Soul Gambler, Faust Reborn

Posted on July 27, 2014 by thre3zekiel

Every once in a while, someone tries for greatness beyond the scope of their reality. For the main character of Soul Gambler, Faust, that was never the plan. Faust is just like every one of you: went to school, excelled at his field, got a reasonable job in a boring position. Paid well enough to have a good life. But Faust was bored to tears. That is, until today. Until the day where you meet him. That is the day he learns how to sell his soul.

Faust is the story about a man who sells his soul to get everything he ever wanted. Soul Gambler is a modern retelling of Goethe’s words. It would be ~~easy~~ boring as fuck for me to launch into a comparison between the two that might inevitably end with some shallow “the book was better” statements. Honestly, I have never fucking read Faust. Probably a lengthy and verbose masterwork of an ancient people that is difficult to relate to and context whose context and references are enormously difficult to fully accommodate. This is why I love video games. We’ve moved past the lives and the times of those people for it to be fully applicable to us here. What we need is a translation between our language and theirs. Goethe was a German writer and Faust is a story from German legends but it is not the German I am referring to. We need a contextual translation of Faust so that we can use it, just as those readers of its day used it, to measure ourselves and consider who we are in a new light. Soul Gambler is an example of that attempt. Taking these old stories and making them into something we can feel and which we can use to relate to our ancestors’ struggles. And now, some titties.

Aw fuck no, I am not listening to any shit you say when your fucking presence makes my office into Cthulu’s man cave.

I am not sexist, I just needed something to break the preachy rant. Faust really is every man in this game, though. At least every modern man. We’ve all gone to school or had some kind of training. Maybe we didn’t all graduate at the top of our class, but the majority of us ended up at the “good enough” category of workplaces, and less at the ones they advertise on the fucking brochure. We’ve all felt the grinding tedium of everyday monotony, and for the British, that’s ok. For the rest of us, we need some fucking flare, some life, some action. So Faust gets to meet this old gypsy woman that cuts him with a fucking dagger. This enables Faust to slice off portions of soul life a loaf of goddamn bread reserved for his very own private dream sandwiches. He uses these metaphorical sandwiches to mold his reality and make whatever he wants happen. For 10% soul, you can find your own soul mate! For 30% you can be strong and sexy as an athlete! It gets a little obnoxious as every time you look into something with a reflection, his reflection appears and tries to convince him to chop off pieces of soul to buy a new pair of sneakers or something.

The gameplay in this is similar to pretty much every fucking Final Fantasy and Bayonetta in that it really requires is one button. Where it differs is that you have to select with the mouse, so it requires a little more effort. But that is ok. This is about the story, the characters and it is really not that long. There are also none of those pesky game obstacles to slow you down, so I got through this whole game in about 1.5 hours. Granted, the more observant have already called my bullshit because they located the stats at the bottom of the page. Let me make that bigger for you ; ).

Charism, huh? I thought that was the worship of arbitrary indoor furnishings..

So there are some RPG elements in this game: Health, Manipulation, Intelligence and Charism(a). These stats actually have an effect in-game as well. If you have high manipulation, you can use your jedi powers to make people tell you things you want to know. High intelligence lets you out think stupid people. High Charism(a) lets you charm your way out of some shit. Overall you can look at these as chat modifiers. You will generally end up in the same place every time, but these stats let you choose some new boxes or open new opportunities through discussions. Another stat that will appear in the lower left corner of your screen is your soul. It shows you, in percentage form, how much of your soul you still have left. The more the better, trust me. Without revealing too much you have am epic showdown at the end, and how you choose to spend your soul decides how you do in the epic showdown. Even for those with no concept of the source material, it should go without saying that being frivolous with your soul makes this game end badly for Faust.

Good Lord! She tattooed my liver! That’s the last time I pay a hooker in Belfast!

One thing that really got me in this game was the terrible use of English, but the developer of this game is based in Brazil and has an option for English on the main site, so they don’t English too well. More’s the better, honestly. What was supposed to be a dark and mysterious tale turned into a quirky dark comedy about a guy with a tattoo on his liver, or something. There was also some serious gypsy magic in this one, too. This is a good game for the experience. It really can’t even be called a game, either. It’s an interactive experience. These guys call it a PlayComics game, but it’s an interactive experience. And it is well done, too. Despite the broken English, the dialogue flowed together really well, which is an accomplishment considering this is the equivalent of a “choose your own adventure” novel. It really highlights why games can’t really give you total freedom because every last step outside the boundaries has to be programmed in. This game takes what equates to a dizzying tangle of dialogue possibilities and brings them all back to the same storyline points elegantly. The music is also enjoyable in a cafe, but if you are into that sort of thing, you can download it, too. The best part about this game is that it is only 4.99$ on Steam. 6.99$ with art and soundtrack. If that hulking second dollar figure is too daunting for you, there is always the option to get the DLC later, which includes the music and art.

Of all the things that bother me about this game, nothing frustrates me more than the possibility that it will be passed off as just another indie game on Steam. This game has a lot more to offer the standard gamer than just art and relation to a piece of literature. It has a soul of its own that it tries to grant you in the process of playing. It makes you think about things and weigh yourself in a new light, and that is the purpose of art. To affect you deeply enough that you carry a piece of it with you. I just want to know why the woman that is your soul mate carves the symbol of chaos into your chest to protect you. Fucking whatever, I don’t know what kind of love-pain rituals Europeans are into these days.

Huzzah! This is my 50th article! Time to Celebrate with a giveaway! I will be linking this sentence to the details shortly. Stay tuned!

Q-Bert Rebooted, Reviving a Classic

Posted on July 24, 2014 by thre3zekiel

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

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.

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 July 23, 2014 by thre3zekiel

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

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.

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 July 20, 2014 by thre3zekiel

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!

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.

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.

AntiHero, Sprinting Preview

Posted on July 17, 2014 by thre3zekiel

I have been playing a lot of platformers lately, so I got myself a Dualshock 4 controller in anticipation of one day being able to afford a PS4! For now, I will settle for using one on my PC. And today it really paid off. Today I was able to burn through the Anti-Hero demo a couple times and get associated with this upcoming indie title.

Anti-Hero is a fast-paced puzzle platformer that takes you across the universe. The main character is some sort of spaceman with interesting powers. Now they aren’t terribly amazing, so don’t get all amped up for some crazy fucking ideas that will rend the universe itself, but the way the mechanics of the game are woven together provides a fun and challenging game that gets me excited to wear in my new gamepad.

First among the mechanics employed by Anti-Hero is the wall-run. Apparently this space wanderer character is from a distant place where they still have ninjas, because he can run straight up a fucking wall. As of right now there is even a tutorial that lets you practice wall running. You run at a wall (moving forward while pressing L1 for me ) then press the jump button (X in my case) twice in order to start running up it. Simple enough, but as high school does not offer extensive preparation for the real world, so, too, the tutorial is just child’s play compared to some of the wall-run challenges offered by the game even as early as the introductory level. Now, don’t get it twisted: this mechanic has been woven into the game well. It feels right, it isn’t terribly hard, but the game doesn’t hand you anything. After speaking with Matt Lewis, an Artist and Animator on the project, I have a firmer idea on the thought going into the mechanic.

We do think about how the player is going to react to situations like wall-running. People have said “it’s too punishing, I need check points.” We respond, “The level takes 60 seconds to run through and you want a check point?” That’s what I thought, wall running shouldn’t be an automatic thing; it should require timing and skill. The idea was that we didn’t want sticky walls. We want wall running to be a platform challenge, just like clearing a gap or timing platforms.

– Matt Lewis, Artist and Animator, Couch Fort Gamez

Paul DiDomenico, Lead Developer at Couch Fort, also had his own thoughts regarding difficulty of the gameplay:

There are too many follow missions these days. Personally, I want kids to hate me like I hate whoever programmed Mega Man 7

– Paul DiDomenico, Lead Developer, Couch Fort Gamez

So the developers don’t want anything to be too easy, so the game feels satisfying with objectives and challenges that are fun and attainable. But how attainable is wall running? Well, I am glad I played it with the gamepad. Despite my preference for my PC gaming input apparatus, the gamepad made the entire mechanic smooth and intuitive to get your hands around. It is kind of like every other PC platformer in that it should have a warning label: DO NOT TRY THIS AT ASDF! What is unique about this mechanic is the way it is presented in the demo. There is a section of it where you have to wall jump up a mine shaft. Everything about the mine is well-crafted, too. You are running up a couple walls and jumping back and forth between them in time to catch the other side and keep running. It takes some practice, but if you get it right, you can end up running up higher than your goal and coming back down to reach the objective.

Seriously, don't try this on any non-controller device

Just.. a little… further!

Another mechanic in the game that adds to the momentum of gameplay is the slide. Pressing a certain key on the gamepad ( O for me ) triggers a slide, and when executed in certain locations you can slide even further. Various obstacles throughout the level make you slide on your side for a good distance. This results in a platformer with a speed and synergy that gets you moving fast and keeps you on your toes. You want to maintain the momentum you feel with the main character, and it is definitely going to be a good title for speed-runners.

Through the game, you will also be tasked with some fairly simple puzzles. These include throwing an object through a hovering hoop to unlock a door. Throwing is accomplished with the left stick, and the character thrusts out his hand like a damn jedi. You then control the object as it flies through the air. Since this is a preview, you might have guessed the game is in early development. The objects, for now, are blue cubes. As you might expect, the game rapidly builds on the throwing mechanic by immediately having you take an object, throw it through a hoop and over an obstacle, while you slide underneath and catch it to continue the trajectory through to another hoop, which then opens a door. If it touches the ground, the door doesn’t open. It sounds like a bitch, but the way the game plays, it is very doable and very satisfying when you complete it. I have replayed the demo 5 times just to be like, “hell, yea, just another space traveler doing some wicked slam dunks, comin’ through here.” Using this ability also helps you kill your foes as early in the game you notice the blue cubes just chilling there. You can take these babies and lob them at your foes, but many times I used them too hard and they landed in a bottomless pit. Weaponizable objects are best used as “magic bullets” than dumb-fire missiles, swinging them through the air and guiding them closely. Now, in a game driven toward momentum, this takes you out of the speed a bit, so the best way to just get through it is to watch your foes’ movements and run past them.

I knew my years of slip ‘n’ slide practice would come in handy some day!

Some other elements that I enjoyed were the scenery layering. Although the level platforms cut a bit suddenly in some places, overall the way the foreground reaches back into the background is great. That is then layered with various elements that move naturally. It is not like playing in a diorama but it feels like you are just on a hill in a busy forest-bedecked town. One point of this game that still feels a bit rough is the music. The music in the trailer on the site is pretty exciting, but that in the game is comparatively overworldy. It can be best described as platformer jive and it gets you rolling with the game, but it just feels like it should be in a version of this game retailed by Old Navy. A game this fast-paced featuring a space traveler might feature something a little more techno-sprinter and a little less polo shirt overworld.

Finally, the storyline, though largely conceptual, also has a number of fantastic elements to it. In the title screen you see a balloon that is rocketing out of the atmosphere to scintillate gently in the starlight. Paul DiDomenico, the Lead Developer at Couch Fort, revealed to me that this symbolizes a key theme in this game’s golden heart: a child’s wish, which thrusts him into the heart of the story.

The idea is that a true wish from the heart can hold great power, and that power always draws more power. It comes from a place of light and innocence, but it is coveted by those who wouldn’t use it for the like.

– Paul DiDomenico, Lead Developer, Couch Fort Gamez

So right off the bat, I get the sense this game will have some serious feels. But in a brilliant manner of true “yin and yang”, the main character, our space traveler, has a story that is dark and sad.

Eons ago his home world was at the brink of destruction. He and a small council performed an ancient and forbidden ritual as a final effort to save their planet and species. This effort, though bestowing upon them incredible abilities, ultimately failed and left them with the curse of immortality. They have since wandered the cosmos decaying until they are mere husks of their former selves, unable to die. Then, suddenly, one by one, they begin to disappear until only our main character remains, which is where his story and the child’s meet and our game begins.

-Paul DiDomenica, Lead Developer, Couch Fort Gamez

I am not sure about you guys, but this game looks and sounds like a lot of fun. Though it is in its early stages, the amount of heart and work being poured into it makes me optimistic about the final product. Through everything I have come to understand about Antihero, the only thing that get me feeling frustrated is that it will be some time before this title is finished. Keep this title in the back of your minds, though. This is a first look into what is going on with Couch Fort Gamez inaugural title. Let’s wish them luck and get them the support they need and deserve! Check out their site and keep an eye out for Antihero.

Keep an eye out to find out more about Antihero and learn what the devs have in store for our main characters!

Plague Inc: Evolved, Eradicate Humanity!

Posted on July 15, 2014 by thre3zekiel

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.

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

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.

Estudio Antropo, True Next-Gen Gaming

Posted on July 13, 2014 by thre3zekiel

Remember is Shadowrun how your characters had 2 different versions of the matrix to deal with? Yea, sure, one was the Virtual Reality (VR) realm where hackers reign as gods, clad in icons to resemble all the deities of old as their meat body lays somewhere on a bed or floor neglected by the free-roaming mind. The other was called Augmented Reality (AR) and it is where you find the visual interfaces that allowed you to see what specials and sales stores have going that day by looking at the logo through the right pair of glasses. Nintendo was the first to really take advantage of this when they came out with the 3DS and its aptly named VR cards, which revealed a variety of simple, fun AR games that had my wife and I battling over who was the better virtual fisherman. These cards were cards you lay on a table and then look at with your 3DS in AR mode. Characters would then pop out of the cards or games would form out of the table. It was fucking awesome. Then there was this company that fucking decided to make a pair of computerized glasses, which hold the potential to plaster gaming all over the world. There is another company, however, whose scope is more ambitious than just playing with cards and more exciting than karate chopping at the air or shouting virtual “clay pigeons” to pieces with your fucking thu’um.

Estudio Antropo said “That’s fucking neat and all guys, but what about the goddamn devices the entire society has already invested in?” Not a direct quote, but one I like to imagine coming out of someone’s mouth. These guys have developed a game for the boARd format, a Kurzor S.R.O. concept, that allows you to use your mobile devices to play board games. Now, the trailers for this only show people with their iPads all spooled up and ready to go, but, the game is also scheduled to release with an Android element, as well. I don’t see it being long before Andriod and iOS players can huddle around the same boARd to play a rousing game of Monopoly, or something. Estudio Antropo currently have a kickstarter campaign up that ends August 1st. If anything in this article excites you nearly as much as it fucking excites me, go there and throw some money in!

Check that cardboard swagger

First among the titles that will pioneer the fourth fucking dimension is Cartoneros. This title is one that has a kind of general appeal that plays out really cool. Not to mention, even those hippies with their goddamn iPads will love the concept. Cartoneros takes place in a world where people throw away vast amounts of fucking cardboard. EVERYTHING is cardboard, including your characters. Your characters then go out on their mission to clean up the world! Aw, yay! That is so special! Yippee! Love is magical! They then proceed to battle over resources like the humans that undoubtedly spawned them and battle to the death over cardboard. So yes, good intentions do pave the road to good gameplay.

In this tactical strategy, you control a small team of Cartoneros, these little guys that collect the cardboard detritus of the world. Each of your cartoneros has strength and weaknesses, too, so it is not all cut and dry combat. In your mad dash for sustaining cardboard, you will battle with other players. Now, this carboard you collect isn’t really something you’ll use in-game to pump your cartoneros up, but between plays is when it comes in handy. As you await your next round of play against your mortal foes (apparently your mom and little sister) you use the cardboard to beef up your cartoneros. You will even be able to shape the gaming environment by building maps, characters, weapons, monsters and robots! Its developers liken it to a combination of DoTA and XCOM. Granted, if you spend your cardboard too frivolously, you will not have enough resources to maintain a competitive team. This honestly looks like it could turn into a fucking sport.

Adorable cardboard characters butchering each other with their cardboard shotguns. Isn’t that nice!

Each game of Cartoneros will include 1 – 8 players, and the game style will change depending on the teams. If everyone is on the same team, the game is more like an RPG with players working together to fight monsters and get cardboard. If you split the players apart, it becomes a DoTA, XCOM fusion-style tactical strategy game. Monsters in this game fall in three categories. Little ones that flee, big ones that attack your characters and huge ones that make you crap your cardboard trousers. Each monster will have special abilities that can be obtained by killing the monsters and eating its heart like a ancient n0rse warrior. I might have made up that last part about eating its heart, but you really can get the powers of your foes for a limited period by destroying them. Apparently there are some really neat features to the game structure, as well, allowing you to create your own game. Maps can be created by arranging terrain on the board, missions can be created by designating objectives and stories created by linking maps. The game is going to be tough, too; if you lose characters weapons, tools etc. in-game they are gone forever. You’ll have to be careful how you spend your cardboard between games, but careful planning will pay off big-time in the long run. You can read about Cartoneros in greater detail on its Kickstarter page.

Does cartoneros sound too much like something that the family will enjoy and won’t be badass enough for your group of awesome buddies that only opt for the finest and most edgy of tabletop games? The guys backing cartoneros are also developing Espionag3: Berlin Files. If cartoneros’ strategic gameplay and winsome visuals don’t excite you, the dark world of spies and intrigue laid out in Espionag3: Berlin Files should.

It’s another strategic game where you control a network of spies and battle against your friends. Berlin files looks really fun and with pitched gun battles and tailing missions, this game looks awesome. I don’t fucking care what language the goddamn screenshots are in! The players take up the role of secret government agents in Berlin, who have discovered that the mafia has moved in and are expanding rapidly. It is up to players to utilize their stealthy spy tactics to overcome and eliminate their mafia enemies. This gaming format has a lot of possibilities, from the simple and fun ideas to adult level games providing intrigue and excitement. I could see a game like this taking place in 1930’s New York with players controlling a mafia family and vying for control of the illegal liquor trade. Want a historical piece? What if someone developed a game where half the players are the French Resistance fighters and the others are Nazis, and the players duke it out for control of Paris? See, only limited by your imagination.

On any city street in Berlin…

So why does this concept excite me and why should it excite you too? Do you like tabletop games? Anyone who has ever played Shadowrun, Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer and any other such related games should be able to see the potential this poses for awesomeness. This format could easily be built upon by major developers to create a DnD game that works with ipads, android phones etc. so that you can sit down with your gaming crew and play some serious tabletop games. You could have endless customization options for your Warhammer armies, all explained at your fingertips by the software of the game. Terrain customization for Warhammer, DnD and Shadowrun games would be that much more detailed and the worlds you play in would, literally, just be a game screen away. You would be able to almost touch them. Super-nerdy niche games not your style? This format could be used to give standard boardgames the modern update off of console systems they so desperately crave. Instead of buying the whole box and all the pieces getting scattered by a rampaging dog, you could just play care-free on a paper-board! Granted, the animals might poke holes in the paper boARd, but it saves you a hell of a lot more time searching for tiny houses. Those fuckers are a bitch to step on at night, too. So support Cartoneros on kickstarter up through August 1st! It could really be the update of next-gen gaming that would really make people feel like they are living in the future!

Among the Sleep, Crawling in the Dark

Posted on July 8, 2014 by thre3zekiel

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.

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!

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 July 6, 2014 by thre3zekiel

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!

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.

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.

World War Machine, Earth-Rending Preview

Posted on June 29, 2014 by thre3zekiel

So Square Enix has its own crowd-funding site, called the Square Enix collective. Being removed from most mainstream news, I was unaware. World War Machine is a title off that site, which sadly did not meet its fundijng goal of $50k. Its creators, however, seem unfazed by this, and continue to promote the game accordingly. It did manage to score $12,382 of its funding goal, though, so cheers to that. After playing the pre-alpha demo of the game, I am impressed and I hope these guys somehow manage to pull it out of the fire. Looking at the game on the developer’s site, it is something to be excited about.

World War Machine is a transhuman post-apocalyptic game that takes place after humans have thoroughly fucked up the world. After a mass extinction event wipes out all organic life from the Earth (which you know happens from time to time if you watch Cosmos) humanity has changed drastically. We used to be “fleshy meatbags full of sloshing” according to HK-47. Sensing our impending doom, humans started downloading their consciousness to a computer. Because, you know, even if our bodies die, it’d be cool to allow something of us to survive, right? Nothing could go wrong here. Except that the nodes that house our AI’s are damaged from the cataclysm, fragmented and separated. Some of us forget who we were and our purpose becoming confused machines roving the decimated landscape. You play one of those who remembers our past and fight to preserve the memory. See, the other machines don’t know about the past, but somehow you do. In the demo, I had a level 10 machine. You are basically a mini gundam ( or Jaeger ) and you fight against the damaged intellects of the other nodes, which house the human intellects. The fight has been raging for centuries and finally one of the machines remembers. This seems like you. Now, the pitch suggests that the team here, Tuque Games, wants players to slip in and out of co-op seamlessly to take on group missions then revert to solo missions. Missions will have a lasting effect on the world war itself, as well.

Did I mention that the concept art is cool as shit?

That is actually a look at your character in the concept art. And given some of the differentiation visible between the player concepts on the WWM site, character customization seems to be part of the plan. Whilst I was in the machine shop menu, I noticed something confusing about the character. It is a machine, sure, but it looked bizarrely organic. Now, this is not to say that it has fleshy bits. It doesn’t. But there are subtle little features, like wraps around the exposed joints and pieces of wreckage made into a front-plate, that make it look like a cybernetic lifeform evolving on its own in a post-human world. All of the machines have this look, too, from the mongrels that run and kamikaze on you to the snipers and “reaper” artillery bots. There is a lot more to this game than you’ll notice at first, for sure.

On the topic of enemies, one of the things I noticed is that they come out of the fucking woodwork. They squeeze through cracks and doorways in the walls, they pour out of ruined buildings… hell! I was walking along when a chunk of the road imploded and enemies came flooding from the crevasse! The mission in this demo was simply to get to the other side of the map, but that shit was hard to fucking tell! Not because there was no explanation. It clearly said to find the other outpost. Sure there was no “arrow” but fuck, man, I couldn’t exactly try to go through a mountain of rubble! What I mean is the level was more vast than I expected from a demo. Every time I played (and I played several times) it was like I was finding another side path off the one I started on. Not to mention hidden husks. You can find shattered robot husks that house materials for crafting.

These stashes were usually hidden, but the nature of the engine lends itself to finding these pretty easily. Breaking things is fun to do. Simple fucking fact. This game allows you to destroy nearly fucking EVERYTHING! If you can shoot it, you can break it. I found myself demolishing walls, ruined buildings – you can even destroy the rubble! Fucking seriously! Too much fun with that, actually. This is how the game makes it easy to miss stashes, if you aren’t attentive. You could walk past a destructible terrain and miss out on some cool loot. And loot in this game ranges from crafting items to weapons and cosmetic items. I went into the machine shop, which is the crafting screen, and I was able to build some fun things. You collect a variety of Spec Files from fallen enemies and then find the components to complete the blueprint. These components are things like plastic and metals and can be found by killing enemies and destroying the props and terrain. And trust me, one you blow up your first taxi or bus you’ll want to get more of them. Of course, being a robot, you can tell which terrain pieces have something inside that will be useful. I just had WAY too much fun destroying things. I made a cape, which hangs from my character looking badass and tattered. I also made a few weapons

BOOM! Ha ha ha ha!

Weapons in WWM come in a variety of flavors: MG class, RKT class, SHTG class, MTR class, ATL class, Rail class. MG class is your standard machine gun. This fucker spits out bullets and most enemies will have them. Luckily, you don’t just walk into the bullets like they do. Not to mention you can widen the spread as you level up. RKT is your rocket class weaponry, and these were fun. Above you see the player blasting enemies with the standard locking missiles. In the demo I got to try out the mouse-guided missiles! Those were a riot. SHTG class is a shot gun. This sprays a wide burst of firepower in front of you. I attached it to give my secondary a little more punch! MTR class is the mortar. This was awesome, but had a lower damage. The ATL, however, is fucking scary as hell. This artillery class weapon fires high, so you have to plan your blast pattern, but it is worth the wait. The rounds are high explosive and wipe out even the toughest bosses in a short (ish) time. The RAIL class is the only type of weapon I didn’t get to experiment with. This beast looks awesome, though, as I fought a few snipers that had it. The thing passes through terrain, enemies and basically everything the magnetic projectile hits. Thus, this would be my favorite weapon to destroy terrain with! One of the cool things I discovered is that you can attach multiple weapons to your body at higher levels. This allows you to fire a shotgun, ATL combination, for example, that will nuke anything close. And you have three firing modes (for each mouse button) to choose from! So you’re all kitted out with an arsenal of explosives and guns to make a redneck feel uneasy. But your vortex of vicious projectiles isn’t at its limit.

You also get powers to choose from. We had access to them all, but among them a few really caught my eye. First off, there was ultra-velocity, a mega-man super dash that lets you render enemies into tiny bits of scrap. Another fun power is the EMP. This will release a massive bust of electro-magnetic power that will stun most enemies. Makes it a whole lot easier to deal with hordes of mongrels when they can’t even move. Then there is my personal carnage-wreaking favorite. Orbital strike. This is every bit as much fun as you might imagine. A laser centers on an area then blasts everything in its radius with a fucking cataclysmic death beam turning everyone into a thin vapor with a faint hint of ozone.

"Oo, look! It's shine.." -Bob 3428's last words

“Oo, look! It’s sparkl..”
–Bob 3428’s last words

Now, that is not the end of it. You can level up, as stated. I did not see too much of this, as I was level 10 when I got there. Leveling seems pretty straight forward. You get points per level and allocate them to your stats per level. These stats are Weapon System, Operating System, Protection System, Sensor System and Mobility System. Now, weapon system is pretty self-explanatory. This is the power and efficiency at which you use your weapon. Higher weapon system = more dead bad guys. Then there is the Operating System. This seems to be the equivalent of intelligance and govern recalculation, knockback and use count. Use count seems to be the number of times you can use perishable items and knockback looks like it is either how far you knockback enemies or how well you resist the knockback of others. Then there is recalculation. Your guess is as good as mine. Protection systems are fun, and govern your shields. How well can you take damage? Well, you want to be able to take a rocket or three, but let’s face it, you won’t be standing long if you take too many shots in the face. Then there is the sensor system. Now, this seems weird, but it is how well you can perceive the world around you. You’ll have your minimap, right and you are constantly emanating this radar “ping”. Now, when you ping, enemies will show up on your minimap as the ping hits them, got it? The higher your sensor system, the faster you’ll ping, the further you can see, the longer you’ll see enemies on your minimap before the next ping goes off and the faster the ping will travel. Granted, at higher levels, I hope the ping isn’t a constant, ear-splitting pain that just hisses in your ears fueling the rage that drives you through hordes of robots. I am sure they have it under control, though. Then there is your mobility system. This governs your movement speed and how much you can carry in your inventory. Now, the inventory is a perk all of its own, but speed makes sense in this game more than just the obvious. Some enemies are slow-moving, but come in fucking massive waves that don’t seem to stop. You will want to literally dance circles around them as you fire into the crowd. It will keep you alive longer. Alongside the stats is the ability to overclock your character. You can pick a single stat and each time you hit the button, your character will get a temporary boost to that stat. Now weaponry makes a lot of sense, but what about a boost to ping? Maybe you boost your speed to run away from a horde of mongrels?

There is a lot more to this game than will immediately occur to you, and I am finding new things every time I play. It bothers me that World War Machine did not reach its funding, but I admire the spirit displayed by Tuque Games. Hopefully they will be able to find a way to make the game. Perhaps do a pre-release and add content as it progresses? I don’t know, but I sure do hope to see this title soon. That is really the one thing about this game that pisses me off the most, too! I am worried that it will just be another piece of vaporware. A great demo in my Steam Library that collects electronic dust with my other favorite forgotten titles, like SIN Episodes or the original Thief series.

Want to know more about the game? Check out their site.

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The Crotchety Old Gamer

An irate gamer's blog

Category Archives: Superior Gaming

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World War Machine, Earth-Rending Preview

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