Dark

You know something is up with a game when you hear the lead character's voice and you go "That's Geralt!" and you look up Geralt's voice actor's IMDB and there is no reference to the game in question. Hum. It's not even sort of vague, it's like they told him straight up to play Geralt. Either that or it's another voice actor very explicitly instructed "Geralt. EXACTLY like Geralt. Also the dialogue will sound like Geralt. Good. Good."

Actually you know something is up when a game asks you to login upon starting, while being a single player game. It doesn't press you about it, and then it does have a proper decent settings menu, so it's almost immediately conflicted.

Shortly after I got through the early dialogue, the hat trick was in the back of the net. I was sent to do the tutorial. Actually, I should point out the tutorial is entirely optional, it doesn't appear to be forced.

The weird 'head of security' character tells you there's some, you know, thugs hanging around the club. Maybe you should take care of them? God, why is this dialogue so weird. It's interesting realizing this is very, very much an over the shoulder stealth game with cover mechanics and neat sounding vampiric powers to interact with stealth and leaping through shadows, not a stagger around a club while Geralt whimpers about his headache simulator as it implied in the first twenty minutes. On the other hand, ten minutes later and I'd murdered a bunch of what is very apparently a bunch of homeless people.

That is the best name you could come up with?

I don't even know how to describe this game other than that completely weird contrast. There's the core of something good, immediately, someone talented worked on it. But then you're just casually murdering hobos and it feels all so entirely out of whack. I mean I guess the hobos had guns, but that just seems out of place as well. I mean it goes Why am I murdering hobos? oh because the hobos had guns wait who is arming the homeless like so...?

I was warned this is a bad game, but it's almost jarring how good/bad it is. It's not like Blood Knights, where the game is just so upfront about being ridiculous, but more ... Just bad, but still clearly a production people put effort into. The engine actually runs fairly well, and I don't think I've seen this art style applied to vampire/stealth games before, but it looks quite nice...

Belated Shootember! Splinter Cell Conviction OR Adventures in uPlay

choke 'em out UNDER THE CLOWN

I didn't buy this game, but I've wanted to try a Splinter Cell thingie for a while, so when my friend offered to give me a free copy generated via a nvidia promotion I was all excitebike. Or, well ok, not so much excited as vaguely interested. The promotion was for the deluxe edition of Splinter Cell: Black List, but for some reason also came with a free copy of this game, which is pretty nice given I hadn't played any of them. It's pretty weird that a deluxe edition (ie, purchased by the game's core audience) would come with an extra game but hey that's really nice of them.

uPlay though, man oh man is uPlay a thing. I have two experiences previous with uPlay: One, I installed it to add a key from one of the Assassin's Creed games. I think Brotherhood, or something. The key was generated via a pricing error, so it was eventually revoked. I'm not upset about that, but it's worth pointing out that Electronic Arts had a pricing error that gave up hundreds of thousands of copies of games and they didn't revoke a single one. It worked too, that's why I have Origin and have actually given them money for Origin titles - Kingdoms of Amalur through Gamersgate, but certainly more of a success than nothing. My other experience is installing uPlay to figure out what I actually had on the account and the entire process being a bit well into irritating.

This latest experience is just a hassle. My friend gave me the code amazon had spat out. This code then goes into the nvidia website, which requires a webform. That gives me a coupon code for the ubistore, which uses my uplay account credentials. But it isn't uplay, really, because upon finishing the checkout process after getting all my ducks in a row (and it changing my address to a US postal code matched to Alberta, Canada which is a place I do not live in) it spat out ... An email. The email gave me the Conviction code, which I would then I have to input into uplay myself. But there was no Blacklist code!

No, that code shows up later, because this was before the release date. My word, there are so many more steps here than if it was on Steam. And most of them involve using outdated storefront software and gee wilkers mister ubisoft, get your damn shit together! Later it gave me Blacklist anyway and emailed me to let me know, but there's just so many things about this whole experience that gives me the feeling uplay is a year too early. Then an Installshield Wizard popped up and I honestly thought I'd traveled back in time.

I don't know overmuch about Splinter Cell, beyond the main character having a name I like and something about Tom Clancy which to my understanding is like a kiss of death? A friend of mine read spy novels by the dozens and Tom Clancy apparently upsets him. But this series has been going on long enough that something about it must be worth playing, right? And then the voice actor for Sam Fisher becomes apparent and it's the guy who played Ultra Magnus in Transformers Prime. UM was a space cop in the IDW run, and it's hard not to connect everything in my head and it's just so awesome. Sam Fisher, duly appointed enforcer of the awesome accord. Hells yea.

And then I remembered this is this VA's last game and damn it now I get why people were mad!

Mark of the Ninja: An actual ninja game

"Stealth game" is a confusing and often contradictory path to follow down in any gaming discussion. You will often hear of it in extremely mixed tones. Forced stealth section is uttered by some gamers in the same way a lad or lass might discuss their latest date getting food poisoning mid-way through coitus. On the other hand, stealth genre done right is spoken in low, reverent whispers, like finding the holy grail and its hot sister, the holier grailia. There's also a middle ground, which is generally made up of high pitched whining. Reviews of DX:HE often shrieked about how sometimes you couldn't manage to not kill someone and reading people discuss Crysis games has always been unbelievable. The usual complaint being that the Crysis suit powers were "too wimpy", because turning nearly invisible before point blanking someone with a shotgun is a really wimpy power.
 
Mark of the Ninja is a stealth game, and thankfully sold as one, so people didn't begin shrieking like a wounded squirrel at it. You would think that a ninja game would advertise that alone, but for generations ninja has basically meant 'samurai who kicks people and throws smokebombs'. I can't even fully blame Naruto with its brain damaged orange jump suit wearing lead character, as the West has had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles going for almost my entire lifespan. There's actually a fair bit of common ground between the two eve. Given ninjas might be very well made up in the first placenesides...

I digress. Mark of the Ninja is about a ninja of the assassin-y type, which is actually not as cool as I would have liked. It has a pretty tight revenge for the Clan plot which ... Honestly, I wish you just did ninja missions megaman style. You know like, steal Woodman's grain, swindle Metalman's strongbox, leave Gutsman's corpse swinging by his robo-innards in the temple gate... I'm getting off track here, but wouldn't that be cool? Regardless, Mark of the Ninja is a 2D platformer and good lord does that ever fix so many issues with stealth games. Admittedly many of those issues could be fixed but Mark of the Ninja straight up equates sound traveling distance, sight lines and patrolling paths in a really tight way that almost surprises you in how robust it is.

Almost like they really did want to make a ninja game or something.