Monochrome slider: Betrayer

I don't know if Betrayer had a troubled development cycle or overly much about the game; I do know that it was made by 'at least some dudes' from the sweet team that made FEAR. While FEAR had a pretty iffy story that essentially did whatever it wanted and left you to pay the bill, it was a really enjoyable shooter with a really bad sequel.

You really hope that when they say "the guys who worked on FEAR" they like, left after the first FEAR and watched in horror as the second was made. Not the other option, that they worked on FEAR 2 and just left the digit out. You could say it makes too much of a difference!

(Snakefist)

don't want no skeletons on the lawn

Anyway the thing Betrayer is known for is its original prerelease materials depicted it with a very stark color palette of red on black, giving the game a weird perhaps even noir feeling to it. This may have done a lot to actually hurt the sales of the game, since lots of people went 'oh god my eyes they bleed red on black' and then wrote the whole production off. As it turns out, and the screenshots posted about here will display, Betrayer is on a rather unique slider system that allows you to set the contrast and intensity however you like. While I admit I didn't find I disliked the original artistic design, I do really appreciate actually getting to see some green in my gaming that isn't my wallet being devoured by steam sales so I flipped those sliders to see some glorious leaves. Such glorious leaves.

Also just kidding Canadian money is like blue and plastic now. I haven't seen green money since 2010!

Ya know you want to do more than stare: 2013 in review

As with last year, this is a set of mini reviews summarizing my recollections of games I played over the course of 2013. Unlike last year, I'm going to be really frank about something: I don't necessarily recall, with perfect accuracy, how I felt about the games while I was playing. This is more or less a summary of how I feel about them a week, a month or almost a full year afterwards. This is after digestion, these are the lasting impressions.

I divide this into four categories, which work in the following somewhat conflicting ways. Category A is the games I think, regardless of your tastes, you should give a serious look at and try because I really enjoyed them. Category B, inversely, are game I think you should try only if you like the genre they're in, but otherwise I felt pretty highly about them. Category C are games I liked or sort of like, but I'm not really recommending unless you're already inclined towards them, or I had problems with getting them running. Category D lastly are games I just stopped playing and/or can't really see personally ever telling anyone to play.

You may notice this review system is entirely subjective. While I do my best to be impartial about things that aren't objective in nature, the truth of the matter is, you're going to have to look at my reviews and decide if you agree with me or don't. If you do, then my opinion is worthwhile, but if you don't maybe you like the games I don't like, and vice versa. As an aside, where I put my experiences does not interrelate with where you put yours. If you really liked a game and I didn't, it doesn't matter, it just means we disagree and you can probably look at the review to figure out why. I get hung up on stuff that doesn't matter to most people, but I do tend to talk about why.

To me, that's the idea, to talk about flaws and facets, and then maybe other people can figure out from my subjective opinions how they'd mesh with their subjective opinions. Because ultimately we're not all that objective, except I will say I'm a fanboy of absolutely goddamn nothing and that's my thing.

Also these reviews are not, as with last year, of games entirely from MY 2013. Many of them are older, but some are more recent, but I feel like hey - how often do you get to read a review of complete games years later, or compared to modern titles? The point here is to discuss if this $5 title is still worth your money four years after its release, and how shit ages, and if we have time how many donkeys power uPlay.
 

Scary Games Month: FEAR 2 is a game about diet cola beverages

Time for another horror game, as it is scary games month still, the even more bizarre sequel to the rather bizarre FEAR, which is an acronym for "First Encounter Assault Recon" which I guess works well enough. Fear 2 (there's no way I'm capitalizing every usage of the word Fear in here, I hope you don't mind) is sort of an odd sequel because Monolith sold then regained the rights to the Fear series somewhere within development, resulting in (supposedly) some of the oddities in the story. Regardless, the original is from 2005 while the sequel is from 2009, but I'm not entirely sure it looks it.

Fear is kinda noted for three different things: One, slow-mo bullet time! Hard Reset has some of this too but it's way better in Fear ie actually useful. I think bullet time was supposedly pretty common at about the original Fear's era of development but the mechanic has mostly fallen off. I kinda like the mechanic since it offers you another resource to ration out in combat, though I admit it's basically a pale shadow of the Crysis suit's tactical options. For those uninformed, during slow mo you move somewhat faster and enemies move much slower and you can toggle it on or off as you go.

Second, Fear is a little unusual in being a consistent running horror fps series. Most horror games are over the shoulder third person, or are less reliant on gunplay, which makes for an odd dynamic. I have to admit straight up that I didn't find the original Fear all that scary if at all as opposed to Doom 3 which did get me a little bit here or there. But I'll talk about that more later.

Third, Fear is notable for having a story that appears to have been crafted in the most bizarre, brainstorming think tanking flow of thought manner. And by that I mean the story has conceptually solid moments but upon reflection the combined narrative is less plot more shambling gestalt. The words "cohesive" and "consistent" are completely missing from Fear, with Fear 2 likely going even a step further since it's apparently the product of some odd IP losing and gaining process.

The original Fear centres on the adventures of THE POINTMAN, who over the course of the game is blah blah who cares. There's a couple twists but they're all so far from removed from a connective context that you blink at it then shrug. The plot also centres on ALMA, who is not ATMA, a little girl who has psychic powers and they never really explain much of this. The source of her powers, which are far closer to Warhammer 40k Chaos warper stuff than any vision of 'psychic' I've ever heard of, is never really explained. Also she isn't really a little girl by the time she "dies" but they juxtapose the ideas around so as to make you think they somehow impregnated a seven year old. Multiple times. While she was in a coma. She could still talk and yell while in the coma though, since the word coma is entirely utilized for the purposes of making it sound even worse.

But it only gets worse and man oh man, I'm pretty sure Fear 2 isn't going to disappoint. What's even funnier is that for all the attempts at making the story sound heinous and "horror", I actually find the setting outright mundane. I'm not sure if this has to do with the complete higher brain function shut down necessary to absorb the science fiction elements from the story without going into convulsions or if its the general detachment of the horror elements from the primary gameplay which is shooting the bleep bleep bleep out of many dudes.

(note: there are more spoilers than I would usually drop during this review!)