Category Archives: Steam Games

3 Dead Zed, Brain-Munching Puzzler!

Posted on by thre3zekiel

3dz_logo

 

Some of you will remember a title on the SNES released by some small time company (snowstorm? hailware?) where you play three vikings.  Each of them have abilities that the others did not, and were able to overcome a variety of obstacles.  Individually they would be easily overcome but together they were an indomitable, mead-swilling force of nature that would punch its way through any level mechanics.  I remember playing this title with friends years later (like 4) in high school.  More than the fact that this game was a release by the creators of one of my favorite childhood titles about mutual human-orc slaughter, I was amazed by how much fun this game was even while we were in the heat of our PS2 and N64 glory.

3 Dead Zed, like that lost title, shares many of the same basic theories and elements, even if it differs in its appetite.  Specifically, this is a game about three brain-munching heroes (?) that fight there way out of the stomach of their metaphorical mother.  It’s a lot of fun.  Technically there is only one main character with three sides.  You have three zombies smashed haphazardly into one and the ability to swap between forms.  Each of the forms has its strengths and weaknesses.  Your primary for is standard zombie: he runs, he drools, he eats brains.  You control this character to pick up small objects, attack people, and generally be a zombie.  The second form is the fast zombie.  He wears a cape, goggles and possibly also a diaper.  I mean, it’s either a diaper or underpants.  Either way, this guy runs really fast, jumps really high and is lanky.  He can crawl into vents as well.  He is unable to attack anyone, though, and takes hits as well as a tin foil bumper.  Your final form is that of a strong zombie.  This she-hulk of an undead murder-machine can pick up large objects deal devastating damage, knock in walls tear up floors, and generally make holes where they normally don’t exist.  She also takes damage really well, wading through corridors of toxic gasses, absorbing magazines worth of ammunition like a giant, green bullet sponge.  Granted, you will need every last bit of that damage resistance since she could only move slower if she were going backwards.

Cause moderation is for pussies

Cause moderation is for pussies

Should you find yourself on the receiving end of hostilities, you might want to grab the nearest scientist and pop the cork on those fresh, juicy brains.  Collecting brains is how you heal yourself, so there are usually a number of useless scientists around.  Some are even elderly, too, so that’s fucked up and hysterical.  After a while, though, you become completely inured to the slaughter of the elderly.  While there are some combatants at first, you soon find yourself knee-deep in the entrails of security guards and zombie-focused death squads out for your gooey, yellow blood.  Among these perils, there are also the myriad of unfortunately-placed buzzsaws, smashing pistons, burning lasers and guard-bots.

In some other games, you will have to face down a company filled with faceless and unethical scientists that created some monster that duplicitously promises you cake.  In this game you are the monster created by unethical scientists that thought cake would work in the beginning.  Yes, they throw a party for you to celebrate your graduation from testing.  Honestly, these morons have it coming.  After wading through an ocean of organs, your characters find themselves unraveling the sins of an obliviously evil organization.  Among the skeletons in their closet is a project that mysteriously involves forcing tin-foil hats onto magical teleporting cats.  Granted they have the tell-tale deedly-bob of an extra-terrestrial animal.  There is also the fucking teleporting.  That is a pretty obvious fucking sign.  Throughout the game you can locate abandoned work stations.  After tearing apart the occupant, you can listen to voice logs about various topics: feral cats, the zombie project, turning you into some kind of slave.  You know, the usual.  These desks allow you to figure out what terrible machinations brought you to this state.

Nobody likes going to this guys' fucking office

Nobody likes going to this guys’ fucking office for performance reviews

The art style of this game is jarringly comedic and smacks of John Kricfalusi’s, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, influence.  There is a sort of measured insanity alongside generous mediocrity, too, which makes me flashback to Office Space.  Not to mention the music is a lot like something you might encounter in an elevator.  All of these elements combine with the puzzles and obstacles to create a game that gets you laughing and having fun when you don’t want to tear apart a printer in an open field.  Gameplay is fluid, too, and you find yourself swapping forms mid-air at some points to climb a ladder here or avoid a whirring buzzsaw with relative ease by the end.  The challenges scale well, too.  The first area is an office, and it goes from easy to hard in the matter of seconds.  For a game about eating brains, it sure does demand you use yours a lot.  It’s not just soaring through levels of insanity, there are some puzzles that your just won’t get right away.  Then you go “O fucking duh!” and complete a puzzle that gets you past 70% of the obstacles in the area.  After the office you go into a factory setting where things get pretty easy.  Honestly, for the office I spent a good 6 hours in there.  The factory was 2 hours at most.  Granted, after you get used to the game, things seem a lot easier, so there is the acclimation factor.  Once you are fully acclimated, however, the game takes its fucking liberties in the last act.  I am not even sure what kind of fucking place I am in at this point, but it is tough as shit.  I die no less than twice every minute or two.

I love the way this goofy fucker runs

I love the way this goofy fucker runs

Another fun part of the game is the fact that it is fully voiced, even if the voice actors were convinced 3DZ’s primary playerbase would consist of deaf people.  I also noted a few bugs here and there, but not enough to make a real difference.  Overall, this is a great game with a dark and quirky sense of humor.  Every challenge you come against has a logical solution.  I was also frustrated to discover that the game is programmed to work with mouse and keyboard and the xbone controller, but not a DS4.  I am not springing for the xboner, so I had to play it on mouse and keyboard.  But the PC controls are responsive and simple, so it wasn’t that big a deal.  In a lot of places where bigger developers might have slacked off, Gentleman Quid Studio showed its tact and capability.  At the reasonable price of 5.99$ on Steam, this is a great game that is hard to beat, especially to the puzzle-lover.  Not to mention it takes a fun twist on zombies and makes them into something I might consider having as a stuffed animal.  Not to mention it is nice to have a fucking indie game that has enough balls to just fucking release.  Not pre-release, not episodic.  Just fucking out there.

Among this game’s features, I was most aggravated by the puns.  In a fucking game where you main the elderly and have three people mashed into one zombie, the unconscionable puns were my biggest fucking gripe.  That and the lack of fucking dualshock 4 support.  Bastards.  Maybe next time they will be more considerate of those who don’t want a media center instead of a fucking gaming console.  Whatever.  I will train some ninja monkeys to hunt them down, perhaps.  I am still working on a number of other deceptively cuddly animals to murder people in the middle of the night.

Q-Bert Rebooted, Reviving a Classic

Posted on by thre3zekiel

QBERT

 

When I was a kid my parents had a Commodore 64.  It was this huge beast of a monitor with a fucking keyboard you could kill a man with.  I never played NES becase I was too busy with the awesomeness of this thing.  It’s 8-bit graphics and massive display loomed over us as we poured hours into it.  We played The Hulk, a game where you typed commands to the green rage machine as he was tied to a chair with a bomb ticking to destruction.  Incidentally, Hulk could not cry for mommy.  Hulk not know mommy.  We played Centipede and Space Invaders, but none of them hooked me in like Q*Bert.  I had no fucking clue what Q*Bert was, but I figured he was an alien like ET.  He hopped around this mountain of colored blocks, of which I never made it past the first or second levels, and was continually thwarted by these fucking green dudes, pink snakes and bouncing red balls.  But I tried and tried.  It was the first love-hate relationship I had ever known.  This machine was forgotten when we got the SNES, relegated to the back of the attic.  I remember that we would still use the monitor years and years later for Nintendo 64 and Xbox, when Halo 2 came out.  It was the last game I was to play on it before the last lights in the machine finally died out.

Nowadays my cellphone has exponentially better processing power than that stone-age piece of machinery, but nothing aggravated me more than the games it presented me with.  Modern games are much easier, walks in the park by comparison.  And some asshole had the idea to reboot Q*Bert.  I fucking hate you guy.  Not because this ruined a game from my childhood, it didn’t.  More because this game ruined my tiny little mind with a rage I had never before known, and now it’s back.  Just as frustrating as ever.  And I love it.  You could even skip this article to the last paragraph and not miss much, just a great time and fun and love for a character from my childhood.  Yup!

The two faces of the insidious little space-invader

The two faces of the insidious little space-invader

Upon loading up the game, you will see that Q*Bert has given you the option of torture.  Play the original arcade game (not recommended for the feint of heart nor the weak of constitution) or the modern game mode.  Q*Bert is a game about jumping on blocks to change their color.  Somebody put this fuzzy (?) little alien on it, basically so it would sell, I’d wager.  Now, when you choose the modern game mode, it eases you in.  First level, jump on blocks to change the color, avoid some balls.  No big.  Then they add the snakes and the rainbow discs.  When you see the pink ball fall from the top, you know it’ll turn into a snake, rather than just falling off the edge of the board.  Hop onto a rainbow disc, though and it’ll carry you to the top.  I guess it was those discs that really made me think he was an alien.  They’re like his little UFOs you know?  But then shit gets really aggravating with these little sunglass-clad green dude that change the color of your blocks.  AND THEN there are these little horned things that chase you around the board alongside the snakes!  Shit gets frustrating pretty easily.

Q*Bert’s newest features involve a character select screen where you can pick which alien guy or girl you want to play.  Given you’ve had time to amass some gems, you can choose any of a number of cool and fancy Q*Berts, so I chose this Q*Nicorn that farts out a shiny rainbow everywhere it goes.  Magical!  There is also a level progression screen, which has asteroids a various locations that require a certain number of stars to progress.  Each star is obtained by finishing a level one of three ways: finish the fucking level, finish the level by a certain time and finish the level with a certain number of points.  I found myself quickly cursing at the screen as some of the early levels have you jump on the blocks twice to get them to the appropriate color.  Then those fucking green dudes come along and ruin EVERYTHING!

I'm going to kill your family you little green shit!

I’m going to kill your fucking family you little green shit!

It really is a rage-inductively fun game, if you are into puzzlers.  Q*Bert is a classic puzzler that will really make you consider the path you take to traverse a given field.  Needless to say, a straight line is never the fucking answer.  This early videogame is one that makes the challenges of the Portal franchise seem like an over-narrated piece of cake.  While Q*Bert Rebooted steps you up gradually to the insane scramble of the original game, it still employs new elements of gaming to make you want to bash your monitor in.

There is also something really odd about Q*Bert.  While his original form looked a little wary the rebooted version of Q*Bert looks positively concerned.  His eyes have this look like he’s thinking “Are we really going to play this again?  You really sure you want this?”  Just look into the furrowed brow and saucer eyes.  He looks saddened by something and reluctant to even exist.  Granted, when you fuck up, Q*Bert curses his head off so bad, that it needs to be censored.  And why shouldn’t he?  His life is one of coloring OCD, jumping on blocks to make them just the right hue while he’s dogged by snakes, falling balls, green dudes that FUCK UP HIS WORK REGULARLY and who knows what else!  Seriously there are no words that can fully encapsulate my rage for those slick little green shits.  Then it hit me.  When you Game Over Q*Bert says “bye bye”.  This makes sense since you will be walking away from the screen to count to ten and squeeze a stress ball into flaccid submission.  But what else does he say, huh?  That’s just alien gibberish, right? FUCK NO, MAN!  Q*Bert is saying “What’s the object of it all” impassively implying that he knows it’s all pointless.  Like he knows that jumping on blocks and being constantly driven by your OCD to make everything perfect is a crappy way to live.  That’s pretty fucking heavy coming from a simple puzzle game, like some shit I expect to find in Q*Bert’s suicide letter after he jumps off the level for the last time!  But he can’t even kill himself since he’ll just be put right back up on top to continue.  Like his very existence is one of pure resignation to the fact that he must (not can, wants to, chooses to, should, would, likes to) but fucking must complete these boards.  But why?  Why does he have to?  My guess is that if you beat the game, Q*Bert will be left in peace to do what Q*Bert does when you’re not making him color blocks.  I guess that would be hang out in the endless void of space, just hopping around.

Shiny gems almost make the futility of life seem bearable.

Shiny gems almost make the futility of life seem bearable.

So I guess you might have skipped the rest of this article since we all know what Q*Bert is really about. ::: whistles innocently :::  So, yea, it’s a fun game full of great colors, cute characters and shiny objects.  Give this to children, cause like, I played it as a kid, and I turned out great!  Good times!  Great price, too!  Only 4.99$ on Steam to support a classic of videogaming!  Go and get it!  Honestly, there is nothing about this game that would ever make me mad.  Those green guys can be a little frustrating, but hot dog!  You’ve got to have some challenge, hey?  So go on, get this title and don’t say I didn’t warn you… about the great time you will undoubtedly have!

Black Ice, Warning: Incoming Game!

Posted on by thre3zekiel

BI_logo

 

Remember those days when we imagined all the different ways that life would be different inside a computer?  Any male product of the 1990’s would remember Reboot: a show whose name is invoked, intentionally or not, when an old series gets updated and made dark and gritty.  It was about the denizens of a cyberworld inside a computer where things were fine and happy until some jerk decided to play a game.  If that were the case, my computer’s inside city is a post-apocalyptic nightmare ruled over by the churning wheels of a citizen-rending machine known only as Steam.  But before all that happy-go-lucky bullshit there was a guy who envisioned a world destroyed by cybernetics and supercomputers.  Where the ultra-wealthy elite do as they please with the world, ruling from corporate arcologies where they look down and see an infinite sea of light reflecting the scintillating beauty of the stars above.  This vision of the future, as seen in Bladerunner and Shadowrun, is called cyberpunk.  Black Ice takes place in the minds of those called hackers, and it is a love letter to that vision of a future age.  Garrett, the developer behind this game, shared some of his own thoughts on the inspiration driving this title.

Black Ice was inspired by many things, but mostly Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I wanted to experience the hacking as described in Neuromancer, but I also wanted to find cool loot and blow stuff up.  I think it’s obvious that I took a lot of inspiration from Diablo 2 and Quake 3, but I also looked at things like the Android: Netrunner card game and older games like the original Rise of the Triad. I want you to feel dread at what’s going to come out of these servers, to risk it all for the potential of awesome loot. I want you to feel great because you found an awesome ability combo and are wrecking servers that used to give you trouble. I want you to feel OP.

– Garrett, Developer, Black Ice

Jacking into the Supermesh can be a bit overwhelming at first, since you start the game at level 0.  The game is far from perfect right now, but it has a good thing going.  Check in options that you have the tutorial activated your first run.  It will give you an idea where to start, level you up and secure you some first-level loot as well.  But after running the tutorial once make sure you don’t have it active anymore, or else it will run every time you play.  Irritating.  Sure, in most versions of a cyberpunk future you are dealing with a massive computer network cybercomplex known as “the matrix”.  Gibson used it, Shadowrun uses it, the Matrix used it: at this point the matrix is an irritating trope, so I am glad someone saw fit to call it something a little different.

Towering cybernetic arcologies etched with fluorescent dreams and backlit by scintillating points of data

Towering cybernetic arcologies etched with fluorescent dreams and backlit by scintillating points of data

Once inside the supermesh you will see block after block of fluorescently lit data archives.  These are the servers.  Each one is owned by a company or organization and each one holds a dark secret and terrible power, and you can read about them on their little terminals.  But don’t get too distracted; there is a lot to get a hold of.  Each attack you possess costs you RAM.  Think of RAM as stamina in other games: every action you take aside from pressing ‘wasd’ costs RAM.  Sure, your RAM replenishes but how quickly depends on your talents.  You also have a health bar, experience and an actions hot bar.  You can slot actions into your left/right click and numbers 1-5.  You will also be able to slot abilities into spacebar and shift.  While I went with the age-old gaming medium of shift to run, space to jump, you will certainly have options open as you can slot any ability anywhere.  You could have 6 different types of lasers, an icebreaker and a rocket pack and play the whole game that way.  Your arsenal depends on your hacking style.

Each of your attacks and abilities is governed by a talent.  This is like the character sheet for your standard RPG, but this one is a bit more extensive.  There are a lot of things to consider while you are running the supermesh. You have your hacking talents ( hack speed, hack time, hack range) which govern how you attack servers.  Increase your hack speed to speed up your hacks.  Decrease your hack time so there is less time on the clock when you start the hack.  Increase hack range and you get a larger playing field.  Now, when you hack a server, you run up to it and activate your icebreaker.  Why the fuck is it ice?  What is with all the fucking ice?!?!?! Is it cause the ground is light blue like ice or something? No.  Fuck no.  Those playing Shadowrun are aware that each server deploys Intrusion Countermeasures to detain or kill anyone trying to gain unlawful access to the data on the server.  Your icebreaker lets you tunnel into the server and gain access in a matter of seconds.  In the meantime, you have to deal with Black Ice, the ICs designed to kill the operator.  These are what you shoot, nuke and destroy in the game.  You main enemies.

Your next series of talents are what I have dubbed your general talents (Movement speed, Loot Find, RAM, Health) these let you do various things, mostly self-explanatory. You want all of these increased as much as you can get them.  Some items increase your RAM incrementally or by a percentage, each is displayed separately.  Your next round of talents will be your combat talents ( attack speed, accuracy, critical hit chance, weapon damage, weapon range).  Again, all self-explanatory.  The last round of talents are really just secondary combat talents (Damage returned, chance to pierce, drunk projectiles, knockback power, homing, chance to ricochet, damage reduced, chance to colorize, RAM returned).  A lot of your talents cannot be increased by level, so watch what items you slot.  You don’t want to give up an icebreaker that has a nice range if you really need space to move!

When you see this fucker you better run. It's a shark that fires missiles out of its jagged-toothed mouth.

When you see this fucker you better run.  UFO shark is gonna shoot you with missiles!

Some points to consider while leveling up.  While having an ass-load of RAM is good, some abilities will reduce your RAM by a percentage.  This means the speed you’ll run out of it will not change ever.  So the best stat to level up if you want a good bit of RAM every time you hit that button would be RAM return.  This will increase the rate that your RAM bar refills.  There are a lot of talents in this game, so don’t be afraid to experiment with each of them.

Personally, I did a lot of experimenting with ways to play this game.  For example, nothing is more annoying in battle than being unable to find the attack you want right before some cyberweb crawler leaps at you and takes you out.  This is frustrating.  So I arranged my abilities and weapons so my attacks would be easier to access.  In order to activate my icebreaker, I have to hit 5.  Essentially, I cannot hit that button by accident.  Your supermesh cybercity will be arranged so that a level 300 server is just next to the level 80 server I want to hack.  If I am finishing off the target server and accidentally attack the level 300 server just next to it, I might get my bits scrambled before I can exit the hack range.  I have had my bits scrambled a lot, and every time that happens you lose bitcreds, in-game money.  So placing my icebreaker in a tough to hit spot helped me stop doing that shit.

Another fun fact you might notice while playing is that you can crack multiple servers simultaneously.  This helped immensely when I was level 50 – 70 and was getting bored.  Cracking one server at a time is a slow leveling process, and you have a long way to go until you can attack your final server, the aptly named Finality, Inc.  It is the giant silver server guarded by a roving warship of doom, called a S.H.A.R.K. and topped with a spinning cybernetic skull.  Can’t miss it.  Anyway, being able to take several servers at once gave me the ability to level fast as shit.  I got from level 51 – 80 in a matter of hours; each server provided a healthy boost of around 1000 exp.  Activating several servers simultaneously allowed me to create a giant Venn Diagram of death.  Pure magic.

Enemies in the red, orange, blue field are assholes that don't like video games. I nuked them with a logic firebomb.

Enemies in the red, orange, blue field are assholes that don’t like video games. I nuked them with a logic firebomb.

However, I still wasn’t leveling fast enough.  I got frustrated and went to the store to sell a fuckload of goods.  After cracking a few hundred servers, you inventory gets a little full.  So you go to these giant solid-colored store servers.  I hadn’t bought anything until level 47 and boy was I surprised when I did.  I realized that I could buy some crazy missile attack that allowed me to blow up anything in sight. I also got a secondary, slow-firing shotgun attack that fired missiles instead of pellets.  That shit hurt a lot.  Now I was cracking 2 servers twice my level.  At my best around level 50 I was able to take down a level 110 server and a level 160 server at once.  Anything more than that and it gets really dicey.  These attacks even let me take on the dreaded sharks, and that got me even stronger weaponry, since Finality Inc is a level 500 server.

Now I am pushing level 99 and I am able to take on three level 150 servers at once, but I generally just take a level 175 server and a few smaller ones with it.  An important factor to note in server crashing is that when you attack more than one server at once, each server’s ICE will attack the others.  This means that if you grab a spam server, all the other ICs will be bogged down trying to fight the little guys.  Most other servers will kill off a spam server for you, and you can just watch.  Granted, you would normally get experience per kill.  If ICs kill eachother, you get nothing for it, however, you will still get the exp when the server goes down and the loot inside.  But this means that you can use two or three larger servers against eachother, but be careful!  Each server is killing each server and any IC not engaged in combat will lock into you if close enough, so it is best to keep within the range of enemies you can feasibly take down.  I still shy away from servers at the upper 200 levels.  Utilize these tactics well and you will turn all your enemies into a neat little pile of cybernetic death confetti, just make sure not to get your bits scrambled in the process.

It's like a party for you imminent demise! YaY!

It’s like a party for your imminent demise! YaY!

Black Ice is a great game, but it is in pre-release status, so it is far from perfect.  It has a modern-classic feel to it, though, and will definitely get you back to reading some Neuromancer.  It is available on Steam right now for a cool 9.99$.  Not bad considering it is a good time.  At the moment you’ll be plowing through servers like you’re some kind of bit drinking data vampire after a camping trip in the Australian outback, but it is a lot of fucking fun.  My favorite thing is standing on top of a server, looking out and seeing the ghostly outlines of the numerous servers I’ve crashed.  Sometimes destruction is its own form of creation.  This is another game that includes a photo-sensitive mode designed to aide those suffering from light-sensitive seizures that still want to enjoy it.  For those that care, this one is firmly planted in my favorites on Steam.

I was driven up a wall by one thing in this game, and it wasn’t the web crawlers.  The thing about this game that got me so frustrated is the distinct lack of anything.  It is a lot like being in an actual server: lights, a droning noise some soundtrack but there is no life!  Can we have the game elements of this one already?!  I mean I don’t want to go trade war stories with Mr. Rodgers or anything, but when I am cracking servers just to have someone to associate with, you know there should be a little more variation.  Whatever, maybe I can just go hang out at Finality, Inc.  Live every week like it’s shark week!

Warlock: Master of the Arcane, Strategy Wiz

Posted on by thre3zekiel

WMoA_logo

 

I’m not sure if I ever said it, but I love strategy games.  Warlock: Master of the Arcane is a game that sticks out in my mind as a perfect example of the genre.  It takes after my all-time favorite strategy series, Civilization, and really gives fantasy gaming some serious respectability, rather than just another action-thrill ride through a well-known and profoundly over played fantasy series.  Lord of Magical Fashion Accessories aside, Warlock is a semi-serious game from a franchise known to do everything but act all self-important and serious.  This title in the Ardania franchise reminds you that, while you might be micro-managing the economics of an empire while keeping the ravenous hordes of enemies, ghouls and humans at bay, it’s ok to giggle a bit.

So part of the reason for posting this is I played this game a whole lot over the spring and finally realized the sequel came out.  Another title that suffers from lack of respect, this title received a 71 from Steam’s game critic system, the meta-critic.  I am at the point where I will tell you not to trust the meta-critic with this one.  Warlock is far above a number of other worse strategic titles.  So, Ardania is a realm comparable to that of Heroes of Might and Magic, considering how often the denizens are killing each other, but it is much more comedic.  MnM’s “anti-hero focused, villainy rises to power” game was a story about a demonically possessed man that convinces all his friends he is actually a good guy before killing their daughters and summoning his father, a demonic deity, to eat their souls: a demon-Jesus, hence it is called Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.  Ardania’s version of this was Impire: you are a the dark lord, evil mastermind of horribleness.  Trouble is, you were summoned by a schmuck, so you are a tiny imp.

To start Warlock, you get to configure the vast map on which you’ll play.  I am an obsessive lover of turn-based strategy games, so I always set the size up really high.  There are also the usual parameters to configure (number of foes, win conditions, difficulty) but the most interesting adjustable value is the number of alternate worlds.  Aside from the main map that you can play on, there will be a number of alternate worlds parallel to the primary one.  Now, as far as I’ve gotten (I’ve built a sprawling empire of monsters) I have yet to encounter the portals for this mechanic.  I know that I am worried about it, though.  Good chance that, knowing my luck, the first one I find will be the link to the dimension of darkness and evil shadows will pour out to consume our souls.

it's like a pretty steampunk butterfly of world-generating glee!

It’s like a big steampunk butterfly of world-generating glee!

Once you have you world set up, you pick you ruler and jump in!  One of the more disappointing elements of the game is that it has 3 playable races (4 with the DLC): humans, monsters, undead and Arethi elves.  Arethi elves are basically just emo elves.  Now the humans get the most gold production, monsters  have the best food production, while elves are good at all three (but not comparably so) and they have the best research.  I favored the monsters for two reasons, first being I like to eat and eating makes my army bigger.  I can always steal money from enemies.  My favorite element of the monsters is that they have the most variety to their army.  You start off getting ratmen and goblins and, for my character, you move into lizard people, the Koatl.  I can also get a giant fucking turtle as an ultimate unit!  It’s great!

The way city-building is almost exactly like Civilization.  You have a central city that grows in population and thereby grows in power.  Your capital will come to have a full-on bitchin’ castle at some point, which fires at nearby enemies.  You’ll construct buildings on the nearby land and assimilate resources necessary to fantasy empire-building: food, gold, mana and research.  Now, where this game differs is that research is not used for technology, but for magical spells.  Each spell has a supportive, offensive or strategic use of some kind.  Things like lightning strikes and fireballs are obvious, but things like water-walking and terrain-alteration is just interesting and useful, especially when turning farmlands into wasteland.  The final spell is the Unity spell.  Similar to the spell that hippies attempted o cast in th 1960s, the Unity spell makes everyone sit down and sing cumbaya and smoke pipe-weed, that shit’s for sissies.  It is much more fun to kill everyone and take over their shit.  Of course, if you take over their cities, you will have to contend with the lack of farmlands you caused without an ounce of forethought.  Another thing that was irritating about this is handicapped production on all fronts when controlling the city of an enemy race.  This seems a bit harsh, but if I, a human, was forced to rub elbows with goblins and ratmen, I would be irate and difficult to rule, too.  I am ruled by humans and I am already irate on a regular basis!

Welcome to my seat of ultimate powaaaahhh!

Welcome to my seat of ultimate powaaaahhh!

Some of the problems posed to you as a ruler come down to building a city in the right place.  While in normal strategy games you can build mostly everywhere with minor economic modifiers that might come to be frustrating.  Build a farm on the roiling lava plains and your building will cost you 3 gold per turn AND you’ll have 20% reduction in whatever that building produces.  So, generally, don’t fucking do it.  Also, should you decide that a burning plain with rivers of lava is an acceptable risk for military advance, your units will have to contend with a movement penalty and a 50% defense penalty.  Not worth the fucking trouble, unless you run your shit like Pickett.

Further features of this game involve a modest plethora of special resources, like donkeys and pumpkins.  I really enjoy the things that can be done with these, too.  I have my koatl houses that I build in swamps, a shrine of the rotten pumpkin, order of the stubborn knights and other things.  Stubborn knights are powerful and ride donkeys.  They are eternally stubborn and hold grudges as high as universal mandate.  As you play, you will notice the hordes of wild animals.  These serve function of barbarians from the Civ series.  They are random marauding groups of enemies that serve as something to kill besides other players.  There are also some special enemies in the water, like krakens, which will murder the fuck out of your ships until they’ve seen some battles.  They guard treasure troves that are well worth the fight, including items for your Lords.  These lords can be hired and deployed to deal massive damage or healing.  Employ them right and you will slaughter enemies by the droves, employ them poorly and they will be the funniest most expensive character bios you’ve ever forged an empire to buy.

One of my favorite features of this game are the missions.  Throughout the game you will be randomly assigned missions to kill neutral foes, AI foes or build things.  You might also get a mission from the gods to build a shrine in their honor, which can only be built on special holy sites.  This gets you sway with the god in question and, in turn, their favor will grant you special features.  I am currently struggling through the demands of a needy deity that wants me to want him.  He demands that I build a shrine to him on a holy site.  It’s a little annoying and I really want to make that god happy so he’ll give me shit, same way religion works in real-life.  Not open to the idea of pissing of deities with phenomenal cosmic power.

The go kill bears mission. The pivotal moment in every epic story line.

The go kill bears mission. The pivotal moment in every epic story line.

 

In my opinion, this game was given no quarter by the meta-critics.  It is a stupendous game with some flaws that don’t ruin the fun parts.  Not to mention it is reasonably priced.  You can get Warlock Ultimate edition on Steam for 24.99$, which includes all the DLC with the core game.  You can also get the fucking entire Majesty collection for 69.99$.  I am pretty sure I own 90% of these games and I still want to buy it.

As it is with all things, there is something in this that pisses me off unnecessarily.  Anywhere you haven’t explored there are clouds.  CLOUDS MAN!  I fucking feel like there is a roving bands of stoned hippies just over each horizon, and, like all hippies, they break down camp whenever anyone that might spoil their convention of hallucinogenic enjoyment. Fucking hippies!  I wish I could march my fucking army down their throats and murder all of them with the rage of monstrous fury! Then subsequenly enslave a remaining few so our society would have a fresh supply of dubious plant-life to smoke recreationally in the states of Washington and Colorado.

Plague Inc: Evolved, Eradicate Humanity!

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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So I wiped out 99% of humanity today and still fucking lost!  Plague Inc: Evolved is a game for the strategic mastermind in all of us.  Take control of an infectious disease, evolve and kill everyone ever known by everyone you’ve ever known.

This title starts out simple enough, but gives you an idea of the scope you are dealing with in order to get there.  Initially you can only control a bacteria, but later organisms include prions, viruses, nano-viruses parasites fungi and some things I have never fucking heard of.  You then name your virus.  In prior Plague Inc titles (previously known as Pandemic) I always named my disease something insidious sounding like Writhing Death or The Manacles.  I lost every time.  So one day I made a disease named Booty Shoe out of denominational ennui.  Booty shoe eradicated the world population.  So this one got to be Nut Slipper.  I started Nut Slipper out in Indonesia, and altogether solid start location for any disease.  It has ports for oceanic export, planes for aerial export and it’s a warm, moist climate, which puts it two evolutions away from stepping out into the greater world.  Plague Inc seems to have 3 phases of play.  It’s not actually a part of the game, but the way the flow of the game seems to develop.  I call these phases initial spawn, transmission and eradication.  In initial spawn, you get DNA points for evolution from a few gameplay milestones in the beginning.  This is where your disease starts in its natal region and starts to breed.  When you spread out little by little to people in your starting country, Indonesia in this case, you’ll see little red and orange bubbles appear.  Pop these for the DNA points to evolve your disease.

Exponential infection rates and the game gets excited over a few thousand? Psh.

Thousands of nuts are apparently warm and cozy. Why is this bad?

In Plague Inc, you don’t order your little bacteria where you want them.  Consider the game a simulation of the spread of a potential disease.  Your disease will spread on its own in an organic fashion across the various methods.  You control the disease by mutating it, granting it new characteristics along the way.  These characteristics fall into three categories: transmission, abilities and symptoms.  Transmission is how the disease is carried from one host to another.  These can be things like livestock, insects, air, water etc.  Being in Indonesia, I evolved air and water right away.  Now, the game also made it so that transmission via water would be hard off the bat for my disease.  Something about sanitizing boats.  But evolving that water transmission negated the effect.  Nothing would stop Nut Slipper from sailing the seven seas!  This brings us to where you are spreading to every country in the transmission phase.  You get DNA points for spreading to new countries and infecting large portions of the population.  People don’t need to know you are around yet, but you get the DNA points for infections.

Now one of the things that you get concerned about really fast is how well your disease spreads to other countries.  Does it like the climate?  How rapidly does it spread? Do they use class 3 or 4 antibiotics?  All legitimate concerns.  It used to be that getting your disease into Madagascar was a sure-fire win, but now fully infecting Greenland, Canada and other cold-climate countries is the true challenge.  Your disease will spread the slowest in these locations and if you get lethal too soon, you’ll kill the hosts before they can spread it to other people.  That is a no-go.

Only fifty-one percent of the world population is dead!? Time to step up my game.

Only fifty-one percent of the world population is dead!? Time to step up my game.

Once you have enough people eating, drinking and breathing in your disease it’s time to start the extinction of humanity!  This is my favorite part because once people start dying the music, which has sinister techno-ambiance, goes from ominous to downright fucking creepy.  It starts off with the EKG heart monitor noises woven into it just below audibility and the moves on to include some kind of sirens.  I think they might be the noise that ambulances make in countries not mine.  Ours are pretty obnoxious.  Either way, it moves on to people hacking and coughing and children singing ring around the rosey.  Awesome, ambient and creepy as fuck.

Now the extinction of humanity won’t be reached by making your disease resistant and transmissible alone, and this is where it gets tough.  In the eradication phase you get DNA points for wiping out populations and destabilizing governments.  Symptoms are the method for reaching these goals.  If you take symptoms too early in the transmission phase, your disease will be detected and cured fairly rapidly.  Take symptoms too late and you will not have enough points to develop the truly lethal symptoms.  Occasionally you will spawn random symptoms, but the game can be paused in order to devolve those and earn some DNA points.  With your bacteria, you want to aim for 70% – 79% of global infection to start taking symptoms, and when you take them take them fucking hard.  When I pump up the symptoms I will take them 3 – 4 at a time and let them go.  People start dropping dead faster than the game even knows how to react, and by the time the first death hits the news, hundreds of thousands are lying in their living rooms clinging fecklessly to their last breaths.  Even with Nut Slipper taking the world by storm, I was still greeted with this fucking screen at the end.

ninety-nine point nine percent of the world is dead and it is not considered a goddamn victory

ninety-nine point nine percent of the world is dead and it is not considered a goddamn victory

I am only partially joking about that, too.  I wiped out 99.9% of humanity and it was still not considered a fucking victory!  To give you an idea, the people who survived lived in Greenland, Canada, Italy and Sweden.  Everyone else in the entire fucking world was dead.  My problem was that I took symptoms around 65% world infection and killed all my hosts too fast.  I have no fucking clue how Italy, of all goddamn places, fucking survived, either.  I guess they didn’t go to the Olympics in London that year…   Granted none of them survived unscathed, but they survived.  One of the more fun features of this game is how you can make spectacular effects occur, like projectile vomiting, by combining various symptoms.  Projectile vomiting occurs when you have coughing and vomiting at the same time.  Once you have started to wipe out the population of planet Earth, people will start to do research in an attempt to survive.  This is signified by a blue plane that flies around.  You can slow them down by clicking little blue bubbles, too, but the best part is when you stop research by killing everyone in a country.  Then the country just goes dark as everyone slowly collapses.  This game is a tough one, but rewarding for the strategic enthusiast.  It can be gotten for 14.99$ on Steam and.. wait this is early access?  Well for an early access game, this one sure is well done.  Worth the money, in my honest opinion.  It also feels like one of those games that some people think might save the world by thinking about how to solve realistic problems, except in this one you are the problem.

Of all the things this game does right, there is one thing that still haunts my dreams.  The children.  When you start to go nuclear, as stated, you hear a group of grade-school children singing Ring around the Rosey.  I swear to fucking god this is the creepiest thing I have ever fucking heard in ever.  It is like the children of the corn, or some shit.  The music is fucking awesome, mind you.  That just enhances how creepy the children are.  They are like the fucking harbingers of the goddamn apocalypse!  I will be waking up in a cold sweat singing ring around the rosey tonight, I just know it.

 

Among the Sleep, Crawling in the Dark

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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My wife calls this the “freaky baby game” and not because of the baby.  Everything about this game is unnerving and it all adds up to an enjoyable experience in fear-inducing games.  My wife hates it when I play this in the dark cause she keeps having to run in and check that my screams are caused by the game and not something terrible… like a stubbed toe.  Those are horrifying.

If you come into this game off the adrenaline high that profoundly horrifying games like Amnesia produce, you will not be enthused.  I have to admit, I couldn’t play Amnesia.  It was that fucking freaky for me.  I quit playing only about an hour into the game, and I hadn’t encountered any enemies yet.  Among the Sleep was a much more accessible game for those who don’t want to pour hours into complex puzzles, creeping through terrifying dark castles and losing your mind.  Horror-lite, is the best term for this game, and I found it rather enjoyable.

Among the first elements of the game that you notice is the fact that you are a goddamn 2-year-old.  Your mom has you in a high chair, she’s feeding you cake, you play with a ball and you have as much control of yourself as a drunk muppet.  Not to disparage the game, it controls beautifully.  Toddlers on the other hand are called toddlers because they don’t have the basics of biomechanical locomotion down, yet.  Look down at your body, and you notice a tiny, onesie-clad body that takes haphazard steps.  Environmental manipulation is difficult at times, too.  You are a baby, after all.  Your tiny little hands grasp uncertainly at objects.  It is almost adorable.  Except for the fact that you are scared out of your shit trying to rationalize the world around you.  In the very beginning of the game your crib gets thrown across the room, spilling you onto the floor.  You spend some time crawling around, which lets you hide from foes and get into tight places, but you can stand up on your little baby-legs.  When you do, you move slowly, but you can run briefly before stumbling over into the crawling position.  Frequently, the game makes use of this by making you want to run so badly, but you can’t, you know, being a fucking baby and all.  Not exactly a Kenyan track star.  Also, you can hear the tiny little baby breaths and your character hides in the dark, sucking in air like a noisy little vacuum.  Another feature that highlights the fact that you are a baby is the esc screen.  Hit escape and you bring up your tiny baby hands to cover your face.

Remain still and the teddy bear will go away.

Remain still and the teddy bear will go away.

Early on you realize there is trouble in paradise, and being sensitive to everything around you, it shows.  Babies don’t know much, so they have to experience the world around them in terms of emotions.  Thus, when something scary happens, your screen gets dark and twitchy, like it’s being chewed on by a langolier.  This occurs early on when mommy answers the door.  You hear a male voice and then mommy starts yelling.  That’s when the screen gets all ugly, but mommy soon comes back and it’s all ok again.  She brings a present to you, which you get at later no thanks to your mother, and inside it is the scariest toy ever.  Your travelling companion is a terrifying possessed teddy bear.  At one point he plays with your train set and hides your elephant from you.  But I know the fucking truth!  That little bastard is possessed by a dark entity bent on turning you into a ruthless serial killer!  Either way, teddy is apparently your only weapon.  When you get scared, you have to hug him and he glows in the dark, like a carebear stare that is less powerful and gives your position away to enemies.

<THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!>  Since this game only came out a few months ago, I have to do this.

While playing this game, you notice some really interesting tidbits.  There truly is something sinister lying just beneath the surface, and it isn’t just the spooky ambient soundtrack.  Anyone who watches Grimm knows that what people thought were stories are often used to represent something more sinister.  Although it might not be the fact that werewolves exist, fairytales like Grimm’s fairytales were actually mechanisms used to rise children in a time where they could have been ripped apart by wolves just outside of town.  No one would have noticed for a good few hours either.  So rather than saying “don’t go into the woods or you’ll get ripped apart by wild animals” they would probably say “don’t go in the woods or you’ll be eaten by a witch!”  This is much easy to offer to children than, you know, sheer abject terror.  This game uses the same vehicle to convey and otherwise occluded backstory.  Some guy brings a wrapped package to the door on your birthday and gets into a fight with mommy?  Yea, that was dad.  I guess they were having some kind of issues, so daddy doesn’t live at home anymore.  Later you go through this level with paintings on the walls, one of which features a woman and a well.  As you approach it changes from the woman coming out of the swamp toward the well, her standing at the well and then her drinking deeply from the well with water running down her dress.

Toward the end of the game, you see mommy drinking from bottles (which litter the floor in another level) and she turns into a monster.  This made my jaw drop.  So apparently mommy is also an alcoholic and having some serious issues.  Considering your character stumbles out of a closet at the end of the game, I have to assume this means that the whole game is basically the result of child neglect by a irresponsible bitch that wants to keep the child away from a potentially loving father.  This is a little on the rough side, since a lot of single mothers work hard to ensure that their children get the best they can provide.  But no one is perfect, and some people outright deserve to be dropped off a cliff.

O, shit, mommy is drinking from the jack daniels well again!

O, shit, mommy is drinking from the jack daniels well again!

This game takes a real big adult issue and shrinks it down to a baby size.  It is really deeply affecting, especially since at the end, your mother is the one who rips the arm off your teddy bear, and you character still starts rubbing her head as she sits crying on the kitchen floor.  I cried a little, since this one hits a bit too close to home, having had a number of friends growing up who experienced something like this.  All told, this game is a true horror story that focuses more on the story elements and leaves those “terror from the darkest wilds” elements to more drawn out titles.  After all, how much can you really tell about the story of a baby?

Among the Sleep is a great title, but the thing that really got my gaul up about this title is the number of startle scares it gets out of you.  I mean you creep around a corner, BAM! chair flies at you.  Turn around and something behind you is moving by itself, or something flies out of a random hatch you didn’t know about.  STOP FUCKING DOING THAT!  Man, you’re gonna scare the shit right out of me!   I guess that is their fucking plan, though.  Bastards.

Viscera Clean-Up, Engagingly OCD

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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So this is what it’s come down to.  Viscera Clean-Up detail is a glorified janitor simulator in early access, but don’t close the screen yet.  You’re not exactly wiping some kid’s puke up off a tile floor or mopping up piss.  You are the guy that cleans up after the events of other video games and tragic events, but this seems to be made by a people who are disenfranchised with the world in general and are used to monotonous, soul-crush jobs.  Like the British.

Ultimately, this game is just like building a puzzle.  You are given a big mess to organize, and piece by piece you work the mess down to an easily manageable pile and then finish up.  Now, starting this game is a bit of a chore.  You begin and blood and guts litter the floor, are painted on the walls and the entire scene is a very “modern art in rouge.”  You have several very fucking important machines that help you get your job done.  First, there is the Slosh-o-Matic, dispenser of buckets full of water.  Then there is the furnace, it is the disposal method of choice for viscera both human and alien.  Then there is the What-a-Load container machine, which disposes containers marked with the “biological hazard” symbol.  And finally, the vending machine, which provides access to all manner of useful objects.

This game provides the all-too-realistic experience of being a janitor fitted with the cheapest mechanism for cleaning available in futuristic times.  By all accounts, you should have access to a fucking auto-cleaning zapper mechanism!  But the most high-tech device you have is the Muck-Guyver, which provides a radar “ping” that beeps faster and in a higher pitch the closer you are to a “mess.”  Way too many times have I finished cleaning up a section of a room littered with the remains of a scientist, used the Muck-Guyver and the region still came up hot.  I look on the ceiling and curse the gods, realizing that the some of a victim didn’t fucking reach the floor.  At which point you have to stack a bunch of boxes, or whatever environmental detritus you have available, and scrub the goddamned ceiling!

Your main “weapon” is a mop, so the Slosh-o-Matic isn’t just a funny little feature.  It is your main support element.  And don’t even think for five fucking seconds that this shit is all user-fucking-friendly!  Every time you hit the dispense button, there is a shot you will get a bloody body part instead of a bucket of clean.  This means it will drop out and splatter fresh blood all over the ground and the machine.  I like to imagine that this is because the machine is really a teleporter, and a careless technician just lost an arm or something.  A slosh-o-matic is necessary, though, as your mop gets dirty through usage.  You can only mop a heavily-soiled section of the floor for five mouse-clicks before you start just spreading the muck around, so you have to get a fresh mop bucket and rinse the mop.  One dunk only, though!  Your mop buckets will get soiled, too!  Dunk your mop in that and you will just be smearing a fine paste over surfaces leaving a trail like a snail on its period.  And watch your goddamned step!  Knock over a bucket containing ANY level of grime, and you will have just poured out a mess all over the floor again.  Prepare for agony.  My wife came in worried about me only to find I knocked over another fucking mop bucket!

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Dirty mop? Spilled bucket? This might end with suicide.

 

If your buckets get dirty, too, how the fuck are you supposed to clean for a protracted period of time?  In this space-age setting your company has resorted to the most sensible and fiscally responsible means of disposing of things: setting them on fire.  Apparently the Joker was right, everything does burn!  Even steel buckets full of fucking water!  Now, this is a little silly, but once you have mopped up enough blood and such to get to the bullet cartridges and organs lying in the open, how can you get them to the furnace reliably?  Why, you simply put someone’s assorted remains into a yellow bio-hazard bin and burn them, of course!  Bins are pretty sizable, too, and seating most of two people comfortably.  But be fucking mindful of your goddamned surroundings!  Have a bloody stub sticking out of the bin?  You will smear blood on anything it might touch.  Considering the fact that doors in this don’t open wide, you will end up scrubbing walls and doors a lot, too.  And don’t be that manly man that has to cram eight people, a thousand bullet cartridges, five soiled knives and a take-out box into one fucking disposal bin.  That shit will cost you!  Things inside the bin will get heavy for you and you will drop that shit.  Even if the bin isn’t that fucking full and you are hitting shift to go slowly!  Run with organs and you might as well paint everything red.

One thing that this game encapsulates entirely too fucking well is frustratingly tedious tasks.  So you have disposal bins, eh?  Here is a floor littered with a bazillion mother-fucking bullet cartridges.  Pick them up one at a time.  Scientists in this ripped apart by a blood-thirty alien?  Intestines will be scattered around like someone spilled oodles of noodles and you have to pick it up one greasy meat-tube at a time.  Then there are the distances they go to make this a challenge.  Aside from organs pouring out of the bin or bucket dispensers, should you step in a pool of blood, you will track blood everywhere across mom’s new carpet.  There is nothing more frustrating than realizing you just tracked somone’s DNA across your freshly-mopped floors.  And then there is the detail!  Yea, sure, anybody can scrub a few tiles and punch out, but if you just run through and opt-out of spot-checking your work with the Muck-Guyver, you’ll miss something.  One element I discovered was that sometimes blood will run into the fucking grout in the tiles!  And you’ll have to scrub that separately from the rest of the pool!  I am just grateful they don’t force you to go in there with a brush and scrub it out by hand.  Holy fuck!

At the top of the bin, Chad was really getting a-head!

Spacious enough to fit the extremities of several researchers comfortably!

Cleaning up the organs or dead researchers is only the fun part of the job, though.  You’ll find yourself cleaning up crumpled papers, soda cans and other office debris.  There are also other menial tasks to achieve, such as refilling wall-mounted medkits.  I mean, what research facility is complete without the easily-accessible medkit designed for dressing alien claw-wounds?  To this end, the vending machine is a must.  Of course, not all facilities are outfitted in anticipation of epic fight-scenes.  Some places are just dimly-lit and have naturally dingy textures.  In such situations, the vending machine will provide lanterns!  Of course, knock these fuckers over too many times and they explode leaving scorch marks all over the floor.  Vending machines will also offer any number of useless shit, such as pizza slicers and “wet floor” signs.  Granted, I think you get docked points if you don’t put down the signs, so yea.

This game isn’t without its flaws.  Sometimes you’ll have an arm that will get jostled so bad in a disposal bin that it clips through the bin, painting anything it touches.  The bins are the source of a number of issues, as over-stocking the bins causes things to jump around in there like a bunch of nitrogen atoms under pressure.  I also found these strange “phantom pegs” that appear on the electrical cords for your appliances.  At first you might not see them, but if you splatter blood on them, they show up, sometimes only partially.

I guess this is more respectful than just dumping it all in the garbage somewhere.

I guess this is more respectful than just dumping it all in the garbage somewhere.

Aside from being the type of game a serial killer would jack off to, the most irritating thing about it is.. uh.. well I’ll tell you after I spend another 3 hours scrubbing out the toilets and transferring the wasted toilet paper left on the floor to a disposal bin.  Yea, it really is that much fun.  What kind of psychopath has fun in this, do you ask?  Anyone who gets satisfaction out of gradually turning a hopeless situation into an operational facility ready for the next batch of squishy and ethically-irresponsible researchers.

Skara, Shiney Pre-Alpha Preview

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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Skara: The Blade Remains is a game given the go ahead by the community on Steam Greenlight.  One of many worthy candidates for support, Skara attmepts to step in where many mainstream companies leave off.  Arena deathmatch games typically come with guns and grenades, but this title threatens to drop you into an ancient desert or a volcanic nightmare and wishes you well against the hordes of your foes.  The game looks great and the developer’s site gives a lot more regarding the story and world.

Among alpha-previews that I have played, this title has to be the most difficult to discuss in my fashion.  Primarily, I would ask readers to keep in mind that this game is not even up for sale yet.  It is not even close to finished.  The developers are working hard daily to ensure this game gets to a complete phase as soon as possible.  Having recently played the pre-alpha build, I am certainly excited, but not overly impressed.  If this game were to pre-release today, I would laugh loudly and call shenanigans.  But it is not, so I look forward to the game that the developers are working on, as detailed on their Greenlight page.

First, let me generally name some of the areas that the developers have to improve.  In a game with sword fighting gameplay, you want the character to attack well.  A third-person perspective is granted to the player, and this gives you a much better perception of the presence of your character than other games of a similar genre with their first-person views.  Now, being in pre-alpha, Skara’s animations are a little slow right now and this definitely comes out in the gameplay, making it difficult to maneuver, but it was funny as hell to watch my character swinging a longsword like it was made of white-dwarf matter.  I had to actually start my attacks at a distance in order to “spool up” the animation like it was some kind of minigun with one fucking shot.  Another problem with the animations is the ragdoll effect, but in this it should be called the invertebrate effect.  Upon death all the bones in a corpse seem to magically disappear.  Instant man-jelly style.   Now, one thing that I did notice about the animations while playing was fatalities.  Let’s fucking face it, a game like this is boring without a little extra in the awesome category.  I was able to perform two fatalities that really got me amped up.  I favored the civilized look of the Durno fighters.  They just felt better than the insane, cultist look of the Kharn savages.  I was able to get a few guys to a state of “finish him” dazed-ness.  Once there I ran one guy through and flipped him over my shoulder.  The second one I put a guy on his knees like a priest at a pulpit then proceeded to hack wildly at his muscular neck.  I imagine the head will fly off at the end once the game releases, but the chopping action just finishes the animation with the victim sliding to the ground.

Just wait right there, Shraka! I gonna keel you!

I’m not waiting here all night, Shraka.  Just get the attack over with already!

 

Arena fighters always need someoneto duke it out or there is nothing to play.  This game currently features the Durno (above left) and the Kharn (above right).  Looking at the models and textures for the races I can see why there are only two at the moment.  And why they turn into man-jelly on death.  The models and textures are detailed as fuck.  Light reflects from their clothes and skin differently and their armor and weapons gleam. It is really exciting to see.

Another element that is important to arena fighters like this is easy navigation, especially as far as the menus are concerned.  There shouldn’t be a learning curve for the usage of the basic elements of a game.  When there is a menu to interact with, Skara makes sure it is easy to use.  The only two menus I saw, however, were the escape menu and the match menu.  When loading the level right now, there is nothing.  The screen is just a dead view on the map your anticipated match will be held. Once the game starts, though you have access to the match menu. The match menu is what displays when you hit the tab button in-game.  This is pretty simple and shows you how many kills you (in a deathmatch) or your team (in team deathmatch) have scored.  The scoring system is the Kills – Deaths equation, which I can get behind.  I played enough Unreal Tournament and grew accustomed to the simple systems of games past.

STBR

Best not ask the barbarians why they all have the same first name. Might insult their savage and unforgiving culture.

 

Now, everything that is wrong with the game can be attributed to the fact that the game is not ready for release, so it is missing a variety of important features, such as a tutorial area.  Tutorials on the operation of the battle combos would definitely be very helpful.  Looking at the explanation of the combos in the PDF that came with the game is a little on the confusing side.  Not because of the manual, that is simple.  Click this button, or press this series of keys.  Whatever, no sweats, man!  Then you get in-game and the ham-handed speed of the animations makes timing combos impossible for anyone.  Unless you are Miss Cleo or a Jedi..  then you can clairvoyantly intuit precisely when you need to hit the next key.  Otherwise it is a frenzy full of confused manipulation, like watching my childhood dog hump a pillow.

Of all things this game does and does fucking well are the sights.  Now, yes, I am very critical of graphics-heavy games with no other matter, but this is a game that is still in fucking development!  Cut me a goddamn break!  At one point the AI had a freakout session as I swung at it, and I think opted for self-preservation.  Either that or the guy was like, “fuck this!  If I die now, I want it to be a badass fight sequence!”  So he turns and runs up this tower, and I immediately give chase.  Bones of fallen warriors crunching beneath my iron-clad feet, I charge after my foe.  Bloodlust is coursing through my mind and bringing that coppery flavor thick into my mouth.  Each step takes me upward and he intermittently flags in stamina, coming into view only to catch a string wind and charge further.  I arrive at the top, only to lose my bearings.  Around me the winds howl and the glare of orange light as the sun reflects off the clay-shot fields of the moors.  Behind me my ambuscade foe howls and comes a hair’s breadth from burying the sharp end of his axe into my skull.  I dodge narrowly and heft my sword up, bringing my slice through his torso.  Dazed and reeling, the Kharn warrior blinks against the dazzling flash of my steel.  Only a blink passes and he opens his eyes to see the sharp tip of my sword pierce his chest.  Back my sword plunges until the hilt nearly touches his bulging muscles.  Kharnish men are brutal, and the warrior sneers and tries to grab my sword with his last breath, but I ram my shoulder into his sternum and twist my blade, flipping him into the air.  He lands with a sickening crunch on the stone behind me.

This is what is looked like in game, and the graphics supported every second of it.  You see a far-flung waste, venomous water gnawing at its shores and warriors struggling against death borne by other men.  I can only image that this game will get better, especially since it has been successfully Greenlit.  My biggest issue here is that the game isn’t fucking done, yet.  I played an unfinished game and honestly cannot wait until it is done, because a fantasy arena fighter would be so much fun to me.  The graphics and textures are gorgeous and the ambient sound is nice.  Perhaps the grunts and groans of the characters sound like they came out of a can, but the wind tearing at the dirt and slobbering waves on the shore sound magnificent.  Add in the ambient wildlife and you have a very graphically enticing world that utilizes the Unreal engine to stunning effect.  Now let’s get the rest of the game done, guys.  This one is set up to be really good.

Here the Kharnish warriors allow a Durnovan man how to perform the Kharnish Hot Foot ritual, performed with axes and clubs by boys at age 4.

Here the Kharnish warriors allow a Durnovan man how to perform the Kharnish Hot Foot ritual, performed with axes and clubs by boys at age 4.

 

Concursion, Genre-Fusion Salad

Posted on by thre3zekiel

concur

 

I imagine the discussion at Puuba Games when this game was thought up went like this:

“We want to make a game, and have decided it will be a platformer, now Bill…”

Dave jumps in,  “Whoa whoa whoa!  Who decided on that?  I wanted to do a fucking fighter, like double-dragon!”

Bill cuts off Dave “O fuck that! We agreed last week at Chi-Chis that we’d be doing a damn ninja game!  Shinobi redux bitches!”

“And most of us were trashed on tequila and margaritas!  No, last week beforehand we decided on a space shooter!”

Sam cuts in angrily, “What!?  But the indie scene needs my ideas for a non-violent ambient space explorer!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               – Puuba Games Board Discussion, probably

On the battle raged for 6 days, 7 nights and on the 7th day, everyone said fuck it! and they each started their own games.  Little did they know, this was Dave’s plan all along.  He wanted everyone to do what they were good at in order to make this game.  You’re a devious mother-fucker Dave.  Devious.

Concursion literally takes 6 different games, disembowels them like digital legionnaires and squeezes them into a bizarre game smoothie.  Don’t believe me?  They brag about it on their fucking site.  Now, the game starts off as a platformer with the usual platformer issues.  Dark Lord Bignbad has captured the princess… Honey Drop.. Honey Bum..(?).. the princess yet again, but this time he shatters some crystals, rending the world and various others.  Your character just shows up at the castle, presumably because he’s a horny (-ed) viking, and sees that she isn’t there.  You then chase after the princess’s hand maiden, who it seems was included as a bad-ass lady character because in a kingdom with no other visible rulers, theirs is still a princess.  At least I don’t think there are other rulers, but if there is a king and queen, it was real shitty of them not to show up at the scene of their own daughter’s kidnapping.  Anyways.  Puuba Games essentially does with Concursion what Irrational attempted with Bioshock Infinite, but does it better and to greater efficacy.  Sure, it is not as sparkly as Bioshock was, but I never once said, “God this game looks great, but where is the game material that I was expecting to enjoy?”  Concursion delivers on all of its promises, whether you like it or not.

In the platformer you play a little red viking that seeks to save the land.  Of course, when your happy ass crosses realms you change into the hero of that realm.  It’s pretty fucking awesome.  So one minute you’re a little red viking and the next you are a ninja, double-jumping and deflecting shurikens.  Cross over into another realm and you man a spacefighter, and another still has you don a jetpack and spacesuit.  Watching the transition is a little bit jarring, but as you play each genre-realm, you become associated with the capabilities of each character.

They have great dumplings in this swirling vortex of universe-rending power.

They have great dumplings in this swirling vortex of universe-rending power.

Transitioning between worlds also grants you certain abilities.  Jump in the platformer, transition into ninja, now you can double-jump that pit in time to survive and go platforming again.  Even the bad guys transition sometimes, but it is really funny to see a dopey dragon-dog transition into a flying hunk of rock and vice-versa.  Those bastards over at Puuba also made mastering these transitions essential to obtaining the key to patching all the holes.  See those little green shards at the top left of my screen there?  Yea, those little fucking things.  At first you are getting them like it’s you’re job, but the difficulty of the game increases steadily, so each level makes it tougher and tougher to get the damn things.  I can already hear the howls of completionist rage.

I am not a platformer pro, either.  I bought Braid, found it insanely too tough and quit playing.  Sure, it’s artistic and mopey and wrist-cuttingly emo, but this is not Braid.  This game is also artistic, in its own way.  In a way that reminds me of Mega Man.  Seriously, this game’s music is the type that I love to hear.  It is full of energy and fun.  I actually alt-tabbed the game so I could listen to the theme music of the Intro level.  Don’t you judge me, play the game and listen for yourself!  Music in this game is also as much a part of the game as the mechanics and the graphics, too.  Each realm has its own version of the same music in each level to which it transitions.  It seems Puuba put some serious ass into this game as the only way I can imagine doing this is to make several versions of the same soundtrack and making the game change the place in the soundtrack upon transitioning.  And in case you are wondering, this takes about a fraction of a second.  It is seamless and really neat.  Even in places as above, where you will transition three times mid-jump, the game alters the music as you pass through those vortices.

The soundtrack here must be titled something like "the finality of laser-induced death"

The soundtrack here must be titled something like “the finality of laser-induced death”

Concursion’s difficulty has a good rising curve, but after a point I got to where I was cursing my ass off.  It really brought me back to my roots on the Super Nintendo with Mario or the Commodore 64, trying to make the Hulk cry for mommy before the dynamite he had strapped to him exploded.  It is the most fun game I have ever sucked at in every possible way.  Real platformers would be facepalming and tearing the controls out of my hands.  But the way this game has you doing things that are hard as hell to awesome and encouraging music is really fun.  I mean, every scenario they put you in, whether you are attacking shuriken-flinging wall-ninjas or dashing for your life from a player-seeking angry spike ball, the music is perfect for the level.  Any of you that have a child inside you not due to a heavy lunch will want to go get this and relive your entire childhood gaming experience in one game.

Some of the levels are done up in vector graphics, some are your pixel-art, if you’re into that.  But all-in-all this game rocks.  There is even a little humor in how the game teaches you how to play.  Like, did you know that ninjas could historically perform a double-jump?  I can just imagine that showing up in one of those highly questionable History Channel shows.  And once you are done running all over the place, the game lets you jump under a discoball for your own personal pelvic-thrust party!

If you would like to buy this game, aptly described on Steam as a difficult indie action platformer with a great soundtrack, it runs 11.99$ on the aforementioned gaming service or 16.98$ for game and music.

nntsss nntsss nntsss

nntsss nntsss nntsss

Absolutely one of the most fun platformers I have ever played, including in comparison to the classic ones.  But the thing that pisses me off about all of this is how hard I suck at platformers!  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love gaming, and I played more Super Mario Brothers than any one person should have as a kid with 4 brothers.  But I was the one that passed the Sega controller during rocket-knight adventures so my brother could teach me how to rocket-jump!  I played the first level after the intro in about 3 minutes and 30 seconds.  When you play that level, you will be astounded by how hard I truly suck.  Please don’t hate, we all have our strong suits and I am not the Jack of Platformers.

DLC Quest, Laugh Until it Hurts

Posted on by thre3zekiel

 

 

 

dlclogo

 

DLC Quest is fucking hilarious.  Have you ever been frustrated by the fact that every MMO has microtransactions in it?  They no longer use the monthly subscription standard and just try to monetize it the best they can?  Some times they even go too far and make you buy gems or keys to make your game go faster or get you another useless item for your collection of pixel-itmes?  DLC Quest jabs angrily at this frustrating reality and makes you laugh time and again.

Literally this game has you start out by watching a bad guy take the Princess MacGuffin.  Yea, so already we can see that this is a classy title.  For those of you who are unaware, the MacGuffin, as detailed by Alfred Hitchcock, is the item central to the conflict of a plotline and everyone is usually looking for it.  Once you witness this, you have to start collecting coins.  These coins will be used later to pay for DLC.  DLC which unlocks functionally indispensable features of the game, such as music, animations and the ability to fucking move left.  After you get your Zoolander Syndrome sorted out, you are off to seek more coins so you can get to the end of the game.  Now, there are two “games” which are in pretty much the same program, so I would consider them all to be part of the same game.  Granted, they are listed as two separate games and plays, but the fact that the game is “released unfinished” with a “better expansion pack that you can get later” is just another jab at major industry methods.

Something amazing is always happening just over those mountains.

Something amazing is always happening just over those mountains.

The first “game” is over really quickly, but the levels can be a bit on the frustrating side.  I didn’t die once, but there is a lot of annoying jump puzzles and the only thing you get to kill personally are sheep.  After your horse saves the day, you then load up the second part of the game.  You adventure for a bit, and you have to discover who is behind disappearing villagers.  Of course, the villagers all live in what equates to a big hill, so there’s that.  You venture forth and discover a shepherd, whom you presumed dead, was behind the deaths this whole time.  His sheep were the ones you so heroically vanquished in the previous “game”.

Some parts of this game aren’t really played so much as watched.  There are a few cut-scene-esque sequences that showcase various types of player frustration as well as legitimate game sequences.  These cut-scenes vary from inability to maintain server connection to boss deaths.  I found myself laughing loudly at many of these as they are really relevant to the player experience.  This is a gamer/indie developer ranting about his experiences with mainstream gaming.

Don’t come at this looking for an excellent game.  DLC Quest’s primary purpose is to jab angrily at things they hate about the games industry and how they treat their players.  The game features themselves come in the form of a basic platformer, and most of the fighting is done for you.  In fact, the only boss you really defeat yourself is the very last boss in the second “game”.  I have no regrets about purchasing the game since it is available for 0.98$ on Steam.  Could you really justify being mad about a game that is less than a dollar, 2.99$ on any other given non-sale day?

Those coming at this game looking for an actual game are just a bunch of fucking assholes.  Sure, this game isn’t really what it makes fun of, but that is not the damn point.  If this game was a F2P mmo that made you buy DLC for everything, possibly still with in-game money, it would go downhill right fucking quick.  Some jack ass on Rock Paper Shotgun suggested this, but I think he needs to get his goddamn head checked.  That idea would never in a million fucking years work right.  At least not done by an Indie Developer.  And if they did it would end up literally being every bit as annoying as the games it is making fun of.  I mean this asshole wishes he could spend money unnecessarily on stupid shit in a game that makes fun of games doing just that.   It would make the satire less poignant and more self-destructive, making fun of itself in the process of bitching about the state of the industry.  To be respected as a satire, which makes it artistic, it should not be adding more shit to the pile of shit.  Sure, art is a powerful word to use for this game, but not every piece of art is fantastical and pretty.  Just look at Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal.  This game does its job well.  Sometimes I wonder where they find these guys.  DLC Quest as it is now is a satire showcasing the ways that gaming has pissed everyone off, and that is a message I can fucking get behind.

One thing that really got my gall up in this title was the goddamn background!  Just look at it up there!  Something fucking AMAZING is happening back there.  I tried many times to get through incomplete sections of the levels or sneak past the coding, but that shit didn’t fucking fly.  I should be able to explore, man!  This is why I hate playing platformers and 2D games in general.  I am only getting an idea of what happens on this lush and interesting environment along a set, linear path!  Is there gold back there?  Is there a sexy, drunken french orgy/rave party?  I want to see that shit!