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Sep 26th, 2018 at 01:54:01 - A Mortician's Tale (PC) |
Assuming that there was more to the game I decided to play the game again to get another possible understanding of the game. However, what I found was that there really isn't much in the game outside of the intended path for players to experience. So while I was playing I decided to look for every other possible action I could do in the game. What I managed to find out was that you can play Tales of the Crypt Keeper while checking your email on the fourth level. I tried playing the rip off mind sweeper clone for about ten to twenty minutes until I decided that the symbols on the game meant nothing in relation to the numbers in classic mind sweeper. So I went for the other achievement in the game which was to talk to everyone at every funeral. Which was actually pretty nice because each person had a little story to tell when read in the context of that particular funeral. It was interesting to see how different people were behaving in reaction to the lost of a loved one or family. Yet, other than that I didn't really find anything else to do in the game other than trying without any luck to beat rip of mind sweeper.
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Sep 20th, 2018 at 22:48:10 - A Mortician's Tale (PC) |
When I first heard of the game “A Morticians Tale” I was curious on what style of gameplay they chose to take with the premise. Although I wasn’t surprised with the gameplay outside of having you attend all of the funerals, which was actually pretty cool. What I found was interesting was the use of emails to create story elements within the game and how it was used as level progression. I was actually quite shocked to find just how short the game was. I didn’t realize it only had three achievements on steam or I might have predicted it was a shorter game. Nevertheless, it was new to see how a game with such good reviews was in fact only about an hour and half worth of gameplay. The story began working for a small mom and pop funeral home called Rose and Daughters. After about 5 levels the company is bought by big corporate thugs that take all the joy out of working with the characters that you’ve talked with so far. After about 2-3 frustrating, putting it kindly, levels working for big corporate funeral home you get a nice single level event where you find out you started up your own business by the name of Magnolia Forest. I’ve yet to talk to every single member of a funeral which I still want to do, but other than that the game was more of a linear story with elements of interactivity rather than an actual game. It did bring up a lot of good questions on death and what it means for those who play it though. I was especially intrigued by the option that it gave you to opt out of the level where you had to prepare the body of the boy who killed himself. It was cool to see that the game took peoples emotions on such a topic into account, but it was a little weird that with all the different death scenarios that it gave you that suicide was the only one that you had more than one option to engage with on the emails. In my personal opinion this game made me more interested in the love life and personality of Charlies, the MC’s, best friend that it was with the message that the game was clearly trying to portray about the current condition of the death industry in our society. As a funny little side note I found it hilarious to notice that the developers could have been British to some degree based off how they spelt honor as honour was anything to go by.
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Aug 31st, 2018 at 13:10:27 - Little Nightmares (PC) |
Picking back up from where I left off I found out that I was not in fact done with creepy long arm dude. Instead I had to run through the vents while he was reaching for me through the cracks. Interestingly enough it was after this that you are put into your final confrontation with the long-armed monster where I was actually interested in the game play mechanics that were chosen here. The challenge for them being how to do you fight against something when you have made the game where your only controls are to move and grab things. So, I was quite impressed when they set up this encounter where your first idea would be to climb and run away, but then you can see that the bars of the cage bend and it may give you the idea, for me it took a while, to pull the cage bars and as logic would have it you basically disarm the long-armed monster.
However, you’re not free as the next scene give you a glimpse of the next monster you have to face off against, which by the looks of him and the fact there are meat hooks going in his direction I can only assume is a cook. Of which I instantly predicted that I was going to see some humans either being stored away like raw meet in a freezer or I was going to literally see these people getting used as cooking ingredients. What I saw next though felt a bit like foreshadowing that you are getting more and more monstrous with how you get food for yourself, as this time when we get hungry we latterly kill a rat which was foreshadowed in the times that we got hungry the last time. As I got closer to the area that reminded me of a food cafeteria I was just waiting to see what your first encounter with the cook would be like. Following the blood on the floor to the kitchen I saw the big boy himself who isn’t as blind and easy to dodge as the blind one. He caught me very quickly and instantly went about cooking me up. After sneaking past the cook and climbing into the rafters I found out that now there were two cooks that I had to evade for the next part of this game. Which from an artistic standpoint it’s interesting how they chose to almost make them look like twins and make the connection even greater by making them look like two halves of the same monster. I continued to progress until I reached the point where you are tasked with creating a sausage link long enough to swing into the next area with. Which posed the question, was I going to have to put a body into the sausage grinder to get to the next level? Luckily, I didn’t have to do that, but as I got into the next area I got to do the same old song and dance with the monster’s brother. This one was actually grinding one of the human like things in a grinder, but at this point I was getting a little desensitized to the whole feel of the human meat processing plant vibe. My last run against the cooks was hoping onto the meat hooks to safety which was really fun actually cause of the horror elements of having no other options but to run away as fast as I possibly could. Once I was out and away I got the achievement for the kitchen level and I was out of there.
For the Kitchen level I felt like a lot of the gameplay was the same for each cook. Honestly speaking, looking at what the game had been thus far just from mechanics alone it was a large amount of repetition without many new mechanics being added in per level. With the long arm guy it introduced the idea of distracting the monster with an item that made a noise, but not much of anything new for the cooks. The only thing that I could think was possibly added was having to go around the zone to find multiple items to solve the puzzle like with the sausage grinder, but with it only being used that one time I was questioning if it was just that one puzzle or an attempt at another mechanic.
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Aug 29th, 2018 at 23:00:33 - Little Nightmares (PC) |
Once I was back in the game I crossed the chasm and continued on until I reached the hangman’s noose. Once again only after a couple minutes of playing the game and there is another reference to suicide. At this point I was starting to wonder if the entire creepy factor of the game was going to be a huge reference where suicide was the topic of reflection. It made me think back to all the children in the beds and the cafeteria and think if they are all stuck there until only a few will grow into adulthood at which point the reality of whatever is happening to them causes them to kill themselves vs continuing their lives in this prison ship like thing.
Funny enough after getting past this room to the stairs my question was answered at least in part by finding out that the area I came from was indeed a prison. I climbed the stairs until I got to the top and found a room where the wall had a swing out room where you needed a key. I flipped down the bed and was partially surprised, but at this point not greatly, to find that the bed included straps to hold whoever was sleeping down. I also noticed how much bigger everything was compared to me and I started to think that either I was like the little people running around or perhaps me and the creatures around me, were not entirely human. I kept playing for a while after this until I reached more pipes and found myself once again doubling over due to hunger pains. When I continued down the path that ended in the cage I knew it was a trap and that I was going to be taken away as soon as I ate that meat. It really put everything into perspective that I was going to be the mouse in this giant place where the monster was probably going to chase me down and kill me. Of which I was totally correct as I was lifted away by the long-armed dude.
So, when I got out of the cage and found the monster this was the point where the ethically questionable stuff really started to show itself. I saw the monster wrapping up kids and attaching them to meat hooks like he was on an assembly line. Running away from the monster I then found the room where it was just filled with children’s shoes and the first thought that I had is that whatever is going on here, my guess was a children food farm or something, was on scale with the holocaust or some other mass killing. It was very grim to keep showing very nightmarish images and to raise some questions for myself on just how dark this game was going to get. The rest of the time that I played the game was getting away from mr long arms until I got past the part of the level where you distract him with the TV. Throughout the entire ordeal though it gave me time to think about the gameplay instead of the many little nightmares I was seeing, see what I did there, and I was fairly impressed with the fact that it doesn’t teach you outright that standing on the carpet doesn’t make noise while standing on the wood will. I was impressed on this very subtle yet effective way to teach a game mechanic. After I cleared the T.V puzzle I put the game down now that I was away from the long armed blind monstrosity.
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Neuschwanderer has been with GameLog for 6 years, 3 months, and 8 days |
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