Eight long weeks of playing roles: Fallout New Vegas

Was this game seriously made in 2010? Blimey, I feel sometimes like I'm stepping between eras whenever I pick another steam game to pick up. FF8 is 1999 or something, this is ten years after that and SR:R was 4 years from that?

Anyway! Fallout New Vegas is, according to most reviews I've read, the best of the "two" Fallout games produced roughly around the same time. I had something of a mixed opinion of Fallout 3, which was good but not great, and I've always been a little scared to fire up FO:NV. You see of all the bad mental habits I have, I think I'm a bit suggestible in a weird way. If someone tells me something is hot doody, I tend to gird myself and then be pleasantly surprised. If someone tells me something is amazing, I tend to pick out its flaws and not give it much room to breath.

Tell me Fallout: New Vegas is the hottest RPG title in the last five years for storytelling and worldbuilding, watch me sputter like a vagrant in a hot dog explosion as I try to get over how bad the mouse acceleration is. More on this later, though...

FO:NV also has the weird issue with Bethesda steam DLC pricing. Basically, a friend of mine bought me this game for a fiver a couple years ago, and I left it in my inventory. I used to do that, leave games lying there out of my library. Anyway, eventually the game went on sale for the same price, but with all the DLC packed in, and it was more to buy the DLC later. I don't know what Bethesda's deal is here, but I ended up buying the game again with all the DLC and leaving that copy sitting there. Which I still have.

I don't know how to feel about that, either. I do want to make the point that the played statistic above is an astounding thirteen hours off my in-game played time. That's a lot of time alt-tabbed looking at solutions, crashing to desktop, fixing mod orders and other general nonsense. Still, sixty plus hours is a lot of game, either way, and I guess playing with mods counts as gaming sort of anyway?

Eight weeks of playing roles: Shadowrun Returns

 

Roleplaying winter couple of months continues with some sort of successful kickstarter game. Hurray. It's cold out! Let's play the role of someone who can open their not frozen shut windows. Because I can't open my window. It is covered in ice. Is this ok?

I don't have any strong memories of Shadowrun as a teen; I'm not sure if I was too old or too young. I have the weird luck of having read Neuromancer in my formative years - like, to the point I was young enough that William Gibson marched me right past a sex scene and I didn't even know what they were doing - which I think shaped a lot of my ideas about how the future is going to go. Everyone should read Neuromancer, even if it isn't Gibson's best work. Shadowrun is, to my loose grasp of cyberpunk as a conceptual predecessor to the eventual genre it "became" Neuromancer by way of magic and other wackiness, likely making it more akin to the early Warhammer 40k lore which was also something of a melting pot of concepts.

Did you know Warhammer 40k actually originally had a sense of humor?

As for kickstarters, I was really excited when kickstarter first came into being as it represented gamers being allowed to choose what would be developed and influence the market in a more hands on, or wallets on, manner.  The end result however has been something of a mixed blessing. The whole cycle of Kickstarter into Early Access into Steam Cards into Steam Sale has really highlighted a lot of points where the game industry has problems that we all gleefully blamed on like, Electronic Arts and Bobby Kotick for the last decade and as it turns out those perceptions might not have been on the money.

See the joke there is kickstarter has wasted a lot of people's time and money, though I think it is less egregious than the whole green light early access "give me money for an unfinished product I don't plan on finishing chortle" set up.

But SR:R is a kickstarter "success"; the game was made on time, I think, came out and people reacted to it in a pretty reasonable fashion. I've heard mixed opinions on it, but it's a roleplaying game and I had more interest in playing it than finally trying to get through Fallout: New Vegas (which is just so hyped I'm scared) and trying to figure out what the first Dragon Age actually "is". Is it Origins? No I mean yes it is on Origin and I have the full version, but which one actually is it? I don't want to think about it. What happened to putting numbers or clear titles after games?

Right I'm getting distracted. SR:R is a top down, isometric RPG with guns, magic and trolls. It is a mix of cyberpunk and magic, though it ends up feeling like the cyberpunk side is pretty subdued compared to the magic, so that might disappoint a little. As I hinted by mentioned Neuromancer, it takes from an oddly bog standard view of the future, in which nations no longer quite exist and huge megacorps do things for money. Very close to Syndicate, I believe, which this game feels like the more honest RPG cousin of.

I'm referring to the shooter that people wanted to be an isometric RPG there, in case you didn't care. You don't. Let's move on.

Eight weeks of playing roles: Final Fantasy Eight

You know before we talk about anything else I really want to say I was surprised at how long FF8 is, in both positive and negative ways. There is a fairly good amount of content in the game but it is gated behind wandering in circles and just the worst pathing elements good lord. Admittedly it isn't that much longer than FF7, but it really feels longer, but again, in bad and good ways... My in-game played time is rather different from my out of game played time, and I only saw the game over screen five times...

People talk about Final Fantasy games - Frankly, they talk about roleplaying games - Way above the level of enjoyment I think anyone actually gets out of them. You get this moment, when you ask someone what their favorite RPG is and their words just stop making any real sense. From Final Fantasy to the Witcher, to Baldur's Gate and back again, it all just comes off as 'good lord I need to justify this skinner box so hard'. I'm not saying these are bad games, not at all, but it sure does end up feeling like it when you sit down and play them again. Except the original Final Fantasy. God that game is just a bleak void of a skinner box. Argh.

Anyway, I mention this because Final Fantasy Eight is or was probably my favorite in the series, insofar as actual FF games and not like FFT or weird spinoffs or whatever. FF8 is the one I went into expecting was super bad, then found I actually just like every element of it. People bemoaned every element of it, often to the point of absurdity - Squall is extremely Cloudlike, and yet he was derided for elements he shared with the FF7 protagonist - and in the end uh, to be honest, the game didn't seem that bad. Seriously Cloud and Squall both do the '...' thing. Cloud, I guess, gets a bit of a pass since he actually has brain damage and then gets more brain damage over the course of the game, but still...

On the other hand coming back to this game, well... It's a little bit of a strange one, isn't it? The feeling, not the game. The game is pretty Final Fantasy ## you know? Like FF7 I was expecting to come back to disliking it but just playing it anyway because memory is a fickle thing. Here I came back to something I have actual nostalgia for and just being like man, this is just the damn oddest thing.

I mean yeah, the skinner box, the loot thing? FF8 drops much of that element, and I started to wonder by the end if the loss of big lewtz was a big part of why a lot of people really didn't "get" it?

Ya know you want to do more than stare: 2014 in review

As with previous years, this review splits games into four categories. I'm going to proactively not read my earlier YiRs and just assume I remember roughly a year later the system I was using. Maybe I'm not. If I recall correctly, it works like this. This is an entirely subjective, made up of nonsense system, based completely on my experiences. I tend to dislike things that are overhyped because I'm trying to figure out what is so great about it, and like things where people tell me they're bad because I'm always awaiting the game to take a big dump on my face.

Category A: Games that I think everyone should pick up and try if they have any faint interest in them. Games I came out of feeling like I'd really enjoyed myself. Something to branch out and try, and definitely something to pick up if you like the genre they are included in.

Category B: Games that I think, if you're interested in the genre, are definite good times. Not necessarily something to pick up if you're not into it, though, but maybe if you like the look. A bit riskier as propositions go. Most games I finish fall into this category.

Category C: Games that are decent enough if you like this or that sort of game, but not really the sort of game you should go out of you way to try. Games I quit near the end or games I was reluctant to finish tend to fall in here.

Category D: Games I regret play, regret buying or regret existing. I would advise against picking up category D games unless you find your tastes run in stark opposition to my own, which is mind you entirely possible.

To switch it up this here, I'm going to start with the games I don't recommend, and then move up the games I really liked. Whoa. Daring.

I am so bad at this: King of Fighters XIII Steam Edition

No seriously. I don't just mean I am bad at the game, I am bad at playing the game. My left thumb starts to ache up bad from playing. Doing the charged special moves - which have some ridiculous name I can't even remember- starts to cause me pain pretty quickly. I feel like I'm wrestling a porcupine and I'm pretty certain I'm not winning the fight.

And yet man, I really love King of Fighters.

I really don't know a great deal about advanced fighter mechanics; I don't enjoy watching people play fighters, I don't really know much about EVO or salt or being salty or any of those things. I watched a little saltybet, which exemplified the actual Best Of Twitch chat in a weird role reversal of the natural order, but I've never installed Mugen, I haven't played a street fighter game in a decade and I know very little of Capcom's fighters. Divekick makes vague sense to me.

I am the person who is reviewing a fightmans game in the sense of not really knowing a great deal about the art of the fightmans. When I was a kid, I found doing a fireball in SF2 kinda difficult. I was not good at fightmans, and I did not like fightmans. So if you like fightmans, I'm going to sound like a blithering idiot, but if you're a casual like me, this is a review for you.

My Wallet's Heart is the Cards: 99 Levels to Hell

Actually, that is a bit dishonest, since this year Steam handed me like $25 for gems and some TF2 item I'm not even sure as to the reason for existing. But cards make up an even greater pool of my steam wallet, and this game has ... Or had, who knows when anyone will read this ... relatively valuable cards. It actually pooped out a foil, which is nice! I've gotten two foils this month, which is half the foils I've ever gotten after grinding out hundreds of cards.

This is a short one, because there isn't really a ton to 99 Levels to Hell. The game is an odd mix, in that it is both a twin stick shooter and a platformer, with some sort of procedurally generated roguelike nonsense going on as well. I'm not entirely sure on that, it feels like the levels are vaguely different, but who knows. In terms of gameplay, the game really is what it very much sounds like. I don't know that I like the twin stick shooting when applied to a boxy platforming world, it is sort of reminds me how frustrating it could get when taking aim in Terraria. Because platforming is often a very boxy, precise concept and twin stick shooting is messy spray and pray, the game has some weird dissonance going on. You are expected to aim down a lot, which doesn't work all that well. It is actually sort of funny - in the early levels, the scariest thing is a rat in a hole, because while you can just walk on by actually hitting the rat in the hole is brutally difficult.

Visually, the game resembles on at least a spiritual level Hero Siege, which I reviewed a couple months ago and quite liked. There's a lot of shared, happy to be immature, blood everywhere, don't worry about the tone style to this game that helps it get away from the fact the art assets are pretty basic stuff. I would say it is a step down from Hero Siege, but still in the same vein. It doesn't look like pixel artwork so much as just MS paint artwork, which isn't quite as satisfying though that might be nostalgia booting me around.

Enemy design is nothing special. Bats, floating skulls, robots, the like - The bosses are sort of novel looking, but the art frankly isn't the product of much talent, and when they get as big as the bosses do, welp there's your lot. The bosses are pretty cool in actual execution, though. Except the bat boss bugged out and jammed itself into a wall when I fought it...

The game also has traps, which it shares with Hero Siege, but unlike Hero Siege it doesn't seem very consistent. Some of the levels, the traps will kill monsters, other levels they don't and its just kinda wonky. The traps are visually distinct, but the game likes to 'ah-ha!' moment you with them, which is not nearly as amusing as you'd think.

The only real bad side to the visuals, if you don't mind looking at them, is the game's lighting issues are a little weird. The game is supposed to be dark, since you're digging your way to Hell, but it ends up feeling a bit too dark and some stuff is very hard to make out. Especially egregious are power-ups, assuming you can see them, it is hard to figure out if you actually want a power-up since you only have a weapon slot, an upgrade slot and an on-use slot.

As an odd treat, 99 Levels has surprisingly solid audio direction. I don't know if its the product of a kit no one else on the planet thinks to use or the guy behind it just knowing how to make properly matching audio, but it has a good solid snappy style to it. There is some amount of music, which goes loud angry guitar when things get intense, but mostly it relies on ambient noise to make it creepy. It works, and well, which really kinda contradicting the visuals.

Anyway, is 99 Levels to Hell any good? It comes off as fine, but it feels like a low budget title through and through, and the gameplay actually does manage to get pretty irritating in parts. The platforming isn't snappy or precise, and the whole twin stick aiming thing is actually rather annoying when paired with the boxy levels. The levels honestly feel a bit too small and a bit too dull for the shooting and platforming, it feels like they would have done well to be larger and had a bit more panache. Maybe some minibosses, or some less passive floaty goofballs enemies?

Basically I'd say this one is category pass, but if you see it in a bundle (which is where I got it), it's not a bad one to install for an hour or so of goofing around. I had fun with it, but much like Hero Siege, you get to a point where re-starting just feels like too much effort.

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!