Tag Archives: exploration

Reus, Sandbox of Giants!

Posted on by thre3zekiel

reus_logo

 

Reus is a game for hippies.  Rather than suggesting that the player represents the power of some god, as you might expect in a game of this nature, the player is suggested to be the planet.  Now, generally speaking, while a planet could be said to be a living organism, in Reus it cannot affect its own changes.  In order to make life, oceans, forests etc. you have to utilize four extensions of your planetary will: the rock giant, the ocean giant, the forest giant and the swamp giant.  Each has a unique set of abilities that have multitudinous effects on the land, which are limited only by your imagination.

There are the basics: ocean giant makes oceans, forest giant makes forests, rock giant makes mountains and the swamp giant makes swamps.  In order to create swamps and forests, you need water and the world you start on is a barren wasteland.  This means you need to make a couple oceans first.  Oceans will soak enough land on either side for you to create a full forest or swamp.  There is also the rock giant.  This burly fucker just lopes around like a badass all the time.  Use him to raise a mountain, and the side that faces an ocean will remain the same while everything past it changes into desert.  This can be used to destroy forests and if you make a mountain or ocean on a village, they all die.

The variety of wasteland shades go from a stunning grey to a lovely off-white

The variety of wasteland shades go from a stunning grey to a lovely off-white

Some of the less obvious abilities make a sort of sense.  The forest giant can make food plants and what comes out of it depends on where you put the plant.  In a forest it’s blueberries, in a desert it’s a dry bush (more on that later).  Despite looking like a monkey, the forest giant is fully unable to create animals.  The ocean giant makes domesticated animals.  These are things like chickens in the forest or desert tortoises in the desert.  At first you would expect the forest giant to make animals, but then when you realize that all life comes from the oceans originally, it makes a sort of logic.  Plus, why would a forest giant be able to make fish?  The swamp giant is another weird one: he makes exotic animals, but again, if you think about it, this makes sense too.  Swamps are dangerous places where some of the most fucked-up shit evolves.  That and Australia.  Swamps are where you find things like Bot Flies evolving.  The bot fly is something I will not discuss, but if you are fucking curious, check it out here.  It’s fucked up as all fuck.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you. FUCK!  I just read the page a bit too much.. grah..  Either way, weird shit evolves in swampy areas.

As well as making the exotic animals, the swamp giant can also make herbs.  These tend to generate more tech or wealth than fruit plants from the forest giant.  Your rock giant will also generate a variety of minerals resources.  Alongside all of these differing resource-types, Giants are able to enhance resources with aspects.  These aspects are things like the leaf aspect, which will allow the Forest giant to add natura or food to plants.  The ways these aspects affect different resources varies based on the region-type, but typically you can transmute a resources two different ways depending on the aspects you place on it.  Be careful, too!  Some resources have a symbiosis.  These things will work together to create a bonus to what it produces.  Having blueberries in range of chickens will make it so that the chickens generate more food.  If you change what resources are next to each other, you will change the symbiosis for your resources, destroying what you had working before.  The game quickly becomes about efficiently managing what you have growing on the land of your villages after a while.

Have Number 2 step forward and say "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn." Thank you.

Have Number 2 step forward and say “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” Thank you.

The focus of this game is really on the villages, though.  The giants are just where you put all your powers.  Adding resources to the map makes villagers appear.  These villagers, in turn, build towns and settle lands and make the game fun.  All of the villages will start building various projects, too.  This might be a shrine, a granary or a school, and as they get higher level, they will start building higher-level projects.  Given that the effects of your giants’ powers vary based on what terrain-type you use them in, each village will have a different focus depending on where it is located.  Swamp villages tend to require tech for their projects where forest villages need food for theirs.  This isn’t always a set thing, but it all depends on what the villagers choose.  Each project is timed, too, and proper symbiosis match-ups will govern whether you meet the time-limits or not.  Once you finish a project, one of the villagers steps forward as an ambassador.  This person is someone that you pick up and allow to ride on you giants.  Having the little ambassador up there unlocks different abilities depending on where they are from and which giant they ride.  Properly managing which ambassador goes where will determine just how successful your villages will be.

This all sounds like a fun and free romp through a magical world, but there are dangers in this paradise.  The biggest among them is greed.  If your village gets too prosperous too fast, it will start to go ballistic and get dirty.  Eventually they will start attacking other villages and fucking everything up.  When this happens, you have options.  If you really really like that village, you can create “awe” among the villagers.  Do this through symbioses and properly locating different resources next to each other.  Another way to counter-act the greed of a village is with danger.  If you have desert tortoises in your area and you get wealthy and greedy, you might see the world as a desert tortoise that cannot keep up and is easy prey for the clever man.  If the giants transmute those tortoises into snakes, your ass will be too busy working on not dying a painful, poisonous death to make battle plans.  Finally, if your villagers just get too fucking greedy and are past redemption, you can always have the swamp giant launch mud bombs that burn with acidic death or send the rock giant to smash them into the dirt.  Granted,  the little bastards might just start fighting back after a while, so keep an eye on them.

Greedy little bastards...

Greedy little bastards…

Reus is a game that says a lot about people.  Those that want to work in unison with the world prosper and flourish in its favor.  Those that get caught up in their greed fight their peaceful neighbors, who are happy with what the world has given them, and are eventually vanquished to dust.  If they fight the will of the planet itself, they can win, but ultimately they just ravage and destroy the world, returning it to the barren waste it was in the beginning.  A great game and a truly interesting take on sandboxes, since it is a 2D game.  Well worth the 9.99$ asking price on Steam.

My biggest fucking issue with this game is how much memory it eats.  This thing is a memory beast.  I have 16 GB of memory in this computer and Reus still managed to crash it!  I was playing through the tutorials to understand the game.  I played straight through, got about halfway through the third one and BOOM!  blue screen fucker.  The only time I nearly ate my monitor in blind rage.

The Polynomial, Psychadelic Space-Out

Posted on by thre3zekiel

headerI am a huge fan of space shooters, but this one is less a space shooter and more a spaced-out shooter.  This is a title I recommend to anyone on LSD or Acid, because it is intense as hell.  Of course, I recommend anyone with Photosensitive Seizures avoid this title altogether.  I am photosensitive in general and this game made me feel a little nauseous and headachey after about an hour of gameplay.

First, keep in mind that this game is a sort of space shooter.  You are in a spaceship and there are wormholes, but that is about the only thing this game has in common with space, real or theoretical.  Click the left mouse to fire a stream of plasma and steering is a bit difficult due to low gravity.  When you start you are a bit slow, enemies are tough to hit and, if you put the game on insane difficulty as the game instructs, you’ve died a couple of times already.  That’s ok, honestly, I have yet to discern any real point to this game outside of “get a fuck load of points.”  That is ok, though.  It is a good bit of trippy-ass fun.

dashing through outer space in my plasma-shooting ship!

dashing through outer space in my plasma-shooting ship!

There are three other types of entities in this game aside from you: ghosts, flowers and nom-noms.  Everything has a reticule around it in-game, though, so locating them won’t be too too difficult. Your allies are ghosts.  These beautiful beings look the way a child might imagine a soul or angel.  They have a central orb with fluttering wings and a vaguely defined look.  They’re tough to spot with just the naked eye, especially against the shimmering spaces of the game.  If you fly through them, you’ll heal your life-bar and gain a speed boost.  Finding your life bar is a challenge of its own, but it is the solid bar at the top.  The green/red bar on the right of your aiming reticule is your velocity bar.  No numbers, just visual approximations.  The other entity type is the flowers.  These don’t really offer boosts, but they do help you hide from the enemies.  They are more defined than the ghosts, and have a colorful interior.  I am pretty sure they don’t move, either.  They’re like nebulas that keep you from detection.  You enemies are nom-noms.  These guys look like someone took one of Mario’s Big Chomps, covered him with neon lighting and started a light-stick rave party inside.  These guys go around mauling your friends.  They eat the ghosts and it’s your task to kill these fuckers.  And it is tougher than it sounds, too, even on normal.  Aside from chomping down on ghosts, they will also shoot plasma bolts at you.  This is frustrating, especially when you start off, since you are slow as shit.

OooOoO! So pretty!

OooOoO! Ghosts are so pretty!

Yes, those are snowflakes in that picture.  When I got into the game, after it explained how I play, I went through a wormhole into this area that had a big-ass Christmas tree on a big red ball that throbbed to the pulsating trance of the music.  It was cool, especially when it played Christmas music, but it’s FUCKING JULY!  Whatever.  I guess it has just been a long-ass time since I last played this game.

Now, if you want to speed up from your initial slow-as-sex-in-a-pool-of-molasses speed, you have to either fly through ghosts, which can be tough to manage, or find the power-ups.  There are three of these things as well.  One boosts your speed, as you might’ve fucking guessed.  But it doesn’t just boost your speed, it more than doubles your speed bar, so getting these whenever you can, even if you think you don’t need it is always a good idea.  I am pretty sure this will temporarily stack after flying through a ghost, so it will be enough to keep enemy fire off you for a bit.  Your next power-up is the power… uh… power-up.  This one makes your plasma deal spectacular damage.  After grabbing this beast, you’ll mow through nom-noms like nothing.  The last one is auto-aim.  Just center your reticule on your enemies and let the power-up do the rest.  Normally with all the flying about and such, you have to lead your enemies to (hopefully) hit them and land a kill.  This power-up makes all that so much easier.  Just get them in the dotted circle and they’re toast.

OM NOM NOM!

OM NOM NOM!

I said there are wormholes, right?  Fly through one of them if you are tired of the area.  I was sick of the Christmas-themed area and wanted to get out into the greater game.  It was well worth it.  I was greeted by a wide range of procedurally(?) generated spaces full of scintillating beauty.  I really cannot say enough about that.  It says it is a fractal shooter and it really is.  Every space is shaped by invisible fractal variables that paint a spectacular picture.  The choices of colors are also really nice, but can be headache-inducing.  Its look makes Polynomial feel like another game that remembers how we were told games would be “in the future” when we were kids growing up in the 90s or the 80s.  This game really is great, and gives you a chance to just zap some dudes, no strings attached.  The music often has a highly-required trance feel to it, but sometimes you will get some really elegant piano music that really vibes for you.  It’s pleasant. I would call this a really artistic spaced-out shooter that lets you enjoy yourself and really vibe to the music.  Well worth a play and I would even say it is well worth the 6.99$ asking price on Steam.

What really pissed me off about this game?  Everything is shiny and neon colored, sparkly and pretty.  Some fucker hid the goddamn wormhole in the Christmas area, so I was fucking stuck in that section for fucking ever!  A lot of times you will find yourself just struggling against the graphics to see anything, and it gets really aggravating at times.  They have a map, but it is kind of 2D, so it really feels like it is for the look rather than any kind of useful fucking help what-so-ever.  Whatever.  I will just go off and play something that makes a lot more sense and requires me to do inane tasks rather than letting me explore shiny and beautiful space-scapes.  That should chill me out.  Who am I fucking kidding.  That will never happen.

Everyday Ghosts, Ambient Walkabout

Posted on by thre3zekiel

EG_title

 

In the spirit of looking in on more interactive experiences, I was directed to this game by @DannyG1888.  Apparently over the past weekend, some Devs got together and decided to jam.  Everyday Ghosts is one of the 9 titles that came out of this one.  The event lasted the weekend between 35 indie developers working to create a little art for the interactive world.  You can download the full Ghost Wheel? Bundle here!  These games were also made in approximately 35 hours, so keep in mind they are not masterpieces of the art form, just worthy submissions with heart and sweat in them.

Everyday Ghosts was the brainchild of @DANNYG1888 and @IMPLODINGORACLE.  Your main character actually looks very similar to the avatar on Imploding Oracle’s twitter.  This was explained for me:

 

The character you play is someone I’ve been making little stories & adventures about for a long while.  I just think it’s neat to throw ’em into new scenarios.  There have been others and there will probably be more.

– Imploding Oracle, Everyday Ghosts

 

So the main character, a more trendy version of the lead singer from Gorrilaz (top right), is someone that we might expect to see again.  Who is the other character?  I thought it was a female, but according to the devs, the character is intentionally left androgynous

 

I really hadn’t assigned a gender properly to that character. I just made them pretty androgynous. Feel free to interpret that character however you feel.

– Imploding Oracle, Everyday Ghosts

 

The entire game is really more like a level from a larger title.  It is just a slow walk ( or a ninny-frolic if you mash the jump button ) through a haunted junkyard.  It makes a sort of sense that a junkyard would be haunted, since it is where items go to die.  Perhaps they could still cling to some element of those who owned it?  I believe an object can carry some element of an owner, and it doesn’t even need to be varnished with blood, like in the Red Violin.

When the game spools up you hear see only the title screen and then the roar of an engine.  Fading in slowly, the scene you are met with is that of your character at the entrance to a graveyard just after sunset, watching as his partner enters.  At first I thought this was a video, but I pushed a button and moved, so I went with it.

EG_start

a lovely ambiance

Personally, I think the androgynous partner looks like a female, so I will call them “she” for ease of typing.  So, following her into the graveyard you realized you can collect these floating spectral gears.  Upon obtaining them, you will start to see changes.  Around you a host of spirits begin to appear as you collect each one.  One of the baffling elements about this game is the dialogue.  Its tone rests somewhere between casual diffidence and outright aloofness.  Each spirit says something to somebody, but in the fashion common to spectres you will see them saying things to someone they think you are, rather than to you directly.  Each ghost, or group of ghosts, seems to focus on a snapshot in someone’s life.  Now, I highly fucking doubt all of these people died in a junkyard, unless it is the Bermuda junkyard, or something.  But face-melting physical anomalies aside, this interactive experience seems to hold a less sinister and more curious emotion.  Your character isn’t terrified, but rather perplexed by the ghostly visitors.  And just as they appear and deliver their quixotic dialogue, they recede suddenly into the ground.

so I sez to that guy, I sez, no you're a spectral image of your former self!

so I sez to the guy, I sez… No!  You’re a spectral image of your former self!

After wandering the junkyard a bit, you can leave.  Honestly, it is possible to leave at any time, but it is more interesting to walk around and chat with the locals a bit first.  Sometimes subtly lachrymose, other times bizarre and funny, these spirits definitely leave you scratching your head.  If you are wondering when the music discussion will come up, it won’t.  The only sound that accompanies you through your exploration of this junkyard is the howl of the wind, which deepens the deathly feel of the game.  This title is a free play and a good introduction to those who want to experience the more artistic side of games.  I wouldn’t really classify it as a game, since it really is just a short interactive experience that leaves you wondering who these two main characters are.  Personally, I hope to find the characters from  popping up again soon, like Waldo in a sea of faces.  There are a couple more game-like pieces that came out of this event as well.  Download Everyday Ghosts and 8 others from the Ghost Wheel? Game Jam!  Why wait?  It’s fucking free!

Pseudo “Game” Art: Proteus

Posted on by thre3zekiel

proteuslogo

 

Calling Proteus a game is incorrect.  All you can do is walk around, look and listen.  This game has existed long enough, however, where I do not feel at all bad about telling you everything I experienced in it, because let’s face it, it was fucking weird.

When you load up the game a screen like that above will appear.  You click the island to start and dive in.  Every time you start up Proteus, the island is different and you are offshore a good distance.  After the long swim (which feels like it is supposed to build anticipation) you come to shore and you start to get an idea what you just bought.  Everything is in saturated colors and the visuals make Minecraft look like a graphical powerhouse.  Everything is in these bizarrely basic Atari-level graphics.  But that is not the cool part.  Obviously.  What’s so unique about Proteus is that it is about wandering around and discovering.  The things you discover aren’t cool loot or terrifying enemies, they’re sights and sounds.  Strangely, at a lack of other stimuli, you then start to react to the game emotionally, which makes it a more deep and tactile experience.

I came ashore in Proteus and there were a bunch of pink trees with leaves falling from them, which made a beepy drifting noise as they fell to the ground.  Walking further I found a frog and chased him up a hill where I found the ruined towers.  This tower had a weird chiptune bag-pipe music.  That’s the best fucking way I can put it.  Walking up to the thing I noticed my screen blink black.  When I turned around, I was elsewhere on the island.  I stepped away from the imposing broken-looking structure and found a path, which bordered a forest.  Just inside the forest was a flock of birds that bloop when they peck the ground.  I figured they must be chickens.  If you walk too close to them, they’ll chirrup before skittering off, tinkling the whole way.

I walked along the path and found nothing of particular fucking interest.  By this time it was getting late in game, and my natural gamer instinct kicked in.  “Fuck!  The zombies are going to eat me!” but the game lilts softly as night falls, making comforting and sleepy noises.  Really pretty, and no zombies came out looking for my brains.  I’ll tell you what I did find, though.  Fireflies!  I heard weird little bloops that came and went and looked around only to find little lightning bugs flashing here and there.  I wandered around for a bit and saw some sparkles like falling stars in the distance, spinning and writhing.  I got there and found a mass of spinning sparkles.  As I entered the circle, it condensed and formed a portal.  Already time was flying by around me, so I stepped inside the portal.  I was at the same place, but it was a little different.

 

Ooo! Sparkly!

Ooo! Sparkly!

So after wandering around more I found a circle of totems, these made a low whirring noise and the stars pulsed wildly like they were exploding then retracting then exploding again.  Eventually this stopped and a storm rolled in.  Nothing in this game seems to follow any kind of logical sense, though.  There are simple effects and things that react to your presence (standing stones that shoot sparks and make a noise as you walk by, animals to chase) but nothing all that interactive.  At one point I went through the portal and came out into a sad autumn land with a graveyard.  Seriously.  I am pretty sure it wasn’t there before, but it had a bunch of sparkles everywhere.  I also noticed that clusters of sparkles would pulse into existence, then disappear.  When I left the graveyard to search for the portal again, I saw ghosts playing peek-a-boo with me behind trees.  Weird.

Finally I entered the portal again and came out into a desolate snowy waste with dead trees and over cast with clouds.  It began to snow a little, which added some sound.  There was very little, and this took away most of the fun of the game at this point.  I went around and there was very little of interest, so I looked for the totems again.  I couldn’t tell if it was night or day, since the sky was blocked out.  I felt claustrophobic too, and wanted to get above the low-hanging clouds.  When I found them, the totems were emanating a weird chanting noise.  Suddenly I began to float upward.  The chanting got louder.  I saw the mountains, a huge fucking tree I found earlier and went to those landmarks, but I kept moving upward.  A couple falling stars whished past me as I drifted up and up toward the moon.  Finally my eyes began to close slowly until the screen was black.  And the title screen slowly loaded up.

I have to assume this game is some kind of weird analogy for life, you start off fresh and new and everything seems to be in a state of springtime.  You step into the portal and time whooshes by and then it is summer.  Summer is full of more weird shit, there are some bees and the sun is pulsating hotly.  Step into the portal again and it is autumn, the world is full of trees dropping leaves and death.  There are spirits and ghosts and I even found a graveyard.  Step in again and the world is dead.  You find the place of passage and you pass through the clouds, out of sight and into the heavens.  Yay, fun.  I wish I had dropped acid or ate some ‘shrooms.  Might have made the game that much more enthralling.  Of course, I would be the fucker to find the only way to fucking die in a game about looking around and listening to everything.  If you want to play this game, it is available on Steam for 3.99$ due to the Steam Summer Sale.

It is hard for me to recommend that anyone else buy this game.  I liked it, it definitely made me feel something different.  But this is not something for standard gamers to buy.  It is weird and experiential.  You will find things in here that are neat and fun.  Everyone will feel something about this game, whether it be hatred or ecstasy, but to say it is a good game would be a vast overstatement.  Art is to be looked at, enjoyed and explored, and with more than just a few key clicks.  Don’t buy this game if you are looking for a fun little game to waste some time with.  This is not that.  It is more like a visual and auditory vacation from everything else that leaves you on one side of a massive wall or the other.  Do not buy this as a game, buy it as a piece of art, for it is to be enjoyed lightly, perhaps over a pipe of some strong weed.

Whooshy comets go whoosh!

Whooshy comets go whoosh!

In a game with music and bizarre visuals where I always had one eye-brow quirked, I still found something to be angry about.  And that is the fucking reviews on Steam.  Seriously!  It is like everyone is taking some fantastic drugs and loading this baby up!  Everyone seems to agree this is a game you come into just to wander around and enjoy being away for a while.  You get sent to a pristine island of singing things and happy-happy times!  Not to mention, this game has better scores than games that work harder and give you more.  But I have another theory!  This game is actually the waiting room that demented gods send their human sacrifices through! Each day in game is how long it takes in the real world for them to send another one through.  And at night you are sent to the next level of this insane purgatory!  Finally at the end, you are so bored out of your mind that you are happy to let the world melt away and drift into the air to be consumed – mind, body, spirit – by your god(s).  Take that, you hippy-ass art-as-experience pricks.

Unbridled Shenanigans in the Dungeons of Dredmor

Posted on by thre3zekiel

dredlogoIn anticipation of Steampunk Empires by the same developer as this title, I decided to give another dungeon run, for old-time’s sake.  Dungeons of Dredmor is another game that I wish existed when I was a kid.  In a way, this game did exist when I was a kid, but this is a modern reincarnation of those games it takes after whose places it takes over.  Surely, it couldn’t have existed when I was younger considering many of the elements of what makes this game fun, but that is ok.  We have it now, so let the shenanigans begin!

Take Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Diablo, a dash of Lovecraft, and the combined shenanigans of Ghostbusters, Firefly, Monty Python and you are still only getting started.  Dungeons of Dredmor is a pixelated masterpiece that splices click-to-kill dungeoneering with the humor of a by-gone era.  Then they add in all kinds of fun and exciting features that make this a game you are sure to play for hours on end.  Its pixel graphics and isometric view allow this title to have the complexity of gameplay that make it one of my top “do not uninstall” games.  Its procedural dungeon designs, loot and enemies also make it fun in a way that only slaughtering hordes of monsters in a dark, dank dungeon can deliver.

When you start you make your character, and the options to do so are pretty mind-boggling.  The three standard types of character are there: Mage, Rogue and Warrior.  But every character you create will be a combination of all three, whatever the division of powers.  As you level up, this division will fluctuate between the classes.  There are 45 skills that you have to choose from at the start, after you iron out your difficulty setting.  These range from polearms, shields and wand lore to archaeology, mathemagic and emomancy.  I wish I had time to talk about all them, but I don’t.  My favorite combination so far starts me off as a rogue that drives toward a magician as he levels.  When you select your skills, you have to pick apart the grand list of 45 fucking abilities and whittle it down to your 7 favorite.  At first you might pick all the neat ones, but that will get you killed.  You might avoid crafting, but that will also get you killed.  My favorite combination so far is definitely Staff-fighting, wand lore, fungal arts, alchemy, tinkering, rogue scientist and archaeology.

I like this combo because the abilities cooperate well.  First off, I just like the staves.  They tend to add defense and crushing, so it makes for a fun fight, if they get close.  My main skill is wand lore.  This is a tough one to focus on, though, because you will find yourself out of wand parts (and inventory space) by the 3rd level.  So, you will need something to back yourself up when enemies close in.  Fungal arts and alchemy work together well as alchemy lets you draw resources from various fungi that you cultivate on the bodies of the dead.  This gets you a number of good secondary weapons right at the start.  Tinkering is good, even if only for the bombs you can create.  These fuckers will take out an entire room, and there are mines too, if that is what you’re into.  Rogue scientist is a steampunk mish-mosh of tinkering, wand lore and alchemy that gives you some good hold-out moves and catches the bonuses of those three disciplines and lets you benefit from them.  Archaeology is a good way to get some miscellaneous experience.  Killing monsters is good and well, but I am not looking to be that guy that is grinding his ass off to get to a place where he can fight further down.  To put it into perspective, using Archaeology I have gotten to level 9 and I just started floor 3.  Yea.

These skills extrapolate out to the character’s 28 stats.  Yea, 28.  So, you can see how diverse in abilities you can make your character.  My character is a rogue-based wizard, essentially, and as such has remarkable dodge and counter-strike.  He also critical hits and gets haywire hits (magical crits) on a regular basis.  Of course if he gets hit, he dies fast, but I can make life potions, cultivate healing shrooms and there is also food as a final fall back.  I don’t like to let enemies get close enough to need fight hand-to-hand.  But when I do, I beat them with a big fucking stick.  Literally.  That is what the animation looks like and I love it.  Only thing about that I take issue with is I feel there should be a more face-crunching sound effect, you know?

levelup1

… will it keep me safe?

Once you get down to the dungeons you will notice that there is a vast variety of enemies from diggles and undead aethernauts to evil vegetables and flying, spell-casting skulls.  It is mind-boggling all the foes you will flay, but it never gets old.  Especially when you hit the zoos.  These are rooms filled wall-to-wall with enemies.  They could be as small as a former monster-collector’s personal burial chamber or as vast as ancient cisterns.  In the end, you will shit yourself when you bust the door down and pray you have some good AoE attacks.  For me I blast them with my acid wands, save up my Odious Puffballs and toss in a couple acid flasks.  Mosolov Cocktails in this game (basically molotov cocktails) also leaving a lingering fireball that other enemies walk through.  Bombs will also help out and kill giant holes in the crowd, but it is seriously just a monster convention in there.  IF you successfully complete the zoo without dying, you will receive a powerful loot item, too.

Each floor has its own theme, too, but you will always see the diggles.  These little rubber-nosed bird-creatures are omnipresent in the dungeons, so Dredmor must’ve personally subsidized them.  Either that or they breed like cockroaches and act like subterranean pigeons, infiltrating every crack and crevice they can find and reproducing like dirty, little, drill-nosed rabbits.  Dredmor, in case I forgot to mention him, is the ultimate boss of the dungeons.  I think I am supposed to kill him at the end, but I haven’t seen that guy yet.  When the game first came out, you had to beat the game before you could load after death. Yep.  So when you died, the game would delete all your save files for a specific character.  It was infuriating, but the rush after getting to the lower floors was unparalleled.  Today I was able to play after dying once, so either the DLC that was released allowed me this feature, or I beat down to a level where I could unlock said feature.

Who ordered the large anchovy pizza? Was it you Greg? You fucking DICK! We all agreed on pepperoni!

Who ordered the large anchovy pizza? Was it you Greg? You fucking DICK! We all agreed on pepperoni!

This game references almost every facet of popular sub-culture that it will make your head spin.  It has more video-game/movie references than every season of Big Bang Theory and Family Guy combined, past present and future.  There are Zelda and Braid jokes, Dragon Ball Z get one in, Firefly quotes echo through the dungoens, skill trees mimic the life and times of Indiana Jones, stats are named after Pirates of the Carribbean slang and I swear there are Monty Python jokes lingering around each corner.  You spend your days counting Zorkmids and you character’s portrait even decays exactly as in the original Wolfenstein 3d at the same levels of health degredation.  Conan the barbarian, emos, vegans: you name it.  It’s fucking in there.  There are also a number of puns that mostly only the British should get, but they’re obvious enough to be funny to us Yanks, too.  Overall, this game’s treatment of sub-culture and popular culture references are so far-reaching, expansive and awesome that this really is a gamer-culture work of art.  Every time I play, I find more references and jokes, too.  It is truly remarkable.

Then there are the little things that fill in the corners of this piece quite nicely.  Everything else is procedurally generated, why not the side-quests?  You pray at the shrine of Inconsequentia, the Goddess of Side-Quests.  Place your weapons on the Anvil of Krong for nice upgraded loot items.  Gallivant through the hordes of monsters wearing a roadcone and liederhosen.  I can’t say anything comedic.  I don’t need to.  This game is hilarious as hell all on its own.  Play through this title and you will be equal parts amazed, entertained and pissed that you missed so much free time indoors.  Buy Dungeons of Dredmor complete on Steam now for the summer sale!  That shit only runs you 2.93$ for the DLC that isn’t fucking free!  Just go get it.  This is one that you’ll be glad you bought.

Among all the games I have played so far, this one shines on top of the pile like a star, but it still has its rough spots.  What is it this time?  I played this game for FOUR FUCKING HOURS and only got to the 3rd floor.  You have to be ready to commit a good weekend to this game just to get far enough to even fucking smell Dredmor!  I have owned this title for literal goddamn YEARS and I have played it on and off and never ONCE saw the guy.  That fucking perma-death element went a long way toward keeping me away, but now that I can reload after death, I should be able to get that bastard.  Of course now I feel like a piece of shit that can’t hack the lower dungeons without dying once!  And what did I get killed by in my last play on that deep, dark level in an alternate dimension? Hmmm?  A GODDAMNED BUFFED-OUT DIGGLE!  The mickey-mousey comedic enemy of the ENTIRE FUCKING GAME!  You have no idea how hard and loud I raged.  I was in the army at that point and my roommates thought I was giving birth to a fucking watermelon out my ass.  AGH! Whatever, I am killing me some fucking buff-assed diggles this time.  Ain’t nothing gonna stop my fungus-eating, stick wielding, wand-sliging Titus Cezarius!

I have never felt more satisfied in this game than the first time I saw this screen, shaking and drenched with the blood of my enemies.

I have never felt more satisfied in this game than the first time I saw this screen, shaking and drenched with the blood of my enemies.

 

 

TerraTech, Constructive Preview

Posted on by thre3zekiel

TTLogo

 

TerraTech is a game full of potential, which will be appearing at E3 2014, and I am hoping at IndE3 as well!  It is a solid concept built from the dirt up in Unity3D, and, of course, this game is an Alpha Demo, so please leave the screenies alone.  They were on the highest possible graphics setting.

TerraTech is like a combination of lego and erector sets where you start with a few simple pieces.  You gain more pieces by roving the surface of the alien world mercilessly destroying the cockpits of other vehicles.  In the beginning you have your cockpit, a body piece, a machinegun and some wheels.  The pieces are dropped on you like, fuck, here, whatever.  I laughed.  So I am driving around and I see some asshole with a couple wheels and a drill.  So, I naturally did the first thing you do when meeting other people: level your machinegun and prepare for battle.  After nuking his cockpit and leaving their corpses exposed to the extra-terrestrial atmosphere, I took their drill, which I affixed with a blue building beam (Psh, I ain’t fucking going out there!).  And I went off to drill some rocks.  After some drilling and a few battles, I realized that a tractor beam piece was used to pick up raw materials and parts.  Now I am that guy driving around with a whirling ball of resources and parts just chillin’ there, not in any kind of use.  Then I killed an automaton and found an AI interface.  Pretty useful.  That let me make an AI that would drive into trees and turn a little bit when fired at.  Eventually I saw this big asshole that had some neat yellow parts I wanted, so I killed him and took his pieces.  I am now the lord of the big alien world.  That is until some dick drives up out of nowhere and levels me, scattering my parts everywhere.

That's the smug son of a bitch driving through my pieces.

That’s the smug son of a bitch driving through my scattered pieces

I was not unreasonably frustrated, so I went on to see what else this little demo had in store.  Turns out there are some other really nifty modes for this game.  The first I saw was Rocket Mode.  That sounded badass as hell, so I clicked it.  I was greeted by an orange desert and what looked like a two year old overturning a giant bucket of legos.  My eyes instantly lit up like fireworks and I went to town, baby!  When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t allow us to have legos for two reasons.  I have 4 brothers and that shit is fucking EXPENSIVE.  Not to mention we scattered toys with impunity, and my mom did not want to fall victim to the natural predator of bare feet – lego blocks.

This mode is a ton of fun.  They dump out a ton of blocks and say “have fun!” like a dismissive parent that just wants to watch football in peace.  I am happy to let him go, cause I have some wings, there are repulsors, some wheels ( those are remarkably important for a flying vehicle I find ) rockets and rockets and rockets and fuel tanks and rockets.  Now, they give you some advice.  Don’t put too many fuel tanks on or it will be too heavy to fly.  I nodded absently and started throwing things on like a kid on Christmas.  After about twenty minutes of sorting through the disheveled heap I cobbled together what I thought seemed a craft fit for flight.

To the moon! Won't be tough since we start on Mars, methinks. Mars has less atmosphere so.. ah fuck it..

To the moon! Won’t be tough since we start on Mars, methinks. Mars has less atmosphere so.. ah fuck it..

I know right?  Badass!  Upon finishing I hit shift and let it rip!  And it flew like a broken-legged seagull that ate a rock.  It was funny as hell though!  It dragged through the sand, did a backflip.  I imagine the little engineer inside must have gone to Space Camp as a kid, gone to Space College and even manned the centrifuge only to end upside down in the orange sand like “This is what I’ve become”.  LoL!  This was a difficult task, though.  I tried a few times and still could not get it right.  This is why I am not a goddamn engineer.

After my aeronautical failure I turned to Checkpoint Mode.  Again I was greeted by the joy-inspiring avalanche of blocks.  This time I noticed two GIANT sets of wheels.  This opportunity would not go unaddressed.  I immediately set to work placing my cockpit atop a massive yellow block with giant wheels and covered it with as many fuel tanks as I could get.  I would need them.  For propulsion I covered the backend of this baby in as much fuck rocket engines as baby-Jesus could pour from the heavens, and thus did I rock most righteously.  Immediately I flipped on the CD player, popped in some Hendrix, closed the blast shield on my helmet and engaged.

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky!

‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky!

I threw the wings on there because fuck you it looks awesome. Ha ha ha!  I enjoyed the hell out of this mode.  Granted, steering this beast was like trying to turn the Titanic by paddling with Q-tip, but I didn’t have to worry about trees!  I just hit the nitro and flattened the fuckers!  Rocks, on the other hand, still provided a challenge, and as you can see Ethan, Reece and Stephen did not feel threatened.  That’s ok, though.  My rig would probably blow right through whatever dainty little maneuvering craft they made.  I bet they used the tiny baby wheels, too. Heh heh.

So what about this game pisses me off? I’ll tell you!  The rockets!  I need more fucking rockets!  Seriously!  I could have gotten at least thirty more megatons of propulsive force on the back of that baby!  The opportunities I missed!  Ah, well.  This is an alpha mode, so I bet the Devs are preparing a mode for me where I have to attach as many rockets as possible to the back of a cockpit with wheels.  Then I can launch it into the horizon!

Solar 2, Voyage in the Cosmos

Posted on by thre3zekiel

solar

 

It seems Neil deGrasse Tyson was a GameDev before hosting Cosmos because this is the kind of game I imagine him sitting in his underwear, playing between shoots in his dressing room.  Solar 2 was so much fun I bought it on Steam and later on my Xbox 360. Yea, still have that thing.  But Solar 2 is a brand new take on a video games altogether as you play a well-organized collection of sometimes intelligent matter rather than a brainless lump of meat swinging a sword.

Saying that you play a solar system in this title would be like saying you play the strongest warrior in all the land in Skyrim; you eventually get there but there is quite a bit you have to do on the way.  When you start the game, a quote from Carl Sagan appears “if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you’d have to restart the universe” followed by what is supposed to be the big bang.  When the screen fades in, you control a cold lump of dead rock floating in space.  You are an asteroid.  Your goal?  Fly through space like potato with a deathwish and crash into everything else.  Eventually you get enough mass and become a planet.  And your planet can cultivate life!  My little inhabitants built a massive world barrier to protect me and followed me around, blasting asteroids.  That was cute at first, but I found myself outpacing them so I could absorb more asteroids and become a star.  From there I started drawing planets into my orbit and cultivating a whole system of life!  Fuck yea!

And then some other asshole system with a fucking BINARY GODDAMN STAR bumbles along and is like, “O, were you using this?” and smashes my planets to smithereens.  As a system, you take up a good bit of space and larger systems might not be visible onscreen until its too late.  I was naming those planets, too!  Coming up with stories about its people and civilizations etc.  And then some asshole bumbles along and just blow them up by accident!  And to add insult to injury that system’s life, colored red at this point, started attacking the life on my only remaining planet.  I got a good distance, but the fuckers decimated the planet, blowing it up altogether.  I was lucky to escape with most of my protons intact.

O, hi. Nice to meet you. Fuck yourself and die!

O, hi. Nice to meet you. Fuck yourself and die!

So I said fuck it, I will become the biggest fucker out there.  I spent hours building a massive binary star system with nearly twenty planets and all kinds of other life etc.  I went and found what looked similar to the earlier system ( I doubt it was, space is fucking huge ) and ripped him apart.  And afterward I avenged my fallen inhabitants by chasing down the retreating solo star ( I raped it so hard its other star blew up ) and turned it into space dust.  I was so pleased with this that I fist pumped… and accidentally hit the ctrl key, absorbing all my celestial bodies and going supernova.  I was a black hole.  Fuck. Yes.  The most powerful and terrifying force in the galaxy, mother fucker!  On Cosmos they said that my mass is so great that my gravity warps time.  Bad. Ass.

Don’t want to be a goober and absorb the entire galaxy? Fine.  There’s missions.  In the tutorial, some face that looks like the above version of a god Giorgio Tsoukalos might worship pops up to guide you.  He tells you how to move, absorb matter, grow and that you can do his missions.  He’ll reward you at the end.  So you go do missions, like destroying rogue ships, luring them into enemies or playing “don’t die when I spawn missles on either side of you”.  Fucker.  And these are just the asteroid missions.  There are also missions to play as a planet and star.  I can only assume that there are missions for each major form as well, as I have not gotten to the end of this game.  But with how hard and long it is, I might as well run to the end of the fucking universe.

While playing the music is an ambient flow of particles through the void that soothes and hypnotizes you.  Then once you become a star with planets and such, you star to feel more and more drawn in as you watch them swing around in their orbits like a divine clockwork.  The visuals are nice, but nothing too spectacular.  Background is space punctuated by stars and nebulas.  Overall it is cool and fun, but once the charm of being a system wears off, the game can get a little boring.  And then you might fall asleep.

So what pisses me off about this game? God.  That guys is a fucking prick in this game! I mean who wants to play “don’t die when I spawn missiles on either side of you” with a fucking asteroid?  Seriously?!  And he is smiling widely as he says it.  At least that is what it looks like.  He could be shitting. Smug fucker.

missiles

Story about my Uncle, Physics was never this fun

Posted on by thre3zekiel

a-story-about-my-uncle-artwork-1

 

A Story about my Uncle is the story about how your uncle transforms you into a technological spiderman/rocket knight hybrid. But after playing this game for two and a half days, I realize that this was probably meant to be a little longer.  Exhilarating gameplay, story-driven exploration and a tender touch are what makes this game unique.  So that works to force you through the game faster than you might expect.  But what makes it fun it its blatant disregard for the safety of children and a solid understanding and complete dismissal of physics.  It almost feels like this game was made to showcase the physics engine.  Either way,  Newtown’s laws of Motion shall claim their vengeance!

So you start this game and you hear a father putting his daughter to bed with a story.  She won’t go to freaking sleep, so we have to play the game to make her.  Whatever.  Turns out that the father is your character and you are playing as his former childhood self.  You go to his uncle’s house only to find it empty.  As you look around, he tells his daughter about all the things he remembers that day.  Looking at maps, postcards, exploration suit that lets you fly through the air like a genie, teleportation pad that you use to travel to another world.  You know.  The usual.

Then you flip a switch and travel to a world with floating platforms everywhere.  After using your grappling hook to navigate some simple platforms, you get another crystal core for your suit and shit gets tougher.  You also see these frog people, which is cool, but they are really just a part of the scenery.  You meet one named Maddie, and she spends a lot of the game on your back, keeping you company, making side comments and occasionally taunting you.  My character says he wants to be careful not to bump her head, but I would be struggling not to whack her head on a rock purposely.  It’s ok, though, mostly she helps you keep from feeling like you’re playing Portal again.  Solitary, silent protagonist taunted and forced through a treacherous terrain.  Here, you are a winsome protagonist listening to the discussion between a father and daughter with frequent input form your travelling partner.  There is the matter of a couple turns of phrase that come out a little awkward, but those are so minuscule I doubt anyone but me will even notice that shit.

Eventually Maddie leaves you, and I have to admit that I missed her toward the end.  The most of this game is the nail-biting manner in which you travel from one point to another.  I am not a puzzle-game guy, but this was fun as shit.  Sometimes you can choose any of a number ways to travel toward your destination.  There are also little machines that you find, and you take their readouts, but nothing much is mentioned about them toward the end.  They aren’t easy to find, but getting to them is their own reward.  I couldn’t help but feeling a bit of excitement every time I landed with a satisfying crunch.  And with all the hang time you get while swinging by a glowing thread of energy, you sure have plenty of time to weigh the choices in your life that led you here.

You really have time to think while you pray you have the momentum to reach that platform...

You really have time to wonder if you have momentum to reach that platform while soaring through the air at ass-chapping speeds…

Another thing about this game is that you get a remarkable amount of upgrades.  Once you get the rocket boots, you are pretty much all set, though.  And another thing that this game seems to excel at is giving you awesome powers, allowing you to get used to them and then throwing insane obstacles at you.  O, you just got a handle on that grappling hook?  Good, here is a series of orbiting flying rocks to navigate!  You just got that long jump?  Ok, use your tractor beam to catch a rock at the end of your reach mid air after performing a long jump!  I almost shit myself a million times, but death in this game is more a relief from the white-knuckle feeling of flying through the air.  It’s not nearly as jarring as you expect falling from soaring heights into misty and uncertain depths should be.  That is good too, cause you’ll probably fall a few times.  That made it easy for me to feel like I wasn’t failing so much as learning what I needed to continue.  The game doesn’t make you feel like an asshole.  It just picks you up, dusts you off and says, that’s ok, we’re just having fun.  Not quite art, but definitely a cut above your standard game.

So what bothers me so much about this game? The FEELINGS!  I mean, it’s sooooo cute!  You’re a kid looking for his uncle!  Adorable!  Even though the guy made a suit for you, something that places you in a remarkable amount of danger. Blatant disregard for your safety!  And then!  O, the way you let Maddie go off on her own?  And the ending? AH!  Fuck you Gone North Games!  Fuck you for making me… feel for the characters.  O, well.  Time to go back to the standard thoughtless murder of hordes of flat enemies that is standard fare for games these days.