't work for me.

The game is quite pretty, all your gory deaths captured in HD glory, but if I continue playing, I'm going to tell the scarce ammo to sod off and cheat my way through, since the stealth is pointless.

Someone in another GWJ thread said that Evil Within is the best horror game of 2005, and I completely agree. If this had come out a decade ago, it would have been amazing. Revolutionary, even. But now it's just a mess of stuff done better by other titles.

Dark Souls Scale: If you don't cheat, this game is quite hard. You'll struggle to keep healthy and with enough ammo to survive the botched stealth sections. I'll give it a 3.5 out of 5.

Link for Doubting: The Evil Within (Taharka)

That basically sums up the opinion I have of it based on watching the first hour or so on youtube
One to wait for a hefty steam sale discount I think.

Taharka wrote:

Lots of good thoughts and valid points

I've stopped judging games like this as horror games. A horror game isn't a horror game, and this game, Deadspace, Resident Evil, The last 3 silent hill games, and most attempts atr AAA horror do not scare me (the only real recent exception being alien isolation which had seriously competent tension and organic stealh and scares, no QTEs no scripted action scenes). They might startle me, and their combat might be panicky, but they're not terrifying or atmospheric.

That said, as a 3rd person action game with pretty good environments and interesting monsters here and there, It's competent if redundant. To use my usual binary rating: I'm regret that I paid 60 dollars for it.

Taharka wrote:

That eye might as well do a tap dance routine across the top of the screen for all it matters.

That's probably the most entertaining TL;DP review I've read yet. Too bad you spent a significant amount of money on a sh*tty game, though.

Tombombodil wrote:

I've stopped judging games like this as horror games. A horror game isn't a horror game, and this game, Deadspace, Resident Evil, The last 3 silent hill games, and most attempts atr AAA horror do not scare me (the only real recent exception being alien isolation which had seriously competent tension and organic stealh and scares, no QTEs no scripted action scenes). They might startle me, and their combat might be panicky, but they're not terrifying or atmospheric.

That's interesting, because I'd say the first Dead Space was actually a really good survival horror game. Maybe I'm looking at it through Rose Colored glasses, but I remember being tense and jumpy throughout most of the game.
That said, Fatal Frame 2 is still my all-time favorite horror game, it still creeps me out even today (all Fatal Frames are on sale this week on PSN!). DeadOut came close, but was too short to take the gold.

MeatMan wrote:

That's probably the most entertaining TL;DP review I've read yet. Too bad you spent a significant amount of money on a sh*tty game, though. :(

Thank you! That's really great to hear.
You know, surprisingly I'm ok with spending the money on Evil Within. Not because it's a good horror game (it's not), but because it's such a good "camp" game. It's like a b grade movie that's so bad, it's awesome. I'm going to play all the way through Evil Within (with a cheat for ammo), and I'll sit there with popcorn, 'cause it's going to be hilarious. That's not what the developer intended, but it's how I'm getting my enjoyment, so :-p

You should probably wait 'till it's on sale to buy, though.

Taharka wrote:

That's interesting, because I'd say the first Dead Space was actually a really good survival horror game. Maybe I'm looking at it through Rose Colored glasses, but I remember being tense and jumpy throughout most of the game.

So very, very true. Dead Space made me so tense and jumpy that my poor little heart couldn't take it, and I never got through more than half of it. I recognize it's a great game, but I just can't take it, it's too much for me. And this isn't nostalgia talking, I played it for the first time one or two years ago I think.

Taharka wrote:
MeatMan wrote:

That's probably the most entertaining TL;DP review I've read yet. Too bad you spent a significant amount of money on a sh*tty game, though. :(

Thank you! That's really great to hear.
You know, surprisingly I'm ok with spending the money on Evil Within. Not because it's a good horror game (it's not), but because it's such a good "camp" game. It's like a b grade movie that's so bad, it's awesome. I'm going to play all the way through Evil Within (with a cheat for ammo), and I'll sit there with popcorn, 'cause it's going to be hilarious. That's not what the developer intended, but it's how I'm getting my enjoyment, so :-p

You should probably wait 'till it's on sale to buy, though. :-)

Oh, I never had any intention to buy that game. I just enjoyed your review.

Taharka wrote:
Tombombodil wrote:

I've stopped judging games like this as horror games. A horror game isn't a horror game, and this game, Deadspace, Resident Evil, The last 3 silent hill games, and most attempts atr AAA horror do not scare me (the only real recent exception being alien isolation which had seriously competent tension and organic stealh and scares, no QTEs no scripted action scenes). They might startle me, and their combat might be panicky, but they're not terrifying or atmospheric.

That's interesting, because I'd say the first Dead Space was actually a really good survival horror game. Maybe I'm looking at it through Rose Colored glasses, but I remember being tense and jumpy throughout most of the game.
That said, Fatal Frame 2 is still my all-time favorite horror game, it still creeps me out even today (all Fatal Frames are on sale this week on PSN!). DeadOut came close, but was too short to take the gold.

The original dead space was more competently assembled the EW and other similar games. But it just had a feel of a game made by machine, fed a Copy of Even horizon and given RE4 to use as a template for the game play. Lots of button pressing side quests and back-tracking. It didn't really do anything new with the possible exception of the over the shoulder survival shooting now not being mutually exclusive to walking. Which isn't to say it was a bad game or anything, but it failed the "did it scare me" test. The funny thing is is that all the pieces were there, it just didn't pace itself well enough; the monsters were all way to exited to get screen time and the game never gives you long enough to become paranoid or jump at your own shadow.

That's just my two cents, but I personally wouldn't call Dead Space a horror game, the phrase I use is "Tense Survival Action". The long and short of it is, with rare exception, once they let you shoot at something, and the effort achieves more than momentarily slowing it down, it stops being scary. For me at least it even lessens the fear in the quiet sections when they hide the monsters and build atmosphere because I know in a pinch I can blow them apart with my shot-gun.

Fatal Frame 2 is in my top 5 horror games for sure. Examples of horror games with some combat that are still terrifying and oppressive: Silent Hill 2/3, Lone Survivor, Condemned Criminal Origins.

Again though, one man's opinion.

Also because it's fun, my top 5 horror games in no particular order save for number 1 being my all time favorite:
1. Silent Hill 2
Condemned Criminal Origins
Amnesia The Dark Descent
Fatal Frame 2
Amnesia a Machine for Pigs (this one might get replaced by SOMA when it comes out, it was still terrifying but i didn't enjoy it as much as Dark Descent)

EDIT:

Taharka wrote:

Dark Souls Scale: If you don't cheat, this game is quite hard. You'll struggle to keep healthy and with enough ammo to survive the botched stealth sections. I'll give it a 3.5 out of 5.

This I feel like I want to contend. I didn't find it that difficult at all. Once I realized you can just walk away from most of the zombie type creatures and just sprint for a second to avoid their grab attacks I almost never died, and I started on the harder difficulty. A few of the bosses took me a couple tries but once I figured out what you were supposed to do it was usually pretty easy to just run away from them.

I actually think I would have liked this game a lot more if it had allowed the hardest difficulty to be available without playing through the game first. I agree that the stealthing is pretty useless but there are usually enough environmental kills to conserve ammo. I'd give it a 2/5 Dark Souls.

Also being far too genre savvy, I only ever leveled up sprint-time, max health, and pistol damage (and match carrying capacity once those were maxed). It may well have been much more difficult if I had spread my point around more and not more or less cheesed most of the basic monsters (and most of the big ones too I guess).

Also let me know if my posts are a little on the long side, I haven't spent a lot of time on these here forums :3

I'm kind of with TomBombodil on Dead Space. I've put some time into it, and I didn't find it all that scary. One of the things I liked about it was that there was a lot of ammunition for the basic cutter weapon all over the place, to the point where my inventory was maxed out and I was leaving ammo on the ground.

Maybe I was playing the wrong difficulty, but it felt more like a third-person-shooter with a dismemberment mechanic than a survival horror game.

Now, in terms of being unsettling and disturbing, that the game has in spades. Like The Suffering, it felt like a scary shooter, not a survival-horror game. This is not a complaint, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather fight scary monsters effectively than run from them ineffectively.

Huh. That's funny. I actually found myself low on ammo more often than not. And yet, I'm fairly sure I went with "normal" or "easy". Maybe [i]I'm just really bad at this kind of game.

Eleima wrote:

Huh. That's funny. I actually found myself low on ammo more often than not. And yet, I'm fairly sure I went with "normal" or "easy". Maybe [i]I'm just really bad at this kind of game. :D

Once I realized you could stomp boxes instead of shooting them, my ammo reserves mushroomed.

Also, if you're quick, you can take almost anything out with one shot by taking out a leg then running up and curb stomping it.