Oh, this did not go that well at all. I think this is partly because I've played too many other turn-based tactical games this year (critical game design seminar ftw!) such that it seemed rather clear - not having finished the game - that this game had some interesting ideas, but they're just not there in terms of execution.
I've been trying to think about what it is that ultimately resulted in my not having a particularly good (or interesting) time - and it's hard to point out a single thing - the game lacks polish across lots of different areas - but the main two things are:
(a) It's not clear to me if/what the game's unique/special thing is. In other words what is it in the game that might keep someone's interest while overlooking all the other things they might not like/appreciate/etc. It's a really hard sell when there isn't anything - and I've played lots of games from which I felt I could at least go "huh, well, that's interesting". Here, not so much...
(b) The game seems very unbalanced in terms of the challenge/difficulty. Some characters are super strong, some levels seem super "unfair" and so on. The game seems punishing at times, and a forgiving in others, but without any particular rhyme or reason that I can tell. Therefore it's hard to tell if I was playing poorly, well, and so on.
I only played for 3 hours, mind you - so who knows if the game takes a sudden turn for the better at some point?
(i) In terms of the challenge - the AI can be brutal - it was super common for all the enemies to gang up on one of my characters and kill them in one turn. It doesn't always behave like this - so, replaying a mission might result in a totally different outcome even for the same actions on your part.
(ii) At most (so far) you can have 3 characters for an encounter - there are often more enemies than that - which makes (i) above that much more...problematic. Each character in your party has their own deck of action cards and they're clearly meant to work together (synergize) - so perhaps there's a learning curve for them I was not able to get past? The game does have some deck-building in that you can adjust your character's decks - but getting new cards is really slow. So the whole system seems underutilized...
I really enjoyed this! (the fact that it was not super long was also a plus, for real!)
I really enjoyed Until Dawn so I was curious to see how this game, which I assumed from what I've read was in the same design lineage as Until Dawn, was like. This game is the first in "The Dark Pictures Anthology" which I take as series of narrative-choice-driven horror games (like Until Dawn). When I wonder "what it's like" I explicitly mean - have they evolved their game design in an interesting direction, which things have been smoother over from Until Dawn (if any), have they come up with some new things?
Until Dawn was not very long - but I'm pretty sure it was longer than Man of Medan. More importantly I recall (dunno if I wrote about this in a gamelog or not) that it suffered a bit in terms of its pacing - there was long interludes of "gameplay" where you wandered around a lot, picking up things,opening doors, etc. So, lots of time "interacting" but not necessarily in interesting ways. For me it was mostly about finding clues and secrets - of which I did poorly.
Man of Medan is much more streamlined in that sense. Yes, there are "wandering around" moments - but they're shorter and much more constrained. I'm not sure if that's because of the location (on a boat) or as a design decision. So, the experience feels a lot more consistent and tighter - in a good way. After all, the main point is to experience the narrative, see what happens to the characters, etc.
Until Dawn had a pretty large cast of (playable) characters - making it a bit harder to learn about them and so on. Man of Medan has 5. Fewer, and it works better as well. I get to spend more time controlling the different characters, hear them talk more and so on. Again, less sense of "downtime" spent on characters you don't care all that much about because they'll die in the next scene.
Characters dying was a big part of Until Dawn, and it comes up again here as well. Curiously I was doing great - no one had died until, the last session I played in which 2 characters died! I failed one QTE event and boom - gone. I was a bit surprised - not enough to re-load and try again, but it was a good moment in that sense and made me appreciate my successes in the rest of the game. Even more interesting I think that one of the characters (Brad) died because of an earlier decision I made + succesfully doing an in-game event. I think that I should feel "cheated", but it actually makes sense narratively and was more interesting (except that I didn't get to play with Brad). Here's what I think happened:
a. I picked up a knife for that Fliss was carrying around.
b. Fliss is in a weird scene in a ballroom when she sees a hooded man who looks like he'll attack here.
c. You get the option to attack the man. I did...and then the game continues...
d. Much later you see Brad is lying dead on the floor (what happened?) and I think it was Fliss who killed him (by stabbing) because you learn later that there's a lot of hallucinating going on.
So, is it "unfair" - uh...maybe...I succeeded at what the game told me (the player) to do. It makes sense with what hallucinating (Fliss) would do. But, I could have played this scene as Brad (having to avoid Fliss' attacks). So, overall I thought it was neat to tie those threads once I knew what was going on story-wise...
My other character death was Connor at the end during a fight in which he's, literally, chopped in half by a falling cargo door.
Until Dawn had these flashbacks/visions that supposedly give you information about stuff in the future.. I never found them particularly useful for making decisions (especially when they're split second QTEs) and a similar system returns here. Because the game is shorter - it was a bit easier to remember the visions (when you get to scenes that are related to them) which was good, but I still didn't feel like I understood how I could use these to guide my choices in the game. I learned later that these visions (represented in the UI via paintings) exist in two types: white frames and black frames. The black frames I think have to do with character death - like, a scene where your characters might die? That little bit of info MIGHT have helped guide my play? But, not really...
Oh, there's a third painting - gold frame - that I think is for the next game in the series. I have no idea how that'll get integrated into the game? Or is it just like those after-credits scenes that people get excited about but then completely forget a few years later when the movie they were teasing is released.
Overall? Fun times - excited for another one, weirdly.
Continuing with my "play the psvr games before getting svr2" trend...
Perhaps the biggest surprise here is that they made an angry birds psvr game and that it's themed to the movie and not to the regular mobile game (fling birds at structures to break them to clear levels). The game is very much first person but it's mostly a collection of short mini games/challenges. What surprised me is that there's a multiplayer component to it! At least in some levels you can invite friends to participate and help out - doing tasks and stuff. I actually found some levels/challenges quite hard and think they would have been less so if others were around to help.
The premise (I haven't watched the 2nd movie, but I assume it's tied in) is that you're in a giant yellow submarine - and lots of the challenges have to do with the sub firing harpoons and birds running around loading stuff for the sub to fire and so on.
It was fun, but not the sort of thing to get super excited about n terms of novelty.
This game was a bit of a wildcard when I picked it for the Fall23 critical game design seminar. It seemed turn-based but it was not a "typical" game in the provenance, style, etc. It seemed like a "we ma de a serious game" game made by educators and scientists...
It's a weird wonky game in a good way. And, I'm not sure my ~6 hours of gameplay here is enough to get a good sense. That was a single (largely successful) run - I only ended up losing because I started to play much less conservatively halfway through because I wanted to see what else the game had to offer. This resulted in my getting to a point where none of my creatures had the basic "gather" ability (I'm blanking on the name - but it's one that I think everyone starts with) and so everyone starved and that was the end... it was a relatively easy thing to prevent from happening, but I stopped paying too much attention. To be fair, it never occurred to me that I'd lose THAT ability - though I was enjoying learning about all the other different abilities in the game. Things that surprised me/I enjoyed include:
a. I was really surprised when a random wild creature appeared and just "raped" some of my creatures (got them pregnant too!). I mean, it's totally a thing that happens in the wild - I'm not even sure it would be called rape - not idea about the consent thing and so on. It's in contrast to what happens within your group of creatures - here you decide when procreation happens. AND, it's an important part of the game's core loop since you're selectively breeding them for certain traits and so on. So, when a random "wild" creature shows up and copulates with many of the female creatures in the group I was controlling...it was a surprise and definitely mixes things up! (yay for increased genetic diversity, but uh oh another mouth to feed?)
b. There's an ability that lets you attack birds! I'd seen birds flying around and I assumed they were just "decorative" - but then I noticed one of my creatures suddenly had an action to attack bird (and that quickly disappeared as the birds flew around)
c. I randomly got a really derpy looking creature - I laughed out loud when I saw it. The trait is "ugly" I think. AND it has a game effect! (harder to find a mate but also less likely to get attacked)
d. My creatures dying of old age always surprised me - like they'd be fine and then "where it go?" and there would be a pile of bones! I sort of wish the game telegraphed that better? (this creature will die at the end of this turn)
I think that exploring all the different genetic possibilities the game's system offers for your creatures is probably the most fun aspect of the game. New traits appearing and you're always wondering what else there is on offer. However the game suffers a bit from not having a clear goal to aim for - e.g. survive X amount of time or visit Y number of islands. So, after a while it started to feel a bit tedious because I was essentially always doing the same "loop" - scout an island, scavenge for as much food as possible, have a few new critters, scarper off to the next island. I was able to make it work for quite a while until I decided to just play carelessly...Also, as far as I can tell, the game generally requires that you leave from one island to the next (food sources run out on your island eventually - I think?) which is (I think) not usually how things work in nature... the local population will adjust to the resources available..
Still, it's an interesting game and I'm glad I played it!
