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!

My Wallet's heart is the Cards: Freedom Fall

I don't know when or where I set out to buy Freedom Fall; I think I remember this game being reviewed on like ... I have absolutely no idea where I originally got the idea in my head that I wanted to buy Freedom Fall. Like an alcoholic, I seem to yearn for the self abuse inherent to my play experience vis-a-vis torture platformers. I am not good at torture platformers and I do not generally enjoy them. But I look back fondly on like, They Bleed Pixels or Rush Bros in spite of being terrible at them. Admittedly, I did find Gianna Sisters Twisted whatever to be like nails jammed into my eyelids, but I've been told by people who actually like torture platformers that game is unfun.

But I did, some point in the past, want Freedom Fall. I remember thinking it looked good to me, for reasons I can't articulate simply because I may have dreamed the entire thing up. Or, one supposes, the game could be a clone of another game I wanted. This has happened before.

So basic run down: Freedom Fall is a sharp and clear SNES looking platformer primarily about going down, although many of the later levels also go up, around, sideways and rapidly lose the whole going down thing. I actually do take this as something of a mark against the game, since the first few levels are really neat for how it almost feels like a combination of like ... Actually it just feels like that one section in Megaman 2. Or Tetris. As you can see from above, the game is pretty short, unless I missed some option to turn on half the levels or something.

Which would be dumb. Regardless; short game, short review.

Like I said, the game is sharp and clear looking. The art assets are good, animations are very SNES in their simplicity. Beyond the subdued in comparison to other torture platformers gore, the game is generally a cheerful looking set up, with the protagonist quite the dashing looking young rogue and the terrain reminding me a little of mario or sonic in the right ways. The music is good, the sounds are limited but good, its a fine platformer that doesn't ... over-spray like say Gianna Sisters, which wraps back around to eye torture.

Platformerwise the controls are pretty good. I wouldn't say pixel perfect, and the ledge grab thing feels really finicky, but I had very few deaths I thought were bullshit. The level design is good, but this kinda leads into my problem with the game.

So if I think back to my favorite platformer of all time, its Sonic 3 and Knuckles. S3&K divides levels into two acts, introducing then refining gimmicks, and you could probably extend the game out with a third act. Freedom Fall is a short game, but it isn't for lack of different gimmicks or ideas. There's lots of stuff the game just doesn't use enough of, lots of art assets they could have pushed into a couple more levels. I find it a little strange, because the game does great in all the hard stuff, and there are lots of things I could have done with seeing a bit more.

Basically, it could have used "another act" in each proverbial section.

I wonder if they just felt like the game's story - as simple as it was - could only carry so much content. While I liked the story graffiti which feels very natural and helps break up the visuals, I don't feel like it was that imperative, so I'm left wondering why the game didn't have a couple more levels. There's still leaderboards and refining your play, and I'm sure hard mode is hard, but I just wonder how much you can justify at the game's offering price point.

In short (heh), I quite liked Freedom Fall, but it is too short and probably not worth even a sale price purchase. If you see it for cheap or in a decent priced bundle, and you like platformers, I would recommend it, but the game disappoints in how its finally a torture platformer I enjoyed (probably because it isn't so hard) but it never really puts up the wall and has none of the usual longevity.

A brief discussion of Groupees and Greenlight bundles

ok wait what is going on here

I'm a pretty big fan of https://groupees.com/ which I believe was originally a website that allowed indie musicians to get their work 'out there' that gradually morphed into a bundle selling site. There is also of course indie gala and a couple others, and then everyone loves humble bundle. Groupes and Indiegala are more the reasonable fringe, or um, a reasonable facsimile ... most of the time...

One thing Groupees seems to have success doing is, under their own terms, is running "Greenlight" bundles, or bundles of indie games which 'promise' they will give you Steam keys to their indie games once the game is greenlit and so forth. Generally speak, I do believe other sites have tried running this sort of thing, but Groupees seems to have the most success with it. (I should put success in quotes, I think) They're currently running their 14th Greenlight bundle, which is over here, if you care. I have absolutely no idea how good any of the game in this bundle are. None whatsoever. So of course, I bought them all.

look at all these sweet sweet nickels and dimes

For a lot of people, a steam key is worth infinitely more than a desura key or DRM free link. Especially if sweet, glorious cards are up for grabs. But this creates an interesting conundrum, how often do you  actually get a key for a game? There are two hoops to jump through here: First, the game actually needs to get greenlit. Second, the key has to somehow make its way back to you. So, as a little discussion, I'm going to look over the Greenlight bundles I've bought and look up how many keys I've gotten vs how many of these games have been greenlit without sending out keys. Note that these bundles are often build your owns, or might always be, ie I selected these games for purchase rather than the bundle's contents being static. So maybe I didn't choose so wisely. Maybe I should have just voted anime.

Oh, and I'll list how much I paid too, just for the fun of realizing how much money I've wasted on this shit when I could have put the same amount of money into just buying Skyrim or something. As a note, I've read sometimes people will give out their keys by going through Desura instead of sending them to groupees. I consider this as fundamentally disingenuous and I'm not checking Desura for Steam keys

Whoops I forgot about Scary games month: Dead Space 2

The scariest thing about scary games month is the way, every year, like a creeping zombie the holiday sales crawl just a little bit further up the month. I fully suspect by the time I pass from this mortal coil that "holiday sale" will follow "back to school" in like, early september, and halloween will be a one day event where they jam candy at a 400% markup then it disappears from the shelves after being priced 'to move' into garbage bags full of candy while they rush out their Christmas cacophony. But we're not allowed to call it Christmas sales, which does actually make sense, since really who cares?

"Dead space" is a good term for a horror game in a lot of ways even beyond being a puntastic little riff. There's a lot of dead space, filled with spooky but pointless noises, in just about every horror game I've ever played. Need to walk down the spooky empty corridor for your spooky surprise! Which is, unspookily enough, more zombies. Or sometimes, just nothing. Spooked you! You get nothing!

in a shocking twist, horror goes surgical

Oh I'm sorry, necromorphs. Which is basically like going through the dictionary and assembling two words which are as close to 'zom - be' as ghoulishly possible. Regardless, while I've always been a huge fan of the title of the game, I have largely mixed feelings about the first game. I really liked the crumbs button, the ship design and the way combat felt just different enough to be different. But horror largely isn't my cup of tea, and horror seems to mean 'colon sounds and raspberry jam' more than trying to build a scary atmosphere.

I feel sometimes like the feeling that violence is all around you gets away from 'horror' and turns more into being 'horrifying' if that makes sense. Dead Space 2 has even less restraint than the first game, it opens up with a reference to hallucinations that slowly unveil themselves in the first game then some totally hyper violent murder. I understand they're sort of going for a 'look at how real this shit has already got' moment, but horror is at its best when the shit is more implicit, less real so I don't even know how to start with this game.

Eternal RPG dilemmas: Final Fantasy Seven

So last year - or at least a year ago, it might have been two now -  I bought the full endless amount of games D&D pack, which had Baldur's Gate 1-2 and then some other stuff, including Planescape Torment which I've never finished. I managed to finish BG1, but BG2 just drags on forever and I ended up getting tired of it in the Underdark. I don't really have a lot of nostalgia for it, so maybe I never really liked it all that much, although I did really enjoy BG1 in sort of a weird mix of 'dear lord did game design ever have its head up its ass back then' and 'this plot is rather cool and punchy!'

a world of radiation poisoning metaphors

I don't really have a ton of nostalgia for FF7, either, but they feel like fair games to contrast off each other. I feel like I'll go back to BG2 eventually, since I never played the expansions but I had finished the original core game, but maybe not. Nothing about BG2 really blows me away, the game is good and nice looking but it doesn't rock my socks or something. FF7 though, that one I've finished but far enough back I don't remember much other than the story being pretty damn weird. I mean I fired the game up and realized it was almost 20 years old and felt kinda strange. Except that while BG2 looks like a modern indie title (which is to say, it looks fine if not good) FF7 just has some of the weirdest decisions. You are basically playing with 13 polygon characters on artifact riddled JPG backgrounds and ... Yeah it just looks weird. The FMVs fire up and you're just thinking good lord, how did this not look awful back then too!?!

But then I remember why I don't really have nostalgia - I hated that area of console gaming, where everything went '3D' and wasn't really ready for it. But whatever, let's see if we can beat some fun out of this ancient, bizarre RPG.

Whoops forgot to play games month: Remember Me

Yeah, kinda forgot to do much in the way of proper gaming for the month of august. I did play a great deal of MMDOC and some Beatbuddy, but neither are really worth talking about. Beatbuddy, as an ultra short review, is very pretty and relaxing but ultimately just rather dull. I'd hit puzzles where the solution was "swim very fast" and just stare at the screen in confusion. Because I was bored. Remember Me, however, is an interesting enough bit to actually get into.

I have to admit I was really excited, or at least mildly excited, about this game when I first saw images of it. The concept work is really interesting stuff, the memory ideas seemed neat as well, though it does have this sort of weirdly sanitized drug culture feeling to it. I was also really shocked at the general sentiment in the media that the main character was considered in someway unmarketable. Really? Nilin is like the best looking new protagonist design I've seen in years. Supposedly the issue is she's female, and men don't want to look at a girl when playing a third person game.

I dunno, this is just not something I'm wired to understand.

Remember Me, as to the game itself, is a touch weird to get into. The game is the strangest mix of high concept and generic video game. An hour in and it is still spewing random tutorials at you or vaguely explaining boring stuff like 'hit guy with special power up to break up the monotony!' and you're like 'zzzzz'. Nilin's gorgeous model aside, the game is pretty boilerplate. Inversely, the world of neo-Paris is fantastic, a really unique near future bit of sci-fi with lots of craziness and world building, all centered around what legitimately feels like a hopelessly defanged portrayal of drug culture.

On the other hand, neo anything feels like a dated 80s reference. Who calls anything Neo anything after the Matrix? I'm sure there's a guy in his late teens or mid-twenties who is like 'Neo-Paris? Keanu Reeves Paris? Whoa, what?'

Magic the Gathering Online: Please no v4

I love Magic. It is one of my longest lasting hobbies. Now, sure, right now I'm not playing in real life. I take breaks here and there, sometimes card games feel great. Other times card games don't feel so great, some years I don't play it at all and instead write 300k words or whatever. Other times the draft set is core set, which I would rather gargle than play, especially when it is as actively worthless as m15 looks to be.

I think the things that make Magic itself so endearing lies in the various oddities, silliness and so forth. The game is essentially an abstraction as all RPGs are of wizard hat battles, and therein lies the rub - The abstractions themselves make for a really neat game, one built on math and theories. Magic gets pretty stupid sometimes, of course, R&D is perpetually stuck between doing a terrible job and an good job due to the fact they need to codify their theories and stick to them or instead get weird thoughts like 'X isn't very intuitive!! We should change it' or 'this doesn't feel very green'. It's an abstraction, guys, it doesn't matter.

here we have os/2

But still for all the shit talk I've ever mustered up, Magic has gotten a ton better and is a really interesting and deep game. I don't know if it is for everyone, I feel like not, but it definitely is a game that supports all its game modes and allows for a huge amount of players.

Magic Online, on the other hand, is a blight. And thanks to Wizards letting everyone do some prereleases for free, we can talk about an authentic v4 experience.