Choose your own (inevitable) adventure.

Haven't been as prolific as I should be around here for quite some time. Thanks to Kittydog for holding down the fort. On to business...

Reading Kittydog's post on The Walking Dead spurred a long time discomfort with modern games with a prominent element of 'choice'. That is to say, you have none at all. And nobody seems to notice, or mind, whichever is more appalling to you. Games like Mass Effect, Walking Dead, Deus Ex: HR or dare I say, even Bethesda's Fallouts and Elder Scrolls are praised for their storytelling and emphasis on player decisions having meaningful impact on the progression of the game, but they are all overstated.

What does it mean to have CHOICE in a game? That the next three lines of witty, snarky dialogue will be different? That you'll be graced with a slightly different ending slide? Maybe that a few NPCs later on may regard you with disdain. I can sum up my feelings easily: apathy. These choices barely incentivize me to reload a save to satisfy my curiousity, let alone replay the game for a new experience. Everything is so predictable, and it's still the same game, with some minor flavorful tweaks. Inevitably, you will still finish the game, you will still get more or less the same main-story ending, and you will still be YOU. Even juvenile Choose Your Own Adventure books had less predictability and wider variance in outcomes. Even 'choice' games a decade ago had more branching, where your specific dialogue choice mattered less compared to how you carried about in the game world.Instead of leaving the outcome a result of wordplay, the manner in which you appeased them in terms of timeliness, worth and effort was more important.

1. People don't like variance and unpredictability. A consistent and stable universe is more immersive, and less abrupt and jarring when unexpected things happen. Also, modern audiences don't tolerate sudden deaths and unforeseen consequences very well, which is typical of a spoonfed era.

2. People don't want to be punished, and feel like they've wasted their time, even if they've committed to poor choices. Choices can be made casually and on a whim, and should decisions have too much weight in them, the players may feel regret. Instead of stopping the players to heavily deliberate their decisions, developers have reduced their impacts and supplemented them in quantity.

3. People want the story to not end. Even after a terrible decision, the developers want to retain a steady pace and flow of the plot and action. So the story cannot come screeching to a halt even if the player consistently demonstrates he's a mouthbreathing fool who is incapable of making reasonable decisions on behalf of his role-played character. The best way to curb this, is again, to limit the extremities of decisions and their impacts.

4. Devs want all their content to be seen. Nowadays, games are judged immediately and quickly. Too much so, and it pressures devs to make a player's first playthrough, or even first impression, to be as best as it possibly can be, regardless of how the experience of repeated playthroughs suffer. This has created a diorama effect, where the player is shuffled from theatre to theatre, experiencing each set piece and respective characters, but is mostly a linear experience. Adding a few dialogue branches suddenly seems like freedom for what has become an on-rails theme park game. Mass Effect has side missions that you can do before your linear main-story missions to distract you into thinking it's not a linear game. But replays quickly disappoint and show you didn't miss much that a 30 second Youtube video would not have demonstrated. Developers have masked their games so that the first playthrough is as deceptive as possible.

5. Extra content costs money. Publishers may be largely to blame, but regardless, time, money and effort are restrictive constraints. Creating content that players may not see, or discover for years is no longer the norm for games. Anything that is missed by the player scores no points, so developers have been forcibly making sure unperceptive gamers see everything that happens, even to the detriment of immersion. Explosions are huge and flashy, flashing icons popup to tell you something is happening, and camera control is forced to look directly at events. Players have no incentive to try to be perceptive or on guard, since they can just lazily wait until the game tells them something will happen. It's no surprise then, when developers don't want to create player choice branches that branch out too far. It will be content that will potentially be missed, and the further branches go, the more exponentially different the rest of the game becomes, requiring more potentially unseen work.

Walking Dead is entirely linear with dialogue choices that ultimately land you in the same place, with different characters that are all substitutes for each other. Eventually, when the devs feel like it's time to wrap up loose ends, these characters are quickly cut off so they can still produce a similar ending for all branches.

These traits, partially the result of the complacent and spoiled characteristics of the modern gamer, have led the appeal of these games to ruin. There's no challenge of making the right choice. One either gets an ending with all the characters satisfied and a short slideshow of congratulations, or gets something slightly more bleak. How about a completely different ending where the player fails and is tormented in oblivion instead? Or maybe someone he jeered way earlier comes back and cripples him in vengeance and robs him without resistance? These games should be about making one of the dozen right choices, amongst hundreds of bad choices. Start by slamming the player in the face and reminding him that he needs to WORK for the good endings, and that nothing will be happily given to one without deep contemplation for his choices. As it stands, such games are dead, and  though adventure games from the past are returning, sadly, their traditional brutal choice mechanics are not.

Freedom Fall - Psychopathic Princess Simulator

To start things off. I like how this game you're not going around trying to rescue a helpless princess. No, its quite the opposite. The princess is out to kill you. Freedom fall is a platformer where you have to avoid all sort of obstacles like traps, fires, pitfalls, electricity, etc. You are a prisoner trapped in a prison tower where if you can escape, you are granted freedom. You might as well give it a shot since you're on death row right? This entire tower was created by a haughty psychopathic princess who constantly write messages on the wall mocking you and the other dead prisoners. Its kinda cute actually. All she wants is to watch you die because shes bored and has no friends.

Difficulty wise, the game isn't very hard. The game isn't very long either but its still an enjoyable game while it lasted. The art is pretty good. Its similar to Bastion, and every time you die it goes splat then covers the spikes with blood. There isn't much of a story though. Then again this is a platformer and there really isn't any text/dialogue in the game outside of the writings on the walls. The princess is mute. Shes also quirky as all hell and it shows in her writing. Really not much else to say about this game. You should get it if you like platformers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o4ma4ki8sE

The Walking Dead - Haircut Simulator

I was skeptical when I first heard about this game. I'm not a fan of the extremely popular zombie genre. I don't like going around massacring zombies, I don't like how cliche zombie games, movies, anything are. But it was telltale games, and they did some great adventure games. With a lot of people recommending and multiple positive reviews I decided I'll give it a try. Hopefully it won't be as bad as I think it is. Oh was I wrong. This is the best zombie game I have ever played. Instead of focusing on bashing zombie heads and running around collecting bullets or whatever, this game is more of a interactive movie where it focuses more on character development than actual zombie bashing.

You start off as Lee Everett, a criminal wanted for murder of a senator on his way to prison. The cop who is driving you starts chatting to you and you can answer however you like. At this time you notice that anything you say will affect how the story is played out. If you're going to lie, you better keep up the lie because its going to bite you in the ass if its found out. Your responses are also timed. Some are shorter some are longer. If you take too long to decide on a response your character will automatically stay silent. If two people are arguing you can butt in earlier, take longer to decide, or some are actually shorter like you see someone standing in the middle of the road while in the backseat of the cop car and you have to yell to stop the car. There is only a split second to pick the option. You'll quickly meet the first few survivors which will join you in your little group. People don't get along all the time, there is arguing, there are tough choices, and there will be times where you have to pick a side. Its not like other games where you and your party is immune to disease and catastrophe. People die, people turn on each other, and people leave.

One thing that is lacking is puzzle solving is at a minimum.While I like adventure games with a little bit of puzzle solving I think it just wouldn't make sense for a super serious game for the main character to hold 50 objects in his pants and create some kind of door opening machine with a spoon, a bottle of shampoo, and a tire iron. Shit like that just doesn't happen in the real world. There are also times where you have a time limit while solving things. Stuff doesn't wait for you in the real world. You don't get to walk around while the evil ghostly being is charging up his super attack and try to mix items. You take your time then zombies will eat your brains.

The story is very dark ,and very human. People will do anything to survive. Sometimes the hardest choices are the best choices. Some characters you will hate at first and then grow on you, others seem normal and then snap. Sometimes you have to step back and stop. Who are you to judge someone for murder when you are a murderer too. They accepted you into their group knowing you are a convicted criminal. Do you get to kick someone out too because of something he or she committed? You are not the leader, you get to vote but how you have treated people and what things you have said will affect who will be on your side as shit starts hitting the fan. Do you side with the man who abandoned a man to die to zombies to save his own son and will do anything even sacrificing the safety of the group to save his own family first, or would you side with the woman who puts the safety of the group first but wants absolute control of the group and sends people away to die when they come for help. Remember, your decisions must be made on the spot. You don't get time to think things over. You don't get that luxury in a zombie apocalypse when people have guns pointed at each other.

If you like character development, if you like survival stories, and if you just plain like zombie stuff then give this game a try. Even if you're not a zombie fan and just want a good story this game is also for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhL776xz9YU

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny - Fishing Poles, Scarves and Monster Slavery

What exactly is rune factory? Well the creator basically called it, "Harvest Moon with a sword." Its basically Harvest Moon meets action RPG. Its highly praised and many people have suggested the game to me. I haven't played any of the other rune factories but everyone seems to enjoy the game a lot so I picked one on the Wii rather than the handheld. Was it a bad choice? I heard the hand held versions are superior however I didn't find the game horrifyingly bad except for some really terrible decisions.

You first start off the game with you going around beating up random monsters then suddenly a bright light appears while you're in town with your BFF. Suddenly you're sucked 200 years into the future and shes now stuck inside your body. You play as both people and she can take control of your body and talk with others. Its really bizzare but you'll get used to the weirdness, as will the rest of the people in the future town. Like all other harvest moon games you go around farming and planting stuff and selling for money. Theres one difference in this game in that farming is secondary. It felt tacked on and you don't even get to farm it yourself. You can capture monsters by scrubbing them with a brush then force them to work on your farm. You cannot grow plants by yourself, you need a monster to grow it for you. All you can do is place a marker on the ground where a monster will come and then stomp the ground and then the marker will bloom. You feed your monster slaves monster cookies everyday. Each monster eats one a day. The bad part about this? You never get to choose what you want to plant. You really want a Pom Pom Flower for that hat? Too bad. You need a strawberry for some jam or a quest? Pray your monsters plant them. If you forget to feed your monsters its fine they won't starve to death or anything they'll just become unable to work. I also want to point out that you can choose to kill your monsters. In the game quests will often tell you to "return the monster to the forest of beginnings" by killing them or NPCs will talk about sending the monsters back there by slashing it to death with a sword. By talking to your monster slaves at your farm you can pick an option to "return the monster to the forest of beginnings." If you select that option they will die and their spirit will float away.

The main focus about this game however is the combat. You can pick from a variety of weapons and poke, stab, slash, smack, and smash your way to victory. Combat for the most part is fairly responsive and fluid. However, using skills requires a huge cast time and will lock you in animation. Some weapons are also very slow that basically gets you stunlocked from 100% to 0% when surrounded. Every monster hit will stagger you no matter the damage. Even if its a 100 hits doing 5 damage a hit you will get staggered and basically just go grab a drink because you'll be stuck getting hit for the next 5 minutes until you die. This only becomes a problem near the end of the game when they start throwing in large masses of enemies with projectiles. The game itself doesn't have many dungeons. In fact there are four dungeons total in the whole game and 5 bosses. These dungeons are super spread out and you must get there by walking on your golem through the sea. You might be thinking this game must be really short. Yes it is short, but they pad it with the most stupid shit ever.

You do not buy gear in this game. Nothing in the store is useful except to buy materials to craft your own stuff. Crafting starts off alright, collect some materials, make the item, then kick some monster butt. Sounds simple. Then suddenly BAM you hit a wall. You need to raise your crafting skill to craft the new stuff. If you don't craft these you are stuck in progression because you cannot fight against the new stronger monsters. So what do you do? You grind. You sit down and you grind the fucking thing. You make millions of scarves and fishing poles. I am not fucking joking. You will sit down and waste at least two hours of your life spamming the craft button until you are bored out of your mind. Now that you got that out of your way its time to spend a few hours farming rare drops from monsters until you get it. I wouldn't mind if the crafting was optional. If it gave you stronger items or super powerful items. Like have the shops sell some decent gear when you reach the next dungeon, with crafting letting you create stronger ones than the ones in the shop. But no they force people to craft these. Also to get crafting recipes, you first have to make friends with the villagers. By completing quests and raising friendship they will give you recipes. So it takes even longer.

The worst part in all of this? Like harvest moon games, there is a stamina meter. In this game its called RP or Rune Power. Everything you do uses rune power. Crafting, fighting, planting, etc. If you run out of RP it will start draining your health until you die. If you are fighting monsters and you run out of RP then you're shit out of luck. To bypass this you need to buy a shit load of food to eat. Food will recover some RP and you're basically crafting, eating, crafting, eating, crafting, eating every day. In dungeons you will be killing, then eating, kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat. This might sound tedious, and it is. The worst part is how much money you'll be draining on food. You cannot possibly afford that at the start so you'll be spending days fighting a couple of monsters and going back to sleep. Is there a reason why RP is so intrusive? You can easily drain your entire RP pool killing one to two enemies with a weak weapon. Thats fucking bullshit. If this game wants to play like an action RPG then don't add something like this. If they want it to be a farming simulator, then let us plant our own fucking plants instead of making us create fishing poles and scarves for fucking hours.

Last and not least the villagers are the craziest people you'll ever meet. Father Gerad, a priest, is probably the worst depiction of a homosexual person I have ever seen. The villagers describe him as a character and he's over the top flamboyant. Then you have the most boring people like Seirra who never wants to man the fucking shop so you have to wait around all day for her to walk inside rather than standing at the door. You cannot buy stuff unless shes indoors. Her whole existence is to complain about work, to avoid work, and to piss off her twin brother off. The brother isn't much better either, he is super shy and can't talk to girls. Then you have people who drug you because she loves you, and people who is in love with their little sister. Basically crazy people and you're stuck with them. The game lets you play as a male or female but only at the very end after you beat the game. When you split apart from the same body you can choose to play as yourself or as your BFF. However, playing as a female is an afterthought. The entire game you are playing as Aden, the guy.

There are 9 bachelorettes and 3 bachelors. That number itself is indicative of how much effort they put into making the female counterpart of the main character. Basically the list of characters are:

Bachelorettes
Odette - The normal girl who loves to cook and works at the inn. The first person you meet.
Lily - The older sister of Odette. She is incredibly clumsy and ditzy and often falls face first on the floor.
Violet - Younger sister of Odette. She is incredibly shy and softspoken. She falls in love with you at first sight and drugs you.
Electra - Mayor's daughter who really likes housework and being a housewife *groan*
Maerwen - A dark elf. A token dark skin character. She works as a maid for Electra. She acts really cold and has a sharp tongue but is really nice underneath it all.
Sierra - The tomboy active girl who hates work and complains about it everyday and is the most boring and annoying character in the game.
Mikoto - The token asian character in every single harvest moon/rune factory game for the xenophobes that play the game. Shes a cross dressing samurai.
Pandora - The evil sorcresses out for world domination. She calls you her minion and bosses you around all day long.
Elena - A golem crazy inventor/blacksmith/childish person who sleeps until 4pm every day.

Bachelors
Bismark - Sierra's super serious and super shy girl fearing twin brother.
James - Elena's older brother who has a girlfriend already and who cannot stop talking about "his cute little sister" because "her cute face lets him get through the day." Incest alert.
Joe - A giant idiot surfer dude. So very stupid.

So as you can see, girls get the short end of the stick with three of the most depressing people you can ever find. Guys at least have more choice although most of them are terrible. However, all this only appears after you beat the main game. You cannot raise friendship of NPCs over 6 until you beat the game.

The game started off fine at the start, fun in fact, then it became one of the most tedious grinds I ever seen in a game. And I grinded a lot in Disgaea. The difference is, it was somewhat enjoyable there, and for this game its just crafting fishing poles and eating ice cream cones until you take a break from boredom. The farming element is an afterthought in the game and do not expect to spend much time farming. Except to spend in game days just traveling from one place to another and many in game days trying to clear a little bit further in the dungeon because of your limited RP. Although its much easier to just run past all the enemies because it wastes too much RP to fight them. Only fight them when you need drops after that just keep running to the end and buy a stack of food and fight the boss while downing as much food as you can to keep your RP up. Other than these giant flaws, the game itself feels like harvest moon. The combat is fun when you have enough RP to fight. Its decent but not good enough.

Gone Home - Fridge opening simulator

What is Gone Home exactly? Well, if you know of Dear Esther then you should have an idea of what the game is about. It tells a story and its up to you to explore and find and piece together the story for yourself. Thats all, theres no combat, theres no exp, theres nothing but just exploring. That said you will miss a lot of stuff. Unless you scour through everything picking up every single thing, look under the tables, flip open every single folder. You will miss something. Even if you do all that, there is no guarantee that you will get the entire story. Its up to you to piece together the story, some parts are purposely vague, while others are obvious. I think that is pretty cool. I missed a big portion of a subplot in the story and going back I was able to piece it together.

What is the story about anyways? Well there really isn't any way to explain without spoiling the story so it basically is just you coming home to the home your family recently moved to while you were at Europe. There you find that the place is a mess and no one is home. You must walk around and interact with the world to progress with the story and find out what happens. You will read journal entires, you will find things that give clues, and you find that the empty house is really quite alive. The people that live there felt real and believable, it felt like they were still there and could come home at any second. At the back of your head it will keep nagging at you, thinking of the worst possible situations. After the story you become emotionally attached, you find yourself running to your destinations praying you're not too late, that what you're thinking is just a fantasy.

The best part would the the ambiance of the house. The dark corners, the flickering lights, the creaks as you step on the old wooden floors, and just the sound of the thunderstorm would keep you immersed for the entire time. Your mind plays games on you as well, seeing the plant in the corner of your eye, the red dye in the bath tub, the messy bedrooms and the feeling of dread creeping up from your stomach. This game is Dear Esther done better. However there is a $20 price tag which caused a lot of complaining. Is it worth it? If you think of it as a movie then the price tag isn't that much different. I enjoyed this game tremendously.

This proves that "art games" can work and there may potentially be more of these games in the future. Dear Esther started it, Gone Home perfected it. Now I can't wait to see what else other people can create.

Remember Me - I hope you're playing on a controller

Let me start with this. Quick time events are bullshit. Whats worse are quick time events optimized for a controller on a PC game. Thats my biggest problem with this game. Its not the stupid boring game play, its not the repetitive combat, its not the clichéd stupid story, no its quick time events. How bad are they you ask? Well on a controller you're supposed to spin the analogue stick, on the mouse and keyboard combo you need to spin your mouse around. This just does not work the same way, as you circle your mouse around it keeps fucking up and going backwards and rewinding what you are trying to do.

To start from the beginning, this is a third person "action" game. By action I mean walk in a straight line for 5 hours and button mash the left and right mouse buttons repeatedly until it breaks down. The combos are there for you to use but its completely worthless. You always meet a group of enemies so you'll never be able to pull it off before you need to dodge. Thats not all there will be assholes climbing up walls so you need to hold shift to lock-on and then left click to shoot them down so you can punch them to death. Then there are the giant assholes who suck up all the power of the little assholes so you can't kill the big asshole until you take out the small assholes first all while the big asshole is chasing you around. Then there are invisible assholes where you have to constantly shift and left click a light button every 10 seconds so they are revealed. Combat is stupidly repetitive and boring. Having all these "combos" you can customize doesn't do shit. You are forced to take a punch move in this part of the combo string, forced to take a kick move in this part etc etc. It just gives you the illusion you can customize. Are some attacks faster or slower? No I don't notice it. Do some hurt more than the other? No it doesn't. So whats the point. Nothing. Not like you'll ever pull off a full string unless you're fighting one on one anyways. You'll be hitting the space bar every two seconds to dodge an incoming attack. Dodge can be used at any time to get out of anything. Theres no getting locked inside a combo theres no fear of needing to dodge, theres no fear of not seeing an attack coming as a giant ! will appear and the world slows down waiting for you to hit the dodge button.

What do you do when not fighting in combat? You climb. That sounds fun! Thats like Mirror's Edge right? No. Not even close. Saying its like Mirror's Edge is like saying Solitaire is a real game. All you do is walk in a single path. And along the path will have yellow arrows telling you to go here go there. You just hop and hop and hop and hop and hop and hop and hop some more. The worst part of hopping is the controls. Its completely unoptimized for mouse and keyboards. Not to mention the camera jerks around when you're trying to do look to the side. Occasionally you stop to shift left click something, which is probably the worst part because it wastes your time having to search around and you just want to get out of this part because its stupid and boring, then continue your hopping. Every few hops you take enemies appear and you can't continue until you punch them all to death. After that you hop some more. THEN SUDDENLY OUT OF THE BLUE YOU GET SOMETHING DIFFERENT! There are gray spots you can stand on to press E to access stolen memories to see how to get past these areas. What it usually does is let you know where the "safe" areas are in a minefield or something of that sort. You basically get one second to watch the thing then it disappears. Honestly it does shit to help but state the obvious. Its easier to just keep running. After hopping for what feels like an hour you get to the very end of the path which is a boss. Bosses are easy as all hell but also a very long endurance fight with your attention span. Its boring. Its like fighting the same as a normal enemy but you punch longer. Then when it gets close to dying you need to suddenly do a quick time event. If you screw up you have to redo it again after you bring it back down to that health (it regenerates slightly.) You get a split second to click a button then it shows a circle button with an arrow from the left circling to the top then to the right. Oh it must be to spin the mouse like the memory mixing I just did a little while ago right? NO. I did that fight for 30 fucking minutes before I realized that was a the dodge key. WHAT?

Theres also memory mixing. I've only seen it once so far so its not very common basically you go through someone's memory and then go back and change parts of the memory so it plays out differently. The one I had to do was I had to kill the man instead of letting the doctor save him. You watch a cut scene then you have to constantly turn your mouse in a clockwise circle to go forward in time and counterclockwise to go back in time. Press E at certain times to ruin someone's memories until the right combination works out. Then we get to the story of the game. Basically its the most cliché story. You lost your memory, the evil corporation Memorex controls everyone's memory and then tried to remove yours but you resisted because as a video game protagonist you're badass like that. Now you've lost most of your memory and is on a quest for revenge against the big evil corporation while some random seedy guy is helping you who obviously sounds like a bad guy who believes the end justifies the means and you're obviously going to have to fight him along the way or he might be the true villain after all. Fortunately I didn't get very far into the game probably about 25%-30% of the game before I ran into a bug. I used the Sensen DDOS and it bugged out one enemy and it wouldn't die and I couldn't die so I was in limbo because unless you kill every enemy you cannot move on.

I didn't feel like starting over at the last checkpoint because theres no save button you have to go back to a checkpoint every time you die or turn off the game. And if you decide to quit after watching cut scene or something important. For the love of god don't turn off your game because the next time you start it you have to sit through the whole thing again. It'll take like 5 minutes to watch and there is no way to skip it. All in all its a very mediocre game with a cliché story, bad combat, boring and tedious game play, and worst of all the most unoptimized controller to mouse and keyboard port ever.

The Cat Lady - Blood, Gore, Violence Galore!

I'll be honest, I tried this game because of the title. How many games out there do you get to play as the crazy cat lady? I was on another adventure game binge and found this game with positive reviews. It was a horror adventure game that featured a cat lady as the main character. It sounded interesting and I gave it a try. Basically the game begins with you, Susan Ashworth, a woman in her late 30's. You are staring at your cats as you eat sleeping pills to commit suicide. About 2 minutes into the game you die. You however, instead of dying wake up in the world between life and death. There you meet the mysterious old lady called Queen of Maggots. She gives you a gift (or in your case a curse) where you will never die. Every time you die you will wake up alive again no matter how horrific the death is. You never asked for this but you have no choice. However, you can get rid of this "gift" if you do what she says. You must kill the parasites. Once you do you are free.

The parasites are rapists, murderers, arsonists, the true monsters of society. You're not actively going out in search of them, no they come for you. They're here to hurt you and all you want to do is to be left alone to wallow in your own misery. In order to leave the halfway world you must give a gift of blood, and a gift of soul. By blowing out a candle you sacrifice a piece of your own soul in exchange for the life of a parasite. A soul for a soul. Once you blown out all the candles, you die. A gift of blood is by drawing out some blood. So after blowing out the candle you must stick your arm into a hole to push the button when you do that your arm gets chopped off and you start running around holding your wound as blood gushes everywhere as the credits start rolling in. Thats your gift of blood. This game has excessive amounts of blood, gore and violence.

The game then wakes you up at a hospital for suicide victims. You cannot leave until they are convinced you won't kill yourself again. The psychiatrist will ask you questions. How you answer and what you ask will affect the game. The game isn't like the usual point and click adventure game. Its a 2d side scrolling one where you only need the left and right keyboard buttons and walk until something pops up. The up button to interact and the down button for inventory. Its a little confusing at first but after playing it for awhile its not too hard to get used to. Some puzzles are a little obscure but its not hard enough that you should feel any frustration while playing.

The horror amount for the game is not very high though. If you're looking for scares its not really there. Its more disturbing and focuses more on the horrors of humanity. For example the first parasite you meet is none other than your very own psychiatrist. He preys on weak women, charms them, brings them to his home where he tortures them to hear them scream. Then he kills them and use their bodies as art to mimic masterpieces such as, the Mona Lisa, Venus, the girl with pearl earrings. You knew too much when a nurse shared information to you before she committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the hospital. You told the psychiatrist about her and he stabbed you to death. Waking up from the body bag you find your way out of the "prison" basement and create a weapon from random items and breaking open his skull. This whole time screams in the background as he slowly prods and pokes a woman tied to a chair with a sharp object.

While you are out getting killed by parasites, you are also on a emotional journey of self discovery. Coming to terms with your past, the reasons for your suicide, and the people you meet along the way is the real story of the game. Its about loss, tragedy, and the bittersweet moments of being alive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx6j2I8v2Z0

Dreamfall - There is no plot, no ending, and no fun

I have to start off saying I love The Longest Journey. Its an point and click adventure game like Deponia, Monkey Island and the rest of them. Its witty, the characters are interesting, and the world is well thought out and explained. What Dreamfall is, isn't really a sequel its more of a spinoff but they throw in as much of the original characters as possible. Instead of reading through text and asking questions and such it became a movie of some sorts. And I hate movie games. I want to read text.

Basically the game takes place 10 years after the events of April Ryan in TLJ. However this time you are controlling a new person. Some 20 year old whiny college dropout called Zoe. Basically you sleep in all day and complain about your day then you go find your friends, whatever is left of them, and then suddenly your ex-boyfriend gets in trouble and you go out of your way to find him. This whole time you aren't talking to other people, you aren't finding items, and you aren't solving puzzles. All you are doing is walking from point a to point b looking at cut scenes. It wouldn't be so bad if the plot made sense. This just cannot be written by the same person who wrote TLJ. It just cannot be the same person. They brought back the same characters, as much as they possibly can, and then completely butchered them. You meet April Ryan again and this time she is a mopey whiny 30 year old who can't let go of the fact that she wasn't needed anymore. After saving the world her mind snapped and she went insane. Then there are the others like Crow who started breaking the fourth wall and being really annoying as shit.

However the biggest part of this is how they introduce a bunch of new things, never explain anything, and then end the game before anything happens. What the fuck? The whole game everyone is talking about "The Collapse" that happened shortly after April Ryan saved the world. Yet it is never explained what exactly it is. There are a new race of people in Arcadia called the Azadi, who are these all black humans (somehow a different race from humans and are called non human? Why not make them look different then?) Who are super religious and murders everyone and anyone who doesn't believe in their Goddess or uses magic which is banned by the Goddess. So April Ryan is fighting them, you on the other hand is looking for your ex-boyfriend and then hooks up with some random guy you met like 2 hours ago and makes out in his apartment then suddenly, April Ryan dies! What? Then you find out you have a sister and your mom kills you and the game ends. I'm not joking. Thats how the game ends. Why are the Azadi here? What was their plans with the tower? What happened to the Dreamcore? What is The Collapse? What about the people I met at the start of the game where are they? What the fuck happened?

You don't just make a game where less than 1% of the plot is explained. None of it would make sense then, and none of it would matter. What was different from the first game was that they threw away the adventure game format and made it into an "action game" format. You have to punch people and stealth and other stuff. The stealth parts are the worst parts in the game. You move so slow and its so long and tedious. Its not even hard at all you just move at really slow speeds. Guards don't turn around, stuff doesn't pop out and you don't need to avoid anything. All you have to do is walk at 1/3rd of your normal speed for the next 5 minutes. God forbid you let go of the stealth button you'll automatically get caught killed and have to reload at your last save. Combat however is different its not tedious its just buggy. Enemies will stand there and hold block 90% of the time and you can just use heavy hit, which is unblockable. And just keep using the heavy hit and they die without any work. This isn't fun, this is tedious. Who decided it was a good idea to put combat and stealth into an adventure game?

Even if you want to add combat and stealth, it can be done correctly. Most of the time you can never die in adventure games. Some you can die in, thats ok I don't mind dying. But when you accidentally let go of your stealth key and then some spiderbot shoots lasers in your face and you die. That is pretty stupid. Look how combat in Monkey Island in done. You have insult sword fighting. That was hilarious, that was charming. And to this day it is still remembered by many. Adventure games are mostly about talking to people, choosing your responses, asking questions, finding items, combining items, solving puzzles, all while having fun. Dreamfall is none of that. You never talk to people if you can avoid it. Getting anywhere is a pain and talking to people just gives an automatic response so theres no point in talking. Asking anything is pointless because all you can ask is who they are from the first game. Its for people who never played TLJ and can ask to find out more about that character, and by more I mean summarize the person in one sentence which does shit for anything. You don't even get to choose a response everything is played out for you. There isn't even enough items in this game and somehow they keep magically disappearing from your inventory when you change zones. Hell you don't even need to travel in this game you just magically plop somewhere and you never go back ever. Puzzles in this game doesn't even require thinking its just something stupidly cryptic like "turn up the volume of your game to listen to the humming of the wind then push the buttons in the order of the hums." What the fuck? Or some are so easy you just spin 4 circles until they match. Its like calling the hacking minigames in Mass Effect 2 a puzzle.

Last but not least, its not fun. Thats what it all comes down to. Its not fun. You don't feel involved in the game at all. All you feel like you're doing is watching a movie play out but your friends pull you away after you just get started and you don't even know how it ends or what the rest of the movie is about. Thats what it did. It teased you with the illusion that there might be a story, there might be plot. But they spent too much time trying to bring back characters just so TLJ fans can feel happy about themselves when they sleep at night. What happened was a complete mess of a game with no one you can really relate to, no game play at all except the tedious sneaking and combat, and worst of all, an unsatisfying plot with no ending. How this can be called a game is beyond me. TLJ was an amazing game, yet Dreamfall is nothing but a stain on its reputation. Dreamfall Chapters, the sequel is being developed and maybe it will do better. Who knows what can happen.

Evoland - As boring as a real history lesson

Evoland is an action adventure game which basically rips off Zelda. Theres also the overhead view which is ripped off of Final Fantasy. You might be thinking, well if this game is such a huge rip off of other games why should we play this. This is done intentionally as a "history" of video games. You start off the game as shitty pixels and every treasure chest you open you unlock a new added improvement in the game such as fluid screen scrolling instead of the classic Zelda one, BGM, colour, etc etc. You go from shitty graphics to full on HD 3D graphics. But outside of the gimmick of video game history its a pretty bland game.

On the overworld you basically play like a final fantasy game with an ATB bar and attack, skill, item commands. You have the main hero who can do damage, and the heroine who does pitiful damage but can heal the team (all two of them) with no mana cost. Basically you just spam the same button over and over and kill everyone. Inside dungeons it could have both the same turned based combat or sometimes its the top down action adventure style like Zelda. Here you really notice how awful the control are on PC. Its awkward to move around and swing your sword and you more than often get hit trying to swing at the enemy. Not to mention how annoying most of the enemy are. Its not very hard but its very tedious because its not very fun chasing a monster around for 2 minutes trying to hit it once. The puzzles aren't hard at all and just wastes your time even more.

I know they are trying to pay homage to the old school games but when you do it so badly I think its more of an insult. The graphics eventually do get really good but outside of that there really isn't much going for it. The gimmick wears off fast and I hear the game is very short. The only upside in this game is the card game mini game. Its almost the same thing as the FF8 card game and I wasted quite a lot of time playing it. When the mini game is more fun than the main game you know you probably fucked up somewhere.

Overall, the game is boring as fuck. Outside of the gimmick of being a history of video games, its just a mediocre action adventure game and turn based game mixed together. There are references like "Claud's Buster Sword" and a guy with an airship called "Sid." But honestly, its really not that interesting.

Defender's Quest - Yes it looks like shit

I wasn't really sure about this game when I first heard about it. One look at it reminds me of a shitty copy paste flash tower defense game. Not that I have played any of them though. So after reading about the game, reading people talk about it on the forums I decided to check it out. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it actually is. However there is one major problem that people keep arguing about over and over. The graphics are shit. People look at the graphics and go "it looks like shit it must be shit" and won't give it a try.

When you first start the game you are wandering around as Azra, a librarian. You must be going "why the fuck am I playing some dumb librarian chick." Don't worry you meet your first ally within seconds. Slak the berserker. He's smelly, he's crazy, and he's hilarious. As you progress you start getting more and more allies and the bickering between your team is entertaining. Its not all fun an games though as you learn more about the pit and how everyone that ends up here eventually becomes fucked up from all the shit they see on a daily basis. Some of your party are insane, some are bloodthirsty murderers waiting to stab you in the back, but they all have one thing in common in following you. To get the fuck out of the pit.

However, you only get half the story by playing the game. After you beat the game you unlock new game+ which adds extra missions to learn about the characters and the diary. The diary is constantly updated as you complete missions and it expands on the world and character a bit more from the eyes of Azra. Its entertaining and very well written.

The combat is fun but sometimes, a little lackluster. Its basically a tower defense game. You have one or more targets the enemy will head towards. This is usually Azra in the very end of a maze. There will be one or more spawns that will spawn enemies. You must then summon in teammates onto the wall of the mazes. Each character has different abilities and range. You will start off with some PSI, but every time you kill an enemy you will gain more. PSI is used to summon in teammates, magical spells, or to upgrade your teammates giving them bonus range, damage, skills, etc. In normal mode you basically just have to stack archers and they will snipe down everything. In new game+ you'll require a bit more thinking.

Basically don't judge a game by its shitty graphics. For an indie tower defense game this game is actually pretty fun.