NES Classic
I’m ancient enough to remember when early games such as Pac-Man were all the rage, though I was very young at the time. Despite all the duds and wrong paths, it’s hard to deny that the then nascent and promising video game industry and video game scene have come a long way, created a big catalog of wondrous games as well as having permeated the culture and people’s minds. Truly, video games, mostly thanks to ever more powerful computers, have come a long way since, a very long way (not that Pac-Man isn’t awesome), and it’s been quite a fascinating and rewarding journey to be part of, witnessing the unrelenting growth of this new area of human creativity, from humble beginnings to the highly advanced — but still early! — stage we’re in now.
Though I did get to play the original NES I never actually had one (I had Commodores — VIC20, c64, Amiga), so last year when I heard about the NES Classic — a new mini version of the old NES, shipping with 30 well chosen built-in games — I was pretty happy, finally a chance to delve into that piece of gaming history more deeply. Sweet.
Then began the troubles. The preorder sold out. But no hurry and no worries, I could wait, especially with my eight mile long backlog of games. I’ve waited before.
Then the console was released, months went by but the shortage remained. I was starting to get mildly annoyed, but not terribly so, I can wait, no big deal.
Then Nintendo dropped the bomb: production of the NES Classic was to end. Wait, what? They can’t be serious. They were serious. Didn’t see that coming, and they sure as hell didn’t tell us it was coming. Instead, they let us keep our hopes up for months needlessly (save for the lucky few that got hold of a unit.)
That was kick in the gut. For god’s sake Nintendo, you egregious tantalizer, why. By way of explanation they did say something about limited resources. That’s a bit cryptic, are they saying they’re selling it at a loss? I would have thought that getting a beloved and strongly sought-after product to the market would become a net gain, not a loss. If they’re selling it at a loss, why not simply set a higher price so that they can afford to produce more units? I wouldn’t mind, and I doubt others would either, especially when the alternative is not selling it at all. But Nintendo stands firm in their inept decision.
Luckily, all is not lost. On the contrary, the situation is pretty good. I learned recently about another initiative of Nintendo — to offer an online service that includes the possibility to play classic Nintendo games on the latest Nintendo console. It’s a Netflix-like subscription service, and at a decent price ($20 or so per year, if I recall correctly.)
(There’s an upcoming SNES Classic console, but I won’t make any effort to get it. It too will be a limited edition and probably be hard to get. I don’t want to keep my hopes up for nothing, esp not with that online service coming anyway — which from what I can tell will be better anyway, more games.)
Xcom: Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within
Years ago I got the acclaimed Xcom: Enemy Unknown for my PS3, possibly for free as a PS+ giveaway — can’t quite remember — but I never, despite kept hearing good things, got around to actually play it. Well, that PS3 copy will likely remain forever unplayed, but now I’ve done a few rounds of the iPad version, and of both the base game and the (rather significant) expansion Enemy Within.
My verdict: I’m a believer. Excellent game, captivating and surprisingly deep and subtle, and it plays really well on a tablet.
It’s a military game, you’re in charge of a big paramilitary operation trying to prevent an alien invasion. The gameplay has two parts:
1. Primarily and most importantly, I would say, a game of turn-based tactical combat where you control a team of soldiers performing various mostly randomly generated missions.
2. Managing the resources and various areas of development in the secret underground home base.
These parts play very differently, almost like two different games, but they’re tightly integrated so the game is still experienced as a cohesive unit. Obviously in terms of the narrative and theme, but also more directly and practically. For example, during the missions you collect resources which are then managed and used during the base management phase, which in turn helps develop the team (in terms of enhancements, gear, etc) making it more efficient and powerful in carrying out the missions. It’s a satisfying circle.
Looking over the shoulder of someone playing might give you the idea that the game is pretty repetitious, certainly I didn’t think the game seemed very special from videos and screenshots, but truth be told there is a great deal of variety and depth. The different classes, the different development paths within each class (in some cases a single change can completely open or close a set a tactics), a lot of different gear to develop and choose from, what soldiers to pick for a given mission, what order to research things from the massive science tree (with practical benefits attached to nearly each discovery), what tactics to use on the battlefield, what buildings to construct, the different enemy types, and much more. Add to that that many of the missions are randomly generated (within certain parameters). I hear they’re taking this even further in Xcom 2, making the maps themselves procedurally generated.
Also, the solders you hire start out with randomly generated attributes such as name and nationality and looks. While not pertinent to the gameplay, it’s still meaningful. You grow surprisingly attached to these people. In time, assuming they survive, each get to perform memorable acts of heroism, sometimes in such a dramatic fashion you’d swear it was pre-written by an expert dramatist rather than something organically emerging out of skillful navigation of unexpected circumstances. It’s all very compelling in retrospect, in case of success, but less so during the event when you actually don’t know whether they’ll make it (needless to say, no reloads — this game should be played in iron man mode.) Eventually you grow some serious power. My good friend Emma Kohler, a German sniper, was pretty damn impressive, and the team as a whole became a veritable juggernaut later in the game, bringing those aliens and their supporters to their reckoning.
The story, the alien invasion, isn’t the game’s strong suit, nor is it trying to be, nor does it matter. It’s not a story game. Even so, I’d say it adds a sense of progression and provides some context to everything that is going on.
All in all this game is great. If you’re into this type of game at all, you owe it to yourself to give it a try, or at least check out some gameplay videos on youtube (with the caveat I mentioned earlier about not getting the right feel of the game from just videos.)
I’ve already put a lot more hours into the game than I thought I would, and I’m not nearly done yet. It’s the kind of game you want to master.
Vampire: Prelude
The game must have crashed fatally on me or something, because all progress was lost and the only remaining option was to restart. I won’t (at this time anyway), but this is a report on the game as far as I got.
I’m talking about the Vampire: Prelude, a story-based game set in the same universe as the classic action RPG Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines.
It’s an interactive fiction, so it’s a story where you get to make some decisions on how things will unfold, and there are some fail states as well (i.e. you can choose wrongly and die prematurely.)
It’s a coming-of-age story of sorts, except the transition is from human to vampire. The story’s protagonist, Case, has just been turned, but left to his own devices to figure it all out. The crash locked me out of most of the game, but what little I got to experience seemed pretty okay. The subject matter is interesting though maybe not terribly original (isn’t even Interview with the Vampire basically a coming-of-age story.)
More unusual is that the entire game (apparently) is played through a cell phone, mostly texting but also the occasional picture (as far as I got.) It’s not that the character doesn’t act or that there aren’t any events, it’s just that these are mediated through texting, some of which you get to decide yourself.
What are those decisions? They range from trivial to substantial, and as an example of the latter there is early in the game a fork in the road where you get to decide whether to go to Seattle or New York, and you do so by simply telling your friend where you’re going. I hear, though, that these two possible paths are conjoined later by having the character in both cases returning to the original place, a choke point progression wise. So maybe that choice of destination (while still being substantial) doesn’t in fact change the entire game the way one might initially assume, depending on the ramifications of the events that transpire while being away. I’d have to play it both ways to know. Heck, now I’m getting curious and starting to feel like delineating the various paths and endings (presumably there is more than one valid ending) but nah, I’m neck deep in games awaiting, and there’s the risk of another crash to consider. Maybe later.
It’s available on both tablet and smartphone (and on something called a “PC”), but I recommend going smartphone to make it feel more authentic, like real texting. Probably the only game I’ve come across that’s clearly better on a smartphone.
The Last Door
Taking a break from Planescape: Torment to play The Last Door.
Alone in a dusky room, all hope lost. A rope, a chair. The only option left is to end it all.
After all the things I’ve seen, after all the things I’ve done… My life is on a course that I can’t escape from. It’s too late for me now. I just hope you could forgive me someday.
Yours sincerely, Anthony Beechworth
Thus begins The Last Door, ominously. You play as the childhood friend of the daunted late Mr. Beechworth, investigating the mysterious circumstances of his death, starting with examining the very house in which he lived and died. A web of mystery and secrets emerge.
It’s a point and click game, meaning there isn’t really much by way of gameplay, mostly you walk around exploring, finding and using items, solving problems, so the main value resides, as it must, in the story, characters and atmosphere. Visually, it’s going for a striking pixelated retro-style (with some modern elements.) It’s a horror-mystery-adventure with some melancholy thrown in for good measure, and overall it’s somewhat in the vein of Lovecraft — deliberately so, successfully.
I like it. It’s a competently crafted and (so far) well written atmospheric little indie game with a decent soundtrack. I’m not even halfway through the first episode, but I’m looking forward to experience more of this world and to getting some answers. Maybe I’ll write some more when I’ve finished the game.
Planescape: Torment #3
Been playing some more.
Some notable events:
Got a second companion. Just what I needed, as some of the battles were getting rather difficult and time-consuming. It’s Dak’kon, a lawful neutral fighter/mage. Still an incomplete party (three out of six), but I have my eyes set on two others, Annah and a pyromaniac wizard currently trapped in a prison of fire. Those are characters I’ve met who I have reason to believe are potential companions, but I have yet to figure out exactly how to make them so. Probably not supposed to be possible at this point.
I ended up in Lady of Pain’s maze. It’s a sudden and unexpected event that would have been rather confusing if I hadn’t had it all explained to me earlier by some characters I talked to. Apparently the maze is a prison of sorts, for people crossing her in some way. And in fact, I knew I had crossed her, so I expected to end up there. Didn’t know anything about the maze itself though, was surprised to find in it one of my journals I had been looking for.
I’ve explored all currently accessible surface areas and probably found most side-quests, and completed most of them. They’re somewhat hit and miss in terms of inherent interest. Some of the people I interact with give me interesting information about the alien world and its opaque underpinnings, and the people living there, and some characters you meet are interesting in their own right, their situation, their fate, their backstories, and in a few cases I was seemingly helped along my own main quest, by learning things about myself from previous incarnations, sometimes by having long forgotten but potentially important memories triggered. But all too often the side-quests have been little more than a grind to get resources and experience points. But I do need those resources and that experience, and I don’t know in advance where additional benefit resides.
Not only am I now fully ready to get on with the main quest, going further into the catacombs below the buried village looking for Pharod’s bronze sphere — I know of nowhere else to go and I got nothing else to do.
Planescape: Torment (#2)
I’ve now taken a few more steps on this journey, though still not terribly many. Escaped the mortuary and began exploring the surrounding area, talked with a lot of people, got many side quests, completed a few.
Everything feels kind of chaotic and overwhelming, which is to be expected when you enter a new large world of unknown laws and entities. Especially a world as strange, rich and intricate as this one.
I enjoy the experience, but not quite as much as I would have hoped, though there’s a good chance that will change as I get further into the game. In particular, I feel I need to get on with the main story, my propensity to explore has clearly gotten the best of me.
Part of the problem is that I’m not yet completely sold on the world and the characters, maybe I don’t find them entirely believable. It’s never an easy task for developers to create an alien world and make the players suspend their disbelief, might take a little while to have them convinced.
Planescape: Torment
Found out recently that an enhanced version of Planescape: Torment was on the way to various platforms (including my platform of choice for this game, the iPad), which I and many others have been hoping and waiting for for years. Thanks, Beamdog.
What is PS:T? Just a classic D&D-based Infinity Engine story and dialog-rich RPG many believe to be the best RPG of all time. Be that as it may, but I certainly want to give it a shot.
And so I am. I’ve only barely begun, especially for such a vast game, but so far I find it rather compelling, in particular the story and its central mystery, and all the talking you get to do, indeed lots of dialog. I shall now venture forth further into the strange world of PS:T and return to tell the tale. Keep the lantern burning, epic tales ahead.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
A deserted British town, a strange light that seems to guide you, visions of past events involving the people in said town, a Lovecraftian ethereal and nearly incomprehensible event that leaves many questions unanswered. Welcome to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
It’s a game that bears a strange relationship to Gone Home, because they’re both so similar and so different. The game mechanics are very similar, then there’s a mystery at the core and it’s intertwined with the mundane; you’re placed in a world looking for answers slowly piecing together what has happened in much the same way, slowly getting to know a set of key people. Heck, they both even involve finding out what happened to missing people. They both also possess a strong sense of place; lovingly crafted settings that are characters in their own right.
But the differences that do exist permeates the experience and make the games feel very different overall. Gone Home is confined to a single dark house in the middle of the night, involving a single family, whereas Rapture has a fairly large open area, much of which is in daylight, involving an entire village, though you only get to know and know of some of them. Gone Home is grounded, tight and ultimately rather mundane, and everything is ultimately explained, and Rapture… well, it’s a bit out there, metaphysical and open-ended. Naturally they feel very different though they do play similarly.
I wouldn’t call either objectively better, but their differences ensure many will prefer one over the other, and while I myself enjoyed both I do like Rapture a fair bit more.
It is beautiful and atmospheric, tragedy and darkness are present and also hinted at, but it’s not an overshadowing feeling as is the case with Gone Home, and I love the way they contrast the mundane and recognizable with the transcendental and beyond human comprehension. It’s original not just as a game, but as a story as well.
Oh, and the soundtrack is great, occasionally stunning even.
I’d go so far as to say that I love Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
Gone Home
Gone Home is a slow-paced, story rich and pretty original indie game. Spoilers ahead. It’s part mystery, part narrative, and part solid illusion of horror to the point one might almost call it a horror game, though ultimately it isn’t. Questions abound during gameplay, some things are up in the air until the very end, including whether it will be a tragedy or not.
It has an interesting setup. You’re a young adult woman who has been traveling the world for about a year, and then you come home and arrive at the family’s new house in the middle of the night, and surprise — no one’s there, the house is empty as far as the family go.
So the game starts out as a mystery as you search through the house for clues as to where your family (parents and a younger sister) is at. But in doing so you start learning about these people, who they are, their stories, especially the younger sister and her story, what has happened while you were gone, and even, if you pay attention, what happened long before you were even born. You also learn about the house and its secrets, and the tragic story about the previous owner who is, as far as you can tell while playing, possibly haunting the house. Needless to say it’s a pretty eerie house, or more like a mansion really, really big and with secret rooms and hallways (no running in the hallway.)
A feeling of loneliness and dread permeates much of the game, which is an interesting design choice considering that it is, as you discover as you unravel the mystery, actually a coming-of-age secret love story and its ramifications.
The actual gameplay is minimal, to the point where some people maintain it’s not a game at all. It consists of you rather slowly walking around the house and searching for and examining clues, in particular notes from your sister that are being read out aloud (great voice acting), and piercing together what happened, hoping there isn’t a ghost around the next corner. For me that’s enough, though only because the characters and stort are well crafted enough, but I get why the game isn’t for everyone.
Unlike Journey it does get you thinking during gameplay, as you keep making guesses based on the current state of the evidence (at one point I started worry the dad was a derailed conspiracy nut gone mass murderer), and then possibly discarding those as you get more evidence. That’s fun. You could totally make a film out of this game.
The ending was pretty good and maybe unexpected (don’t know what I expected to be honest, but I know what I feared). A pretty happy ending, no horror and no tragedy, and it turns out the parents and the sister were gone for completely different and not especially remarkable reasons (which is fine, a relief even), so there is no single Big Flashy Special Event that explains it all.
So yeah, I may not love the game, but I do like it, it’s original and memorable. The most similar game I can think of is Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and I have a post on that one coming up.
Infamous: Second Son
Infamous: Second Son is the third game in the Infamous series, but it’s largely independent of the first two though it’s taking place in the same universe loosely following, but with a gap in time, the events of the first two. I enjoyed the first two, as far as explosive action games go they’re among the better. Second Son came out several years ago but I didn’t get around to get it until recently.
At first I was pretty disappointed. The story and characters aren’t as compelling or well written, and the action seemed too constantly fast-paced and twitchy to me, lacking the more varied rythm of the first two.
Well, I haven’t changed my mind about the story, characters and writing in general (though truth be told it’s still above many other games of this type), but the action and powers slowly grew on me to the point where I’m no longer certain I prefer the first two in that regard, and the game also beats the older ones in some ways (most obviously the graphics, but it also has also incorperated some environmental destruction etc), though all things considered they’re still better games.