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Sep 27th, 2017 at 01:52:16 - Life is Strange (PS4) |
Finished another episode today. I felt like there were many more tense moments in this episode: Max's nose bleeds from using her power too much, shooting a car in a junkyard, pulling out a gun on the dealer guy in the RV, Chloe almost getting run over by a train, and Nathan sat on Max's desk! Oh, and Kate tried to kill herself and Max literally had to stop time to save her. So that was interesting. I'm glad I snooped around in her room enough and talked to her enough to be able to save her.
I felt like this episode tried to break a few of the stereotypes it set up in the first episode. It seemed like the diner scene mostly existed to try to paint the security guard as more of a 'well-meaning, yet misunderstood' person instead of just the asshole he was portrayed as originally. Of course he quickly reprises his original role after the first interaction with him near the end of the chapter. Then we find out that Kate, for all her christian values, still had a darker side. Though what happened to her was clearly not her fault, she turned down a grave path. And at one point a jock character actually spoke to Max like a person instead of just 'some hipster geek.'
Despite that, the game introduced several other characters based heavily on stereotypes, or well-established imagery: the crazy bus hobo, the distruntled, smelly fishermen, the homeless lady who's been around for as long as anyone can remember and knows everything about everyone, the rough and tough debt collector, and two truckers in a diner who just want a bite to eat before heading out on the road again. Stereotypes are helpful, but I'm beginning to wonder if this game is taking things a little far. Sure cliques in high school still exist, but I feel like even in 2013 when the game is set, people are more open to the idea of talking to people from other social circles instead of this 1980's coming-of-age movie vibe of "rich kids can't talk to nerds!" It feels a bit forced at times.
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Sep 26th, 2017 at 01:03:47 - Life is Strange (PS4) |
Started playing Life is Strange. I knew to expect an episodic story, and that one of the girls in it had blue hair, but that was about it. Somehow I've managed to avoid or forget any spoilers, so that's nice.
The serene-ness of the main menu background and music were quickly offset by a startling loud boom accompanied by controller shaking - a truly visceral start to the story from a player perspective. Here I was thinking it would start me off in a room somewhere explaining backstory, but no. BOOM. Lost in the forest in a thunderstorm. Emperor's New Groove style.
After rubbing my face against everything in the main hallway, (because that's how I play these games: screw pacing, I have to touch all the stuff first) I encountered the first instance of the game's mechanic - rewinding time. Something that I somehow had no idea the game had. A super interesting mechanic, but terrible (or good?) for my habits of wanting to see all the possiblities of my choices. It definitely lengthened my playtime, since I was basically playing the game twice. Sometimes three or four times if I accidentally hit the rewind button.
I found it interesting how they don't shy away from issues pertaining to girls, particularly of this age group: sexual pressure, puberty, popularity contests, that sort of thing. Max makes a comment when you examine a tampon machine (is that what they're actually referred to? I wouldn't know) in the girls bathroom that she is "good to flow," something that would normally be glossed over or never be mentioned in most other games. At another point Max has an inner monologue with the voice of Gollum from Lord of The Rings about protecting her "precious" flash drive. I felt it added a layer of realism to the characters that would have been missed otherwise. The writing is a bit cheesy at times ("But there's something else I have to tell you... Something...hardcore.") and a bit heavy handed on the swearing, but probably accurate for the age group.
There's definitely something fishy going on under the petty arguing at Blackwell, and I look forward to finding out more and exploring what else the characters have to offer.
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Aug 31st, 2017 at 11:32:59 - 1979 Revolution: Black Friday (Other) |
This game is toted as a “headphone experience,” but the developers clearly didn’t bother testing with Bluetooth headphones, as the sound is utterly unlistenable with them. I had an app do this in the past but the developers have since patched it: when connected to Bluetooth, the sound repeats over and over on top of itself, slowly. It’s a strange thing to describe, but an even stranger thing to listen to. It’s like playing 10 slow-mo versions of an audio track overlapping over each other with a .3 second delay. Needless to say I did not get much play time in since I was not in a place where I could play without headphones, and wired headphones were not an option.
I will edit this when I have time to make a proper third play session.
Well I finally had a chance to play some more. I didn't quite get through the whole story but I got through the part where the game got it's namesake: "Black Friday" AKA the day the government went crazy and shot everyone.
I spent most of my game time arguing with the main characters mother and fumbling around in the dark looking at old family photos. All of which were actual photos and videos, so it was cool to see that these characters are (were?) real people. Again, the game does an excellent job of hitting home that this is stuff that actually happened by mixing real and created content. I'm actually invested in seeing this game through to the end instead of just stopping because I am done with the assignment, so kudos to the developers for that.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Sep 1st, 2017 at 01:01:39.
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Aug 31st, 2017 at 00:50:27 - 1979 Revolution: Black Friday (Other) |
Today's play session started at chapter 5. I started off in the middle of a large crowd (which again I am amazed that they got this game to run on mobile, even if it drops down to about 6fps sometimes) where some people I didn't recognize were up on a stage peacefully protesting, loudly. Then the police showed up and someone my character apparently knows showed up as well and started throwing rocks at the police, inciting riot.
The next several chapters involved fleeing the riot and dealing with the ensuing chaos via QTE's and a rather gruesome mini-game where I had to pull glass shards out of Voice-of-the-resistance's skin. I didn't fail, but I am curious to know whether there is the option to fail and pursue a separate storyline. With story style games like this there are two main ways to handle player choice and failstates: Writing a hundred different branching endings, or write the script in such a way that the player only has infuence over minute story details.
In this case I have a suspicion that had I failed, I would have to repeat the minigame until I succeeded, due to the character's major involvement in a later chapter. However, I can also see the possibility that his role could have been filled by a second character. If I have time to do a second playthrough I'm going to experiment with mechanics like this to see how much control I really have over the story.
In the last chapter I played this session (11, I think?), I was tasked with finding out who the traitor was that tried to murder Stabbed-with-glass guy from before by exploring an environment and talking to a bunch of characters. Maybe I missed something or maybe it was intentional, but nothing I saw pointed towards traitorous activity, so at the end of the chapter I just threw a random guy under the bus (metaphorically) since "I don't know" wasn't an option.
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dhawthorn has been with GameLog for 7 years, 2 months, and 30 days |
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