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Jun 25th, 2023 at 14:10:06 - Road 96 (PC) |
Really neat narrative adventure game. It's like a road trip simulator and reminded me of something like a hybrid between 80 Days and a Telltale adventure, except in a pretty unique setting. I say "pretty unique" because the game is set in an authoritarian country with an upcoming contentious election, and it's clearly meant to evoke the current conservative/liberal polarization. The incumbent, a conservative white man, President "Tyrak" (who cannot think of "tyrant" here?), whose campaign color is red (Republican) vs. the liberal, Hispanic (I'm assuming--Florres) woman whose campaign color is blue (Democrat). The police and the media are all pro-Tyrak. Police are caricatured as violent assholes, except the one we get to see with some depth. Tyrak has established a border wall, has a state media outlet, is drilling everywhere for oil, and sends runaway teens who try to cross the border to work in the iron mines. Less is known about Florres' policies, just that character insist she'll make things better. There is a resistance movement, who is not necessarily associated with Florres, especially the more violent wing of it, but it can be assumed that this is the case. The backdrop certainly serves to villify conservatives as authoritarian and cruel and paints liberals as democratic, kind, and oppressed, while taking care to draw a line between "regular" liberals and "extreme" liberals who might be terrorists. It doesn't give such treatment to conservatives, who of course may also be moderate or extreme.
Anyway, you play as a series of nameless teenagers who are trying to cross the border. One by one, you guide them north by car, bus, and foot. You have to manage their energy and money; if you don't you'll be too broke to pay when you need to and you can actually die by exhaustion/starvation. Along the way, you'll meet a series of story NPCs with each teen and uncover their complicated backstories and web of relationships. Without giving anything away, there is the aforementioned "good cop," a trucker, another runaway, a hacker, a cab driver, a pair of robbers, and a news broadcaster (my favorite).
I was intrigued by both the narrative uncertainty of what would come next, of who I was going to meet and what I would learn about them, as well as the gameplay uncertainty of whether I would find food, be able to afford what I needed, and ultimately, whether I'd be able to make it to the border. And if a teen makes it to the border, crossing the border is another story. Not all your teens will make it across. In fact, I made it on my first try (before I understood what the game was doing) and thought, "Wow, I beat this game in an hour? Weird." I proceeded to get arrested or die on nearly every other attempt!
The game says that "every road trip is unique" and talks about procedurally generated routes, so I gather that you'll encounter the NPCs in various orders and scenarios. However, there is an overarching series of events that unfolds regardless of the procedural generation. Your dialogue choices affect outcomes of scenarios, when and how story NPCs will encounter one another, as well as the ending of the game itself, though it wasn't clear to me that my choices were affecting anything outside of immediate scenarios as I was playing. After each of your teens dies, is arrested, or makes it across the border, you'll see a news report mentioning something that happened on your journey and a current political poll. The entire time, the poll was roughly 2/3 Tyrak and 1/3 Florres (along with like 20-30% "abstaining," which totals to like 125% of the vote, and I have no idea if the developers overlooked the math here, or if it's a joke or what exactly...you can't have 65% Tyrak, 35% Florres, and 25% abstain...).
Because I wasn't really sure what the impact of my actions was, especially in the beginning before I understood much about the NPCs and their relationships, and before I suspected how I might be influencing things, I initially didn't play in an ideologically consistent way. You can generally choose important dialogue choices that signal you as a revolutionary (burn it down and rebuild!), a pro-democracy person (vote for change!), or an opportunist (as long as I get out, I don't care what happens!). Though it makes sense not to be ideologically consistent between trips because you are playing as different teenagers. But you, the player, probably have a perspective, and it does make sense to influence the story how you want; therefore, you might play all the teens in the same way. I ended up trying to play a hybrid of the revolutionary and pro-democracy person, and actually wound up with the "good" ending, which is the democratic one.
There is a new game+ feature, which carries over how much of each NPC's story you have completed (I was about 85% complete on average) and your abilities (each NPC can gift you an ability like lockpicking or new dialogue options for speaking to police; I got four of six). I started new game+, which opened with a new scenario for one of the NPCs, and I was thinking, "Oh, neat, I can just play until I 100% all the NPCs' stories!" But then the next scenario was one I had played in my first run, and I realized that it must repeat scenarios from game to game, even in new game+. I might watch the rest of their stories on YouTube, because they are fun and interesting.
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Jun 24th, 2023 at 14:01:00 - Amnesia: The Bunker (PC) |
I did not like this at all. It pales compared to the best Amnesia games and to Alien: Isolation, from which it takes clear inspiration. You are a French soldier trapped in a bunker in WWI. Pretty much everything else is dead down there. Oh, except for a hulking monster that murdered everyone and relentlessly stalks you. It sounds cool! In practice, I found most everything that was supposed to be scary about the game irritating instead. Once you get out of the "tutorial" area of the map, you can head in one of four directions, exploring the bunker and collecting what you need, and solving required puzzles in order to escape. After the tutorial, the monster activates, and boy does it. Everything seemingly triggers it to come looking for you and it looks for a long time. I spent a lot of my partial playthrough sitting in the dark waiting for it to go away. It moves through the walls, emerges from holes, and can break down doors. It feels like it teleports to wherever you are after you perform basic actions like running or cranking your flashlight.
This is all kind of fine though, right? It's a survival horror game. The monster is supposed to stalk you. Of course it's attracted to noise. Well, yeah, but it's so ever-present that the cat-and-mouse game feels less like any battle of wits (you can't "outsmart" the monster), but rather a waiting game. Cat-and-hide-in-a-corner-for-5-minutes. And chances are, after 5 minutes of hiding, the monster will magically detect you in the corner, break down the door you carefully locked, and kill you anyway. Then it's back to the Administration Room when you last saved.
You will HAVE to crank your flashlight; making noise is unavoidable. Typically, though, you want to fill the generator with gasoline so the lights in the bunker come on. The generator guzzles the gas, and you have a handy pocketwatch that you can sync to tell you how much time is left till the gas runs out. But you'll still need to crank that flashlight to illuminate where lights don't shine. And when the generator runs out, the only light you've got is the flashlight, which only lasts like 30 seconds on a crank. So, as with Amnesia: Rebirth, much of The Bunker is spent squinting in the darkness trying to open doors. The Bunker to me was less about avoiding a scary monster and more about navigating a maze of locked doors with a stupid flashlight that I have to crank every 30 seconds. It just so happens that the monster slows my progress through the maze to a snail's pace, what with all the stopping and waiting under tables.
The monster, the darkness, they're not scary! They don't build tension. They're annoying!
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Jun 23rd, 2023 at 13:52:36 - Vampire Survivors (PC) |
Binged the rest of this today, after dabbling in it a couple weeks ago. I didn't really know what to expect from Vampire Survivors, went in blind, only knowing that it was an indie hit. If I had to describe it in genre vocabulary that I'm familiar with, I would say it's a cross between a hack-and-slash game (like classic Gauntlet), a bullet hell game, and a roguelite. You will eventually win due to the persistent unlocks, and it's a fun ride to get there.
You choose a character (and will unlock at least a dozen more) and enter the first stage, a garden full of bats and skeletons. Your character is in the middle of the screen and enemies appear all around, always moving toward you. Your goal is to kill them (to accumulate experience points, gold, and items) and avoid being hit, surviving as long as you can. The more enemies you kill, the more experience gems you can collect. The more experience gems you collect, the faster you level up. The faster you level up, the more powerful you are at any given time in the level's set time frame. Enemy waves change every minute, and if you aren't killing enough (maybe you're trying to explore the stage instead), you'll fall behind and become overwhelmed. Even if you are keeping up, some waves will catch you off guard or are especially challenging to deal with given your character's current build. But generally, if you're keeping pace with the timer, you'll last a long time, and perhaps clear the stage (typically at the 30-minute mark).
Each character starts with a specific weapon and sometimes other stat bonuses or penalties. The weapons and other items offer tons of variety. In addition to your character's starting weapon, you can find and equip up to 5 more (6 total) plus 6 passive items. If you collect the same item again, it levels up. Further, each weapon has a "matching" passive item (unknown to you until you figure it out). When you have both items in a pair, and you level one (or maybe just the weapon?) to the max (level 8), any minibosses you kill have a chance to drop an "evolved" version of that weapon. Evolved weapons are very powerful, and you'll eventually figure out that to excel later in the game, you should plan "builds" that involve evolved weapons, and adhere to them as best you can.
Depending on the level, the enemies you face, and your character, some weapons and passives will be more desirable than others. In the narrow tower stage, for example, the Song of Mana is badass. It shoots wide rays of energy vertically in both directions, perfect for a narrow stage. Choose the character who starts with that weapon, Poppea. She also has a bonus to the "duration" stat, which affects how long weapon effects, like the Song of Mana rays, last. So, ideally, you should go for other weapons that are affected by duration, like the King Bible (bibles rotate around you dealing damage to anyone nearby) and Santa Water (bombs of holy water land in the area, sizzling whoever walks on them), and go for the passive that increases duration, the passives of the other weapons you get (so you can evolve them too), or other passives that provide nice bonuses, like more XP or damage bonuses (always useful!).
Vampire Survivors features a ridiculous amount of unlockables, achievements, and secrets. I had fun aiming for many of these, until they started getting really difficult or grindy (e.g., achievements for reaching level 50 with each character, each of which unlocks Arcana, which are buffs for your run). You will want to go for some of these unlockables, not only because they are useful in and of themselves (new characters, special menu options, new weapons that will drop, etc.), but because many come with gold, which you use to purchase persistent upgrades like increased damage, a free resurrection per run, or faster experience point gain. The faster you acquire gold for such persistent upgrades, the stronger you are in each run and the farther you can get.
One thing I became confused about was how to “beat” this game. The devs have added tons of content since release, including an additional regular level and an ending where the credits roll. I ended up considering completing the final regular level as beating the game. Getting the “true” ending is a long and complex process! First, you have to collect all 11 relics from regular stages. Some of these involve unlocking other secrets (like to get the yellow sign). I ended up with 10 of them, but couldn’t beat the challenge stage called the Bone Zone to get the 11th. The Bone Zone was added after release and is a big spike in difficulty with a boss that gets harder the longer you wait to kill. I never managed it. But, in theory, after I collected that 11th relic, I would have unlocked some other stage, then had to do something else to trigger the final boss fight and see the credits.
Anyway, Vampire Survivors appears so simple, but is surprisingly complex. It exceeded my expectations and scratched an itch for some grindy leveling up with constant rewards. This is one, because it has so many achievements and, I assume, will continue to be added onto, that I probably should have bought on Steam instead of played on Game Pass. Maybe I will buy it on Steam anyway and replay it someday, especially if it comes with a lot of DLC.
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Jun 21st, 2023 at 08:54:25 - Far From Noise (PC) |
Slow-paced narrative game with an interesting premise. You are a person in a car teetering on the edge of a cliff. You're scared, obviously, and questioning how you came to this point, contemplating whether life is worth it. A wise deer appears and guides you through a philosophical conversation about life, death, and nature.
The dialogue barely held my attention though. I didn't like a lot of the main character's dialogue; the attempts at humor fell flat. I think that she and the deer could have had a deeper conversation, without her saying things like "PUPPIES!" in response to a serious question from the deer like, "Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than this storm?". The thunderstorm was mesmerizing, the highlight of the experience for sure.
The camera is fixed looking out over the ocean, behind the car and the deer. Occasionally there is some camera movement, whether it pans to look at the stars, or to look at the car from the other side. But generally, you're just looking at the car and the deer, listening to the wind and the nice music, and reading what they're saying, clicking on some dialogue choices for the person in the car. Very non-interactive. There are far more engaging and better-written games exploring life and death.
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