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2012
This review contains spoilers
Because of the nature of the story, it’s impossible to discuss Spec Ops: The Line without spoiling its contents. Having said that, I do think this is one of those titles every gamer will play at some point in their lives, so let this review stand as less of an overview and more of a discussion regarding its merits.
Minor spoilers discussed for the original Modern Warfare Trilogy as well as Black Ops I and II
Spec Ops: The Line is one of those games I both admire and unadmire -- it takes a thought-provoking approach to military shooters, only to subvert them in the most erroneous way possible, and while I would’ve loved to have seen more titles like it, I ultimately can’t recommend the game itself as a must-play venture.
It should be noted in advance that the story we got was not what was fully intended by the writers: in an article published on Cracked.com back in 2016, Spec Ops co-writer Walt Williams disclosed multiple changes the narrative underwent during development (be forewarned spoilers are present), and so I am definitely sympathetic to the fact that the story would’ve been more consistent had things gone as originally planned(+). That said, because of the high reputation Spec Ops continues to hold among the gaming community, consequent criticisms will be unadulterated regardless of this piece of prescient knowledge.
The problems stem from multiple sources, but I suppose the premise is as good a place to start as any: a semi-apocalyptic timeline wherein Dubai is ravaged by horrendous sandstorms (err, more than your garden variety anyway). Prior to the events of the game, a battalion of US soldiers nicknamed the Damned 33rd opted to disobey orders and evacuate the city, resulting in a loss of contact with their overseers. Months later, a lone transmission broadcast by the infantry’s Colonel Konrad causes the US Government to send in a small Delta Squadron to conduct reconnaissance and find out what exactly transpired.
It may sound solid to an outsider, but Americans holding a basic understanding of their military will know just how nonsensical everything is upon closer inspection. For starters, on what planet would a US satellite be unable to see through dusty wind? We’ve had this technology nailed to a tee going back to the 60s, let alone the 2010s timeline of Spec Ops, yet you mean to tell me no such spacecraft was capable of keeping track of Konrad’s movements?
The idea of HAVING to send in personnel becomes further idiotic the second you find out the CIA had previously infiltrated Dubai, meaning the government already had a source of information on the ground! Are you honestly going to tell me with a straightface that the DOD and CIA were not communicating with one another in any capacity (the same two agencies that, mind you, worked hand-in-hand during the Cold and Iraq Wars?).
And let’s talk about Konrad - even if I bought into the idea of him disobeying orders, in what world are the thousands, let me repeat, thousands of soldiers under his command going to go along with a mutiny (let alone the innumerable Captains and Lieutenants)? This was clearly a homage to Apocalypse Now, which served as a major influence on the plot, but the difference is, there, Kurtz oversaw significantly less troops, making their switch in allegiance all the more believable. Here, though, there’s no reality where a mass of armyheads would betray their country because a single higher-up said so.
The final stretch of incredulity extends to the actions done by main protagonist himself, Captain Walker, and while significantly less heavy than their aforementioned forebears, they end up being arguably the worst of the bunch given their purpose in jumpstarting the plot: that is Walker’s decisions to ignore orders. Unlike Konrad’s men, Walker is, at the very least, explicitly portrayed as a by-the-book veteran, so why is he not following such basic protocol as reporting in attacks by members of the Dubai populace? Long before he snaps, why is he not doing the very thing he was explicitly asked to do ala sending in information about the status of Dubai (it’s not like he forgets this mission since his squadmates are constantly reminding him every other scene)?
I know fans will retort that every military game takes creative liberties for the sake of storytelling, a notion I agree with, yet Spec Ops’ errors struck me as a bit hypocritical given its themes of deconstructing such titles over their lack of realism. Plus, unlike Call of Duty, a couple of easy rewrites would’ve gone a long way towards ameliorating, if not outright correcting, these issues (++).
But look, we’re just dancing at the outskirts -- Spec Ops biggest issues are two-fold: one, its inability to craft morally-grey situations; and two, its aggravating attempts at critiquing player agency.
Regarding the first, Spec Ops’s storyline operates under the banner of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” a fascinating concept that’s been privy to some of the best storytelling in fictional media. However, the problem with Spec Ops’s version is that it’s more interested in manipulating gamers than actually weaving a good tale - almost every “ambivalent” scenario Walker and his buddies come across is deliberately obscured for the sake of a gotcha moment (a tactic that feels less like organic development and more like shock value). Real ethical murkiness seeps from having a decent understanding of the facts and consequently making a Scylla & Charybdis decision: that is knowing things could go north or south, but ultimately concluding that the outcome of one justifies its selection over the other.
Sadly, only once does the game do anything akin to this, with the rest of the story otherwise consisting of Walker being tricked into committing acts of Genevic violence, and what makes this particularly annoying is that you’re almost always responding out of self-defense. The Damned 33rd constantly ignore Walker’s words and shoot on-sight, in turn forcing players to engage in extended firefights that give way to those aforestated war crimes, and as a result, I never once felt guilt-tripped by Walker’s deeds because I knew things would’ve played out differently had the issues been forthright over this force-feeding method. Yes, in wartime, you’re never acquainted with all the facts, but as I more than illustrated above, the game wasn’t exactly heavy on veritable recreations from the get-go.
Interestingly, the infamous White Phosphorus scene exhibits this flounder best, with Walker gulled (read - coaxed) into using the eponymous incendiary against an opposing unit, unaware that there are civilians in the mix. Despite the intentions of the writers, it just didn’t work for me because there was never any indication that citizens were moved to this area, nor a single reason why this particular weapon had to be employed when previous scenarios had you gunning down similar numbers of troops amass no problem. Ironically, what I found far more haunting (and what I wish had been focused on instead) were the sundry of burning troops you meander past following the ordeal: hearing their screams and singeing, it genuinely dawned on me just how sickening my actions were, something I can’t say occurred with the so-called “plot twist”.
Another notorious part involves Walker being deceived (noticing a trend here?) into helping a CIA crony sabotage the Dubai water supply; a scene that only prevails because the game deliberately turns Walker into a moron (+++) in addition to conveniently killing off every exposition-y character who would’ve told him the truth about the agent (whose motivations, on their own merits, are full of horsefeathers++++). Contrived is the perfect word to describe this part because that’s the kind of framing the game unfortunately utilizes in order to render its many tragedies a success. Compare this to Assassin’s Creed I or Witcher 2 where Geralt and Altair were put into decently-detailed scenarios in which you were able to make a concerted decision: a decision that may have caused more damage than good, but never once seemed coerced.
Still, in spite of my disagreements, I actually would’ve commended Spec Os had it not indulged in that aforementioned secondary quandary of emotionally-blackmailing players as though they did something wrong. It does this through its death screens (no doubt a parody of the CoD equivalent) which, if you’re lucky, you won’t be seeing too many of courtesy of how infuriatingly condescending they can get. You get such pretentious polemics as: “This is all your Fault,” “Do you feel like a Hero?,” and an additional one about the parching of Dubai’s citizens that I didn’t jot down verbatim (amongst others+++++), all of which struck me as wholly unnecessary because it’s not like the game provided a pacifist route or legitimate choices for players to willfully exert agency on.
Now of course, being a beloved game, I’ve heard counterarguments to some of these qualms, namely that Spec Ops is a deliberate response to Call of Duty’s cartoonish approach to war, a claim that makes no sense to anyone who's actually played those games. Like seriously, from Black Ops II on-back (i.e., the titles that were out at the time of Spec Ops’s release), can anyone actually think of a moment where actions against civilian targets weren’t treated seriously? The chemical gas attacks in MW3, the death of Noriega’s sister in BOII, the nuclear explosion in MW1, Castro’s assassination attempt in BO1, etc…all led to serious consequences for the protagonist(s). Even No Russian (a mission which, by the way, provided far more player agency than any chapter in Spec Ops ever did) literally resulted in the advent of World War III, so I genuinely don’t know what commentary the devs were going for if this was actually their intention.
Another big rebuttal I’ve heard is that Spec Ops was meant to be critical of gamers who decide to play war titles without thinking about what they’re doing, a facet that, if true, would genuinely trigger me. Nothing pisses me off more than when a video game’s grand or ulterior message is to not play it -- the purpose of any published title, irrespective of its tangents, should always be to be experienced. Telling players that they were dumb to embark on a journey advertised to them would be deceptive, sly, and downright egotistical on the part of the writers.
Perusing the Wikipedia article will inform you that the writers wanted to showcase a realistic decline in the mental state of soldiers at war, something that is generally overlooked in conventional military shooters. Now, I’ve never served in the armed forces (and I suspect neither have Williams and Richard Pearsey); however, I’ve read enough books and spoken to enough veterans to feel confident in saying that this psychological change is not as instantaneous as the hackneyed approach Yager Development took here, condensing a months-long process of deterioration and dehumanization into what feels like the span of a few days. Walker’s transformation, in particular, is preposterous because it entails him immediately developing a split personality, something that literally doesn’t happen overnight. To add salt to the wounds, the game rips-off Black Ops 1 by treating this as a plot twist (though unlike BO1, the dialogue here is overtly-obtuse to the point of not lending an organic layer to said revelation).
Listen, I know I’ve been rambling, but it’s only because I’m passionate about video game storytelling, and I feel Spec Ops could’ve done a better job executing its well-intentioned parameters. It generally tells a good tale about the fall of three men trying to do the right thing, and honestly succeeds in its depiction of PTSD (the spontaneous screaming/acts of violence, Walker’s nightmares): it’s just everything else was severely lacking in either tangibleness or believability. Even as an adaptation of Heart of Darkness it stumbles because you just don’t get a sense of Konrad’s (i.e. Kurtz’s) descent into madness due to the game shoving most of that backstory into optional collectibles (more on that later). There’s also a whole spiel I have about the “true ending” that I’ll detail in the notes section (++++++).
Like I said though, this is a story you will get invested in, and that’s honestly due less to the script and more to the stupendous voice work and chemistry of the main stars. Nolan North, of course, needs no introduction, his performance as Walker arguably standing at the top of an already-esteemed resume. The way he vocally depicts Walker’s crumbling mental state and increasing anger, in particular, deserves immense praise as a gold standard in voiceover work. His coworker, Omid Abtahi, does an equally superb job as thirdmate Lugo, often being handed the most fervently-charged dialogue behind North, and successfully orating it.
Christopher Reid takes the reins as Walker’s second-in-command Adams, and he’s admittedly the weakest of the trio, failing to astutely exude the multitudinous emotions his character undergoes. Still, his camaraderie goes a long way in the game (his conversations with Walker, in particular, being a consistent highlight).
The remaining NPC cast is admittedly hit-or-miss. Jake Busey, for example, is surprisingly good as the shock jock Radioman Delta Squad overhears for most of the game, but he’s unfortunately counterbalanced by Bruce Boxleitner’s Konrad, who not only lacks Brando’s pristine elocution, but dons a nasal impersonation of Kiefer Sutherland from Phone Booth (he also gave the man a bizarre accent for no apparent reason).
If you’ve heard anything negative about Spec Ops, it’s probably had to do with its shooting mechanics, though I honestly feel the lion’s share of these perceived issues would’ve been ignored with better soundwork: firearms lack impact, bullet blasts resound the same across every non-metallic surface, and you don’t hear enough sand crunching in spite of the abundance of grains. Had things been more visceral, particularly during gun battles, I genuinely think a lot of people would’ve flipped their opinion on the gameplay as it’s honestly fine, occupying your standard cover shooter system of pick-and-pop. There are a few enemy varieties (including juggernauts straight out of MW2), but the battle strategy remains the same, and I guarantee you any deaths you accumulate will derive primarily from running out into open areas.
The biggest supplement to the whole shebang is a Mass Effect-esque command squad wherein, at the click of a button, Lugo & Adams can be directed against a specific target. The AI for the duo is actually quite good, with the two of them not only following orders well, but actually hitting/pursuing their targets to a tee. The only downside is the inability to give them specific directives in terms of what tactics to employ (i.e., whether to lob a grenade, provide suppressing fire, snipe, etc….), leaving their choice-of-attack up to either RNG or the occasional on-screen prompt. When they do go down, you’re able to revive them with a quick tap, though be forewarned this does leave you open to bullet fire.
On that note, Spec Ops is definitely more realistic than its contemporaries in terms of damage calculation as, even on the normal difficulty, Walker can only take a few hits before his screen goes red. And seeing as how you’ll rarely be up against minimal foes, you’ll definitely want to avoid darting into the open kamikaze-style lest you wish to die quickly.
But that’s at least understandable - what isn’t understandable are some of the bizarre gamepad calibrations: the semi-tank control scheme where you have to rotate Walker separately from the camera in order to dictate his direction; running being relegated to a singular button tap; and vaulting being keyed to same button as melee.
I talked about the intelligence collectibles earlier, and those are definitely more akin to the backpacks from Spider-Man than their Call of Duty counterpart in the sense that they’re recordings which divulge vital information on either something that occurred before the events of the game, or on present thoughts from Walker on something at hand. They’re excellently scribed and definitely provide integral lore in a way the main campaign never does, but the problem is you have to go out of your way to locate them. I don’t know who thought this’d be a good idea over placing them directly in the player’s path, and what’s worse is, if you want to view them later, you have to exit the game and select them from the title screen despite certain ones pertaining to the specific chapter they’re found in -- tl;dr, it made no sense.
Graphics are the one area Yager truly went all-out on as Spec Ops has aged incredibly well. Character models, in particular, boast extraordinary detail you’re not liable to finding in a lot of games these days, beginning with the fact that you can actually see streams of sweat on Walker’s face alongside the progressive-accumulation of caked dirt and dried blood. Character diaphragms enlarge in an arc motion when breathing, compared to the balloon-shaped expansion typical of most releases, and texturing, as a whole, is incredibly deep, adorning textiles and architectural materials equanimously. Though primarily in desert-strewn areas, you’ll often duke it out in exteriors reminiscent of the 33rd’s past history (makeshift gyms/army barracks) or interiors mimicked off of real-life locations from the iconic city (the Dubai Mall, Burj Khalifa, various resorts), both of which do a phenomenal job giving a lived-in feel to the world. The use of colors, even under the baked overlay of Spec Ops illumination, were especially fantastic, often giving rise to some of the most gorgeous vistas I’ve ever had the privilege to witness in gaming -- one room could literally be home to dashes of rainbow, another pure blues, and still another murkier lighting reminiscent of the climax of Apocalypse Now.
The desert is more than a backdrop, with grenades causing cloudbursts, breakable glass giving way to sandslides, and the occasional habūb slipping into battle during scripted moments. Part of me wishes these latter storms, in particular, were randomized over predetermined as such moments of granular chaos were absolutely thrilling: red-orange typhoons terrorizing everything in their path.
Still, the highlight of the game has to be its murals - painted canvases embellished upon numerous walls you run across in your 7+ hour journey. The artisans behind them did a phenomenal job satirizing the military-industrial complex, their works frequently contrasting idealistic propaganda with the ongoing carnage of Dubai. Some of my favorites included a burnt American Flag above a pile of dead soldiers, a hot girl vacation ad next to a guy shooting himself, religious divinity amidst massacred civilians, and a diamond adorned with pig blood amongst numerous others I recommend you seek out.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I enjoyed were the heat waves that rose from discharged turret barrels, visibly seeing empty magazines fall to the ground while reloading, and those darkly gorgeous loading screen illustrations showcasing Walker in varying poses of melancholy.
In terms of visuals criticisms, I had a couple of minor ones ranging from clouds being stationary to Lugo’s hat lacking proper texture streaming, but my biggest ones concerned two aspects from the desert: one, the extensive brightness of sunlit areas - maybe it was because I just got done playing Resident Evil 2, but there were several places where I felt the lighting was overblown; and two, the inconsistency of footprints - not every sand surface yielded them, and even when they did, they often took the form of instantly-formed blobs rather than an organically crafted boot imprint.
Finally there’s the score by Elia Cmíral, and I was pretty disappointed with it. The biggest issue is Cmíral (and Yager in general) were clearly more interested in recreating those rock-based moments from Apocalypse Now than conceiving something standalone, and they apparently settled on doing so via adding such motifs to almost every single album piece. I’m not lying when I tell you guys that the same electric guitar and drum riffs occupy at least 75% of the OST, and if they didn’t, something harmonically-similar did to the point of being aurally-indifferent. There were also numerous times where the music was completely at odds with the thematic content on display, the worst instance of this being the finale with Walker finally meeting Konrad (seriously - go take a listen to it). I’m usually a fan of alternative rock, but unfortunately I can’t say its use in a serious war game was good pickings (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, your ears are privy to a horrifically screechy rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner via the title screen theme).
And that, in a nutshell, wraps-up all my problems with Spec Ops: The Line. As I said in the beginning, I respect what the writers were trying to do, and it would’ve been great if more video games had built on this formula over sticking with standard AAA templates(+++++++), but the game itself tragically has too many flaws to be worth a solid recommend.
I do believe everyone will play it at some point in their gaming life, and for those who have, I encourage commentary/debate because I acknowledge I could very well be ignorant to some major boon that was simply overlooked.
Then again, if a video game can inspire these kinds of discussions to begin with, maybe it already succeeded at its tasks.
NOTES
+To anyone even vaguely-interested in the process behind video game scriptwriting, I highly-recommend checking out that article irrespective of your views on Spec Ops.
++The Damned 33rd had fallen into civil war, so why not have one faction do the counterinsurgency tactics over throwing in the CIA? And rather than make Walker Delta, why not turn him into a Black Ops soldier? You’re already having him act like one anyway.
+++The CIA is explicitly depicted as being untrustworthy to the point of Walker’s teammates warning him otherwise.
++++The US Government already disavowed the Damned 33rd, so what exactly was the CIA trying to cover-up? Any war crimes committed by the unit would’ve been condemned the second they came to light.
+++++The slogan that really got under my skin was one that asked whether I even remembered the original reason for coming to Dubai. The answer is yes homie, you created a campaign no longer than your average CoD one: of course I remember what transpired two days ago.
++++++The writers reportedly claimed that Walker died in the helicopter crash and that the last act of the game is actually him in Limbo. Firstly, this doesn’t make much sense given that a lot of major events, including the deaths of his comrades and the Konrad Revelation, are disclosed post-crash, but second, why would you scribe a video game about maintaining convictions to the bitter end, only to take away that ending from gamers? What was even the point in having multiple choices if they were all “fake” by your own admission?
This is truly a case where Death of the Author should be applied in spades as I think leaving the conclusion up to the player is far more wise - you got three different finales representing the three most possible outcomes: one, Walker acquiescing to his guilt and killing himself; two, Walker acquiescing to his trauma and becoming self-brainwashed; or three, Walker ultimately opting to seek help and Dubai’s citizens privy to rescue by the US Military.
+++++++To be fair, the Modern Warfare reboot and (reportedly) BioShock Infinite did similar takes on American Exceptionalism, so perhaps some post-Spec Ops influence did happen.
-I’d say the one aspect of the graphics that is visibly outdated is surprisingly the choice of font. I don’t know how to describe it, but it genuinely looks like the kind of typeface you’d see on early-360 shooters.
-Spec Ops was delisted from Steam, and no one seems to have any idea as to why that happened.
-The sound mixing has Walker sounding louder than his brethren, which can get obnoxious during firefights when he’s screaming orders. That said, I did like how, if one person was out of your vicinity, their voice would be filtered through the radio (I believe ACIII did the same during the modern-day sections).
-Talk about a blast from the past, one of the NPCs here uses an iPod!
-The intro credits throw in your name as “special guest____” if you needed further proof that the writers were disapproving you as much as they were Walker.
Minor spoilers discussed for the original Modern Warfare Trilogy as well as Black Ops I and II
Spec Ops: The Line is one of those games I both admire and unadmire -- it takes a thought-provoking approach to military shooters, only to subvert them in the most erroneous way possible, and while I would’ve loved to have seen more titles like it, I ultimately can’t recommend the game itself as a must-play venture.
It should be noted in advance that the story we got was not what was fully intended by the writers: in an article published on Cracked.com back in 2016, Spec Ops co-writer Walt Williams disclosed multiple changes the narrative underwent during development (be forewarned spoilers are present), and so I am definitely sympathetic to the fact that the story would’ve been more consistent had things gone as originally planned(+). That said, because of the high reputation Spec Ops continues to hold among the gaming community, consequent criticisms will be unadulterated regardless of this piece of prescient knowledge.
The problems stem from multiple sources, but I suppose the premise is as good a place to start as any: a semi-apocalyptic timeline wherein Dubai is ravaged by horrendous sandstorms (err, more than your garden variety anyway). Prior to the events of the game, a battalion of US soldiers nicknamed the Damned 33rd opted to disobey orders and evacuate the city, resulting in a loss of contact with their overseers. Months later, a lone transmission broadcast by the infantry’s Colonel Konrad causes the US Government to send in a small Delta Squadron to conduct reconnaissance and find out what exactly transpired.
It may sound solid to an outsider, but Americans holding a basic understanding of their military will know just how nonsensical everything is upon closer inspection. For starters, on what planet would a US satellite be unable to see through dusty wind? We’ve had this technology nailed to a tee going back to the 60s, let alone the 2010s timeline of Spec Ops, yet you mean to tell me no such spacecraft was capable of keeping track of Konrad’s movements?
The idea of HAVING to send in personnel becomes further idiotic the second you find out the CIA had previously infiltrated Dubai, meaning the government already had a source of information on the ground! Are you honestly going to tell me with a straightface that the DOD and CIA were not communicating with one another in any capacity (the same two agencies that, mind you, worked hand-in-hand during the Cold and Iraq Wars?).
And let’s talk about Konrad - even if I bought into the idea of him disobeying orders, in what world are the thousands, let me repeat, thousands of soldiers under his command going to go along with a mutiny (let alone the innumerable Captains and Lieutenants)? This was clearly a homage to Apocalypse Now, which served as a major influence on the plot, but the difference is, there, Kurtz oversaw significantly less troops, making their switch in allegiance all the more believable. Here, though, there’s no reality where a mass of armyheads would betray their country because a single higher-up said so.
The final stretch of incredulity extends to the actions done by main protagonist himself, Captain Walker, and while significantly less heavy than their aforementioned forebears, they end up being arguably the worst of the bunch given their purpose in jumpstarting the plot: that is Walker’s decisions to ignore orders. Unlike Konrad’s men, Walker is, at the very least, explicitly portrayed as a by-the-book veteran, so why is he not following such basic protocol as reporting in attacks by members of the Dubai populace? Long before he snaps, why is he not doing the very thing he was explicitly asked to do ala sending in information about the status of Dubai (it’s not like he forgets this mission since his squadmates are constantly reminding him every other scene)?
I know fans will retort that every military game takes creative liberties for the sake of storytelling, a notion I agree with, yet Spec Ops’ errors struck me as a bit hypocritical given its themes of deconstructing such titles over their lack of realism. Plus, unlike Call of Duty, a couple of easy rewrites would’ve gone a long way towards ameliorating, if not outright correcting, these issues (++).
But look, we’re just dancing at the outskirts -- Spec Ops biggest issues are two-fold: one, its inability to craft morally-grey situations; and two, its aggravating attempts at critiquing player agency.
Regarding the first, Spec Ops’s storyline operates under the banner of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” a fascinating concept that’s been privy to some of the best storytelling in fictional media. However, the problem with Spec Ops’s version is that it’s more interested in manipulating gamers than actually weaving a good tale - almost every “ambivalent” scenario Walker and his buddies come across is deliberately obscured for the sake of a gotcha moment (a tactic that feels less like organic development and more like shock value). Real ethical murkiness seeps from having a decent understanding of the facts and consequently making a Scylla & Charybdis decision: that is knowing things could go north or south, but ultimately concluding that the outcome of one justifies its selection over the other.
Sadly, only once does the game do anything akin to this, with the rest of the story otherwise consisting of Walker being tricked into committing acts of Genevic violence, and what makes this particularly annoying is that you’re almost always responding out of self-defense. The Damned 33rd constantly ignore Walker’s words and shoot on-sight, in turn forcing players to engage in extended firefights that give way to those aforestated war crimes, and as a result, I never once felt guilt-tripped by Walker’s deeds because I knew things would’ve played out differently had the issues been forthright over this force-feeding method. Yes, in wartime, you’re never acquainted with all the facts, but as I more than illustrated above, the game wasn’t exactly heavy on veritable recreations from the get-go.
Interestingly, the infamous White Phosphorus scene exhibits this flounder best, with Walker gulled (read - coaxed) into using the eponymous incendiary against an opposing unit, unaware that there are civilians in the mix. Despite the intentions of the writers, it just didn’t work for me because there was never any indication that citizens were moved to this area, nor a single reason why this particular weapon had to be employed when previous scenarios had you gunning down similar numbers of troops amass no problem. Ironically, what I found far more haunting (and what I wish had been focused on instead) were the sundry of burning troops you meander past following the ordeal: hearing their screams and singeing, it genuinely dawned on me just how sickening my actions were, something I can’t say occurred with the so-called “plot twist”.
Another notorious part involves Walker being deceived (noticing a trend here?) into helping a CIA crony sabotage the Dubai water supply; a scene that only prevails because the game deliberately turns Walker into a moron (+++) in addition to conveniently killing off every exposition-y character who would’ve told him the truth about the agent (whose motivations, on their own merits, are full of horsefeathers++++). Contrived is the perfect word to describe this part because that’s the kind of framing the game unfortunately utilizes in order to render its many tragedies a success. Compare this to Assassin’s Creed I or Witcher 2 where Geralt and Altair were put into decently-detailed scenarios in which you were able to make a concerted decision: a decision that may have caused more damage than good, but never once seemed coerced.
Still, in spite of my disagreements, I actually would’ve commended Spec Os had it not indulged in that aforementioned secondary quandary of emotionally-blackmailing players as though they did something wrong. It does this through its death screens (no doubt a parody of the CoD equivalent) which, if you’re lucky, you won’t be seeing too many of courtesy of how infuriatingly condescending they can get. You get such pretentious polemics as: “This is all your Fault,” “Do you feel like a Hero?,” and an additional one about the parching of Dubai’s citizens that I didn’t jot down verbatim (amongst others+++++), all of which struck me as wholly unnecessary because it’s not like the game provided a pacifist route or legitimate choices for players to willfully exert agency on.
Now of course, being a beloved game, I’ve heard counterarguments to some of these qualms, namely that Spec Ops is a deliberate response to Call of Duty’s cartoonish approach to war, a claim that makes no sense to anyone who's actually played those games. Like seriously, from Black Ops II on-back (i.e., the titles that were out at the time of Spec Ops’s release), can anyone actually think of a moment where actions against civilian targets weren’t treated seriously? The chemical gas attacks in MW3, the death of Noriega’s sister in BOII, the nuclear explosion in MW1, Castro’s assassination attempt in BO1, etc…all led to serious consequences for the protagonist(s). Even No Russian (a mission which, by the way, provided far more player agency than any chapter in Spec Ops ever did) literally resulted in the advent of World War III, so I genuinely don’t know what commentary the devs were going for if this was actually their intention.
Another big rebuttal I’ve heard is that Spec Ops was meant to be critical of gamers who decide to play war titles without thinking about what they’re doing, a facet that, if true, would genuinely trigger me. Nothing pisses me off more than when a video game’s grand or ulterior message is to not play it -- the purpose of any published title, irrespective of its tangents, should always be to be experienced. Telling players that they were dumb to embark on a journey advertised to them would be deceptive, sly, and downright egotistical on the part of the writers.
Perusing the Wikipedia article will inform you that the writers wanted to showcase a realistic decline in the mental state of soldiers at war, something that is generally overlooked in conventional military shooters. Now, I’ve never served in the armed forces (and I suspect neither have Williams and Richard Pearsey); however, I’ve read enough books and spoken to enough veterans to feel confident in saying that this psychological change is not as instantaneous as the hackneyed approach Yager Development took here, condensing a months-long process of deterioration and dehumanization into what feels like the span of a few days. Walker’s transformation, in particular, is preposterous because it entails him immediately developing a split personality, something that literally doesn’t happen overnight. To add salt to the wounds, the game rips-off Black Ops 1 by treating this as a plot twist (though unlike BO1, the dialogue here is overtly-obtuse to the point of not lending an organic layer to said revelation).
Listen, I know I’ve been rambling, but it’s only because I’m passionate about video game storytelling, and I feel Spec Ops could’ve done a better job executing its well-intentioned parameters. It generally tells a good tale about the fall of three men trying to do the right thing, and honestly succeeds in its depiction of PTSD (the spontaneous screaming/acts of violence, Walker’s nightmares): it’s just everything else was severely lacking in either tangibleness or believability. Even as an adaptation of Heart of Darkness it stumbles because you just don’t get a sense of Konrad’s (i.e. Kurtz’s) descent into madness due to the game shoving most of that backstory into optional collectibles (more on that later). There’s also a whole spiel I have about the “true ending” that I’ll detail in the notes section (++++++).
Like I said though, this is a story you will get invested in, and that’s honestly due less to the script and more to the stupendous voice work and chemistry of the main stars. Nolan North, of course, needs no introduction, his performance as Walker arguably standing at the top of an already-esteemed resume. The way he vocally depicts Walker’s crumbling mental state and increasing anger, in particular, deserves immense praise as a gold standard in voiceover work. His coworker, Omid Abtahi, does an equally superb job as thirdmate Lugo, often being handed the most fervently-charged dialogue behind North, and successfully orating it.
Christopher Reid takes the reins as Walker’s second-in-command Adams, and he’s admittedly the weakest of the trio, failing to astutely exude the multitudinous emotions his character undergoes. Still, his camaraderie goes a long way in the game (his conversations with Walker, in particular, being a consistent highlight).
The remaining NPC cast is admittedly hit-or-miss. Jake Busey, for example, is surprisingly good as the shock jock Radioman Delta Squad overhears for most of the game, but he’s unfortunately counterbalanced by Bruce Boxleitner’s Konrad, who not only lacks Brando’s pristine elocution, but dons a nasal impersonation of Kiefer Sutherland from Phone Booth (he also gave the man a bizarre accent for no apparent reason).
If you’ve heard anything negative about Spec Ops, it’s probably had to do with its shooting mechanics, though I honestly feel the lion’s share of these perceived issues would’ve been ignored with better soundwork: firearms lack impact, bullet blasts resound the same across every non-metallic surface, and you don’t hear enough sand crunching in spite of the abundance of grains. Had things been more visceral, particularly during gun battles, I genuinely think a lot of people would’ve flipped their opinion on the gameplay as it’s honestly fine, occupying your standard cover shooter system of pick-and-pop. There are a few enemy varieties (including juggernauts straight out of MW2), but the battle strategy remains the same, and I guarantee you any deaths you accumulate will derive primarily from running out into open areas.
The biggest supplement to the whole shebang is a Mass Effect-esque command squad wherein, at the click of a button, Lugo & Adams can be directed against a specific target. The AI for the duo is actually quite good, with the two of them not only following orders well, but actually hitting/pursuing their targets to a tee. The only downside is the inability to give them specific directives in terms of what tactics to employ (i.e., whether to lob a grenade, provide suppressing fire, snipe, etc….), leaving their choice-of-attack up to either RNG or the occasional on-screen prompt. When they do go down, you’re able to revive them with a quick tap, though be forewarned this does leave you open to bullet fire.
On that note, Spec Ops is definitely more realistic than its contemporaries in terms of damage calculation as, even on the normal difficulty, Walker can only take a few hits before his screen goes red. And seeing as how you’ll rarely be up against minimal foes, you’ll definitely want to avoid darting into the open kamikaze-style lest you wish to die quickly.
But that’s at least understandable - what isn’t understandable are some of the bizarre gamepad calibrations: the semi-tank control scheme where you have to rotate Walker separately from the camera in order to dictate his direction; running being relegated to a singular button tap; and vaulting being keyed to same button as melee.
I talked about the intelligence collectibles earlier, and those are definitely more akin to the backpacks from Spider-Man than their Call of Duty counterpart in the sense that they’re recordings which divulge vital information on either something that occurred before the events of the game, or on present thoughts from Walker on something at hand. They’re excellently scribed and definitely provide integral lore in a way the main campaign never does, but the problem is you have to go out of your way to locate them. I don’t know who thought this’d be a good idea over placing them directly in the player’s path, and what’s worse is, if you want to view them later, you have to exit the game and select them from the title screen despite certain ones pertaining to the specific chapter they’re found in -- tl;dr, it made no sense.
Graphics are the one area Yager truly went all-out on as Spec Ops has aged incredibly well. Character models, in particular, boast extraordinary detail you’re not liable to finding in a lot of games these days, beginning with the fact that you can actually see streams of sweat on Walker’s face alongside the progressive-accumulation of caked dirt and dried blood. Character diaphragms enlarge in an arc motion when breathing, compared to the balloon-shaped expansion typical of most releases, and texturing, as a whole, is incredibly deep, adorning textiles and architectural materials equanimously. Though primarily in desert-strewn areas, you’ll often duke it out in exteriors reminiscent of the 33rd’s past history (makeshift gyms/army barracks) or interiors mimicked off of real-life locations from the iconic city (the Dubai Mall, Burj Khalifa, various resorts), both of which do a phenomenal job giving a lived-in feel to the world. The use of colors, even under the baked overlay of Spec Ops illumination, were especially fantastic, often giving rise to some of the most gorgeous vistas I’ve ever had the privilege to witness in gaming -- one room could literally be home to dashes of rainbow, another pure blues, and still another murkier lighting reminiscent of the climax of Apocalypse Now.
The desert is more than a backdrop, with grenades causing cloudbursts, breakable glass giving way to sandslides, and the occasional habūb slipping into battle during scripted moments. Part of me wishes these latter storms, in particular, were randomized over predetermined as such moments of granular chaos were absolutely thrilling: red-orange typhoons terrorizing everything in their path.
Still, the highlight of the game has to be its murals - painted canvases embellished upon numerous walls you run across in your 7+ hour journey. The artisans behind them did a phenomenal job satirizing the military-industrial complex, their works frequently contrasting idealistic propaganda with the ongoing carnage of Dubai. Some of my favorites included a burnt American Flag above a pile of dead soldiers, a hot girl vacation ad next to a guy shooting himself, religious divinity amidst massacred civilians, and a diamond adorned with pig blood amongst numerous others I recommend you seek out.
Other miscellaneous graphical bits I enjoyed were the heat waves that rose from discharged turret barrels, visibly seeing empty magazines fall to the ground while reloading, and those darkly gorgeous loading screen illustrations showcasing Walker in varying poses of melancholy.
In terms of visuals criticisms, I had a couple of minor ones ranging from clouds being stationary to Lugo’s hat lacking proper texture streaming, but my biggest ones concerned two aspects from the desert: one, the extensive brightness of sunlit areas - maybe it was because I just got done playing Resident Evil 2, but there were several places where I felt the lighting was overblown; and two, the inconsistency of footprints - not every sand surface yielded them, and even when they did, they often took the form of instantly-formed blobs rather than an organically crafted boot imprint.
Finally there’s the score by Elia Cmíral, and I was pretty disappointed with it. The biggest issue is Cmíral (and Yager in general) were clearly more interested in recreating those rock-based moments from Apocalypse Now than conceiving something standalone, and they apparently settled on doing so via adding such motifs to almost every single album piece. I’m not lying when I tell you guys that the same electric guitar and drum riffs occupy at least 75% of the OST, and if they didn’t, something harmonically-similar did to the point of being aurally-indifferent. There were also numerous times where the music was completely at odds with the thematic content on display, the worst instance of this being the finale with Walker finally meeting Konrad (seriously - go take a listen to it). I’m usually a fan of alternative rock, but unfortunately I can’t say its use in a serious war game was good pickings (oh, and to add salt to the wounds, your ears are privy to a horrifically screechy rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner via the title screen theme).
And that, in a nutshell, wraps-up all my problems with Spec Ops: The Line. As I said in the beginning, I respect what the writers were trying to do, and it would’ve been great if more video games had built on this formula over sticking with standard AAA templates(+++++++), but the game itself tragically has too many flaws to be worth a solid recommend.
I do believe everyone will play it at some point in their gaming life, and for those who have, I encourage commentary/debate because I acknowledge I could very well be ignorant to some major boon that was simply overlooked.
Then again, if a video game can inspire these kinds of discussions to begin with, maybe it already succeeded at its tasks.
NOTES
+To anyone even vaguely-interested in the process behind video game scriptwriting, I highly-recommend checking out that article irrespective of your views on Spec Ops.
++The Damned 33rd had fallen into civil war, so why not have one faction do the counterinsurgency tactics over throwing in the CIA? And rather than make Walker Delta, why not turn him into a Black Ops soldier? You’re already having him act like one anyway.
+++The CIA is explicitly depicted as being untrustworthy to the point of Walker’s teammates warning him otherwise.
++++The US Government already disavowed the Damned 33rd, so what exactly was the CIA trying to cover-up? Any war crimes committed by the unit would’ve been condemned the second they came to light.
+++++The slogan that really got under my skin was one that asked whether I even remembered the original reason for coming to Dubai. The answer is yes homie, you created a campaign no longer than your average CoD one: of course I remember what transpired two days ago.
++++++The writers reportedly claimed that Walker died in the helicopter crash and that the last act of the game is actually him in Limbo. Firstly, this doesn’t make much sense given that a lot of major events, including the deaths of his comrades and the Konrad Revelation, are disclosed post-crash, but second, why would you scribe a video game about maintaining convictions to the bitter end, only to take away that ending from gamers? What was even the point in having multiple choices if they were all “fake” by your own admission?
This is truly a case where Death of the Author should be applied in spades as I think leaving the conclusion up to the player is far more wise - you got three different finales representing the three most possible outcomes: one, Walker acquiescing to his guilt and killing himself; two, Walker acquiescing to his trauma and becoming self-brainwashed; or three, Walker ultimately opting to seek help and Dubai’s citizens privy to rescue by the US Military.
+++++++To be fair, the Modern Warfare reboot and (reportedly) BioShock Infinite did similar takes on American Exceptionalism, so perhaps some post-Spec Ops influence did happen.
-I’d say the one aspect of the graphics that is visibly outdated is surprisingly the choice of font. I don’t know how to describe it, but it genuinely looks like the kind of typeface you’d see on early-360 shooters.
-Spec Ops was delisted from Steam, and no one seems to have any idea as to why that happened.
-The sound mixing has Walker sounding louder than his brethren, which can get obnoxious during firefights when he’s screaming orders. That said, I did like how, if one person was out of your vicinity, their voice would be filtered through the radio (I believe ACIII did the same during the modern-day sections).
-Talk about a blast from the past, one of the NPCs here uses an iPod!
-The intro credits throw in your name as “special guest____” if you needed further proof that the writers were disapproving you as much as they were Walker.
2018
Based on a review originally published on Flickering Myth:
https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2019/03/video-game-review-claybook/
Product was received for free
Many of us who couldn’t afford to buy video games back in the day found escapism through other venues: there were those who played sports, those who read, and those who fantasized about being in a fictional world. And then there were those of us who had access to Play-Doh, using it and other forms of modeling clay for all kinds of imaginative hijinx.
Developed and published by Second Order, Claybook aims to bring back that old-school wonder for kids who had fun making crazy things from such mushy compounds. Question is, how well does it do it? The short answer is not the best due to an entirely different gameplan from the developers, though that doesn’t make it bad.
See, contrary to what it looks like, Claybook isn’t interested in occupying the sandbox (err claybox?) genre, its contents more akin to a Monkey Ball-esque platformer wherein players are tasked with guiding shapes through various courses for the sake of an extraneous objective. I won’t lie, I was a little disappointed by the choice (after all, it would’ve been cool to have a platformer built around manually designing items ala Green Lantern); however, in reviewing what Claybook is actually about, I can’t say its a bad concept, so much as it lacks proper execution. See, there’s no story to speak of, so it really needed solid gameplay to succeed, and that just wasn’t the case here. You move around with the joystick and have several options: drill forward or underneath, transfer control over to an adjacent piece, and rewind time with the intent of creating a doppelganger to help subvert obstacles.
It’s relatively barebones compared to the many power-ups of say the Mario games, and unfortunately, even the “unique” endgoals aren’t exactly fleshed out by the devs. Most levels entail you having to fill up pits with liquid, hit random checkpoints, absorb certain materials, or leave behind shadow clones in specially-marked areas; and while some of these can make for some cool challenges, the tasks do eventually get repetitive. There was also this annoying hitch that happened frequently wherein a ball-shaped figure I was operating would go into an arc rotation whenever I tried to dig forward through a wall, the resistance propping up as though I was on an invisible ramp; however, I am willing to accept possible user error for that mishap.
Claybook’s main saving grace is its art style and physics engine. No matter their design intent, the team at Second Order was evidently fascinated by the texture, look, and feel of Play-Doh, and so they’ve managed to develop a beautiful-looking material that somehow feels as soft, malleable, and playful as its real-life counterpart. But it’s not just the movement: one of the game’s biggest accomplishments is how colors daub over each other whenever you move through areas with different hues, making the endeavor feel realistic in its composition and mobility.
Sadly, those compliments don’t extend to the kid in the background. To elucidate, Second Order made the strange decision to add this child character who you’re technically playing as- he has a controller with a joystick that moves when you move yours (although he doesn’t press any buttons when you do). I say it’s strange because it was truly unnecessary: the kid has no impact on the title and the lack of a narrative means there’s no meta-commentary here the way The LEGO Movies had with their live action portions.
Regardless, I would’ve had no problem with him existing were it not for the fact that he seems to be made of the same doughy-material that the putty board is, this facet ultimately rendering him as very uncanny-looking. Combine this with those scarily large eyes, and you can be sure I worked hard to avoid him throughout my gametime.
He doesn’t speak either due to Claybook's lack of voice acting, leaving the audio design to fall into two categories: sound effects and music. The SFX was minimal given the conservative gameplay, but what is there is appropriate enough. Your churning has a nice squish to it, and classic platforming noises hit your ears a-dozen whenever you do something progressive like completing a mini-objective or beating an entire level. Second Order could have added some naturalism to the soundscape, like a waterfall tone whenever you cause a leak in a liquid cylinder, but that definitely would’ve been at odds with the graphics.
Music, on the other hand, is severely lacking. I heard the same three or so tunes on repeat, no matter what world I was on; a big disappointment from whoever the composer was.
Having reviewed Claybook for the Nintendo Switch, there is an important caveat worth mentioning, and that is that the game is surprisingly better played when handheld than docked, at least for me. My theory is this has to do with it not having to render as big a space as possible while portable, though I understand the experience could’ve been subjective.
It took me about 3-4 hours to complete all of Claybook’s stars/worlds, and at $15.00 MSRP, that falls significantly under my $1.00: 30 minute gameplay ratio. That being said, Claybook offers a mode where you can create your own courses, giving it a bit of Mario Maker or Minecraft’s replayability. Because of this, you also have the option to play other users’ levels, so that can definitely bump up your time with it depending on each person’s individual interest in doing so.
As such, make the decision to purchase Claybook on your own. It’s a platformer that doesn’t quite live up to its potential; however, it’s also gorgeous and feels like you’re using real plasticine. Quid pro quo Clarice.
Pros:
+Magnificent physics
+Wonderful doughy tactility
+Bright colors
Cons:
-Not much platforming variety
-Creepy kid in the back
-Little music
https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2019/03/video-game-review-claybook/
Product was received for free
Many of us who couldn’t afford to buy video games back in the day found escapism through other venues: there were those who played sports, those who read, and those who fantasized about being in a fictional world. And then there were those of us who had access to Play-Doh, using it and other forms of modeling clay for all kinds of imaginative hijinx.
Developed and published by Second Order, Claybook aims to bring back that old-school wonder for kids who had fun making crazy things from such mushy compounds. Question is, how well does it do it? The short answer is not the best due to an entirely different gameplan from the developers, though that doesn’t make it bad.
See, contrary to what it looks like, Claybook isn’t interested in occupying the sandbox (err claybox?) genre, its contents more akin to a Monkey Ball-esque platformer wherein players are tasked with guiding shapes through various courses for the sake of an extraneous objective. I won’t lie, I was a little disappointed by the choice (after all, it would’ve been cool to have a platformer built around manually designing items ala Green Lantern); however, in reviewing what Claybook is actually about, I can’t say its a bad concept, so much as it lacks proper execution. See, there’s no story to speak of, so it really needed solid gameplay to succeed, and that just wasn’t the case here. You move around with the joystick and have several options: drill forward or underneath, transfer control over to an adjacent piece, and rewind time with the intent of creating a doppelganger to help subvert obstacles.
It’s relatively barebones compared to the many power-ups of say the Mario games, and unfortunately, even the “unique” endgoals aren’t exactly fleshed out by the devs. Most levels entail you having to fill up pits with liquid, hit random checkpoints, absorb certain materials, or leave behind shadow clones in specially-marked areas; and while some of these can make for some cool challenges, the tasks do eventually get repetitive. There was also this annoying hitch that happened frequently wherein a ball-shaped figure I was operating would go into an arc rotation whenever I tried to dig forward through a wall, the resistance propping up as though I was on an invisible ramp; however, I am willing to accept possible user error for that mishap.
Claybook’s main saving grace is its art style and physics engine. No matter their design intent, the team at Second Order was evidently fascinated by the texture, look, and feel of Play-Doh, and so they’ve managed to develop a beautiful-looking material that somehow feels as soft, malleable, and playful as its real-life counterpart. But it’s not just the movement: one of the game’s biggest accomplishments is how colors daub over each other whenever you move through areas with different hues, making the endeavor feel realistic in its composition and mobility.
Sadly, those compliments don’t extend to the kid in the background. To elucidate, Second Order made the strange decision to add this child character who you’re technically playing as- he has a controller with a joystick that moves when you move yours (although he doesn’t press any buttons when you do). I say it’s strange because it was truly unnecessary: the kid has no impact on the title and the lack of a narrative means there’s no meta-commentary here the way The LEGO Movies had with their live action portions.
Regardless, I would’ve had no problem with him existing were it not for the fact that he seems to be made of the same doughy-material that the putty board is, this facet ultimately rendering him as very uncanny-looking. Combine this with those scarily large eyes, and you can be sure I worked hard to avoid him throughout my gametime.
He doesn’t speak either due to Claybook's lack of voice acting, leaving the audio design to fall into two categories: sound effects and music. The SFX was minimal given the conservative gameplay, but what is there is appropriate enough. Your churning has a nice squish to it, and classic platforming noises hit your ears a-dozen whenever you do something progressive like completing a mini-objective or beating an entire level. Second Order could have added some naturalism to the soundscape, like a waterfall tone whenever you cause a leak in a liquid cylinder, but that definitely would’ve been at odds with the graphics.
Music, on the other hand, is severely lacking. I heard the same three or so tunes on repeat, no matter what world I was on; a big disappointment from whoever the composer was.
Having reviewed Claybook for the Nintendo Switch, there is an important caveat worth mentioning, and that is that the game is surprisingly better played when handheld than docked, at least for me. My theory is this has to do with it not having to render as big a space as possible while portable, though I understand the experience could’ve been subjective.
It took me about 3-4 hours to complete all of Claybook’s stars/worlds, and at $15.00 MSRP, that falls significantly under my $1.00: 30 minute gameplay ratio. That being said, Claybook offers a mode where you can create your own courses, giving it a bit of Mario Maker or Minecraft’s replayability. Because of this, you also have the option to play other users’ levels, so that can definitely bump up your time with it depending on each person’s individual interest in doing so.
As such, make the decision to purchase Claybook on your own. It’s a platformer that doesn’t quite live up to its potential; however, it’s also gorgeous and feels like you’re using real plasticine. Quid pro quo Clarice.
Pros:
+Magnificent physics
+Wonderful doughy tactility
+Bright colors
Cons:
-Not much platforming variety
-Creepy kid in the back
-Little music
2016
Have you guys ever seen a video game cover and immediately had a song pop in your head? Experienced a synesthesia-type effect wherein a pure image sprouted some instant cranial medley? Well when I first saw the cover for ABZÛ, such a phenomena happened, the lucky track in this case being the first few notes from Amiss Abyss’s melody. For those unaware, it’s a tune that plays during certain aquatic levels of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, a motif that more than befit ABZÛ’s premise of underwater extravaganza….or so I thought. Unfortunately, those preliminary aural vibes didn’t represent the game’s actual composition, that figure being a gorgeous door opening simulator.
I wish I was kidding, but that’s sadly the truth. ABZÛ gained fame early-on as a spiritual successor to Journey, and while I haven’t played that title yet as of the writing of this review, I’m under the impression its appeal rested on seamless exploration of a strange yet beautiful land. ABZÛ, to its credit, occupies a similar vein for about the first third of its runtime, but soon after forsakes that in favor of a repetitive gameplay loop involving your unnamed diver character (Abzû?) opening up gate after gate after gate.
If that weren’t bland enough, such monotony is “broken up” with two other repetitive beats: activating beacons and riding riptides, and while they’re all swaddled-up in a mesmerizing package, the reality is it doesn’t make for an enjoyable game. Visuals can only go so far, and even by walking sim standards, ABZÛ fails to live up to the myriad of titles that have blown up the genre beyond basic ambling: Firewatch gave us a thriller angle, Gone Home nostalgic paraphernalia, and even Layers of Fear had tragic undertones. ABZÛ, au contraire, is nothing but fish, machinery, and water wrapped around a vague tale reportedly inspired by Sumerian Mythology of which you’ll learn very little courtesy of the lack of dialogue. And yes, I get that Journey did the same schtick; however, a quick Wikipedia glance tells me Journey wasn’t interested in conveying some ancient culture’s folklore (that type of storytelling being intrinsically tied to words as much as imagery).
As such, I genuinely didn’t understand what ABZÛ was trying to say about its foreign heritage. Sure, I could glean the general story, but in terms of a deeper ancestral lineage or fable-esque moral, there wasn’t anything tangible to grasp minus basic environmentalism -- a shame considering how little Sumerian-inspired games there are out on the market.
I don’t mean to be too harsh as, graphically-speaking, ABZÛ is most-definitely a near-masterpiece. Like I said in the second paragraph, this is a strikingly-beautiful title ripe with eye candy galore for demersal enthusiasts out there. Because you’re underwater for 95% of the game, you don’t actually don’t get much in the way of liquid physics; however, where ABZÛ excels is in its assortment of marine fauna. It would’ve been very easy to do what the vast majority of games with thallasic settings implement- simply program an assortment of multicolored fish to paddle about as you traverse their habitats.
However, Giant Squid clearly had other plans in mind. You see, every single specimen you encounter in ABZÛ’s world is specially-chiseled: the way they look, the way they move, the way they turn. I went in expecting recycled animations ad nauseam and instead found myself staring in awe at the way different species twiddled their tails or swam upwards, and when we’re talking about HUNDREDS of wavy critters (including extinct ones!), that is a phenomenal achievement. I have to believe someone on Giant Squid’s team was an aspiring biologist in light of the heavy taxonomy on display here, from anglerfish to blue whales to archelon to of course Jaws himself.
Besides the animals, you’ll occasionally come across sunken temples adorned with painted tiles reminiscent of illuminated manuscript covers. They’ve been assembled into paintings, presumably representative of major tales from the Sumerian people, and while I would’ve liked to have seen more of them, what you have here is vivid enough. Other GFX additions I enjoyed were the spreading of oceanic dust whenever you whooshed over it, the parting of flora as you drifted through patches, and Abzu’s eyes turning to match your camera position.
In terms of hitches, my only real complaints would be, as mentioned earlier, the lack of genuine liquid physics for Abzu’s movements when gliding/emerging/submerging (i.e., limited splashing/stroking leaving you nothing but a generic stream), as well as the design for Abzu’s face. I don’t quite know why, but there was something inherently scary about her midnight countenance and slanted eyes -- it reminded me a lot of The Prince of Egypt, which, as amazing a film as it was, had similarly-offputting geometry for its ocular organs.
Sound-wise, ABZÛ is a very confused game. Keeping my ears open throughout, I genuinely got a sense the engineers didn’t know whether they wanted their SFX to have an underwater filter on them or not, this ambivalence leading to a lot of inconsistency. For example, the various turbines and sprawling hatches resound with hydroacoustic fervor; however, the closing of entryways, flow of subaqueous streams, and hum of electronic machinery reverberate as though you were on land. Other phenomena, like withdrawing anemones, animal noises, and waterfalls, are either mute or significantly diminished in sonoric quality. Don’t get me wrong, ABZÛ’s sound design isn’t distracting by any means (all of the above resonating well despite their flaws); however, I can’t say you’ll be as immersed as you should have been.
Thankfully, the game more than makes-up for this with its OST, handled by Journeyman Austin Wintory. Wintory’s always been a Jack-of-all-Trades/Master-of-All type composer, and here he lets that dexterity truly shine via tossing-in a bunch of different beats -- you’ll hear his signature vocals, James Horner-esque orchestral overtures, and even harp-based harmonics throughout your odyssey, and what’s amazing is how well it all bends to the players’ playstyle. Reading the Wikipedia entry, I saw this was deliberately designed by Wintory due to the semi-freeroam nature of the game, and, having beaten it, I can gladly say he has absolutely nailed these cues to a tee: ABZÛ is a title that knows when to speed-up, slow-down, amplify, or downright shut-up as you float around its seascapes. It’s a grand score, my sole quandary being this uppity, pluck-based tune that sometimes played during excursions, its chords sounding out-of-place ala a Super Mario Galaxy track.
If the gameplay had been even half as good as its music ABZÛ would be an instant recommendation, yet you’ll find that isn’t the case, and what’s sad is it didn’t have to be this way: ABZÛ could’ve easily settled for being a swimming simulator within a vast ocean of spectacle; wherein the goal was to simply bathe in those Neptunian dreams we’ve witnessed in countless enterprises ala Avatar, Aquaman, or The Lost Empire. Unfortunately, not only do none of the game’s vistas stay with you, you’re also privy to some genuinely boring gameplay entailing the unlocking of mammothian gateways in order to access hidden shrines (the ultimate goal being to activate all of these shrines). Occasionally, the devs try and mix things up via tossing the diver down a roaring rapid, but, as I hinted at before, even this is mediocre in light of it essentially being on rails(+).
In addition, ABZÛ lacks basic features that would’ve gone a long way towards bestowing it extra value, including a toggle “run” function, as well as photo mode (I seriously don’t understand how that went missing during the development phase given the myriad of unique visual assets about you).
In light of all this, I ultimately was not a fan of the end product. Keep in mind, though, thousands of people out there genuinely enjoyed their time with ABZÛ, and you could very well be one of them -- just don’t forget the very real flaws that cloud this diamond’s shine.
NOTES
+You can technically move to hit these schools of flashing fish, but you’re not in any danger if you don’t touch the controls (plus I’m convinced they only put in this facet for achievements/trophies).
-There are two recurring leitmotifs in the official soundtrack I wish to highlight: first, a somber horn melody, and second, a choir-based harmony that brings to mind similar ones heard in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and The Fate of Atlantis DLC from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (I have to wonder if it’s a just thing composers have consciously-decided to incorporate into seafaring compositions).
-You’ll encounter some fish and structures with glowing eyes/facades, and I have to praise Giant Squid for their quality bioluminescent lighting.
-There are collectables you can acquire, but I don’t see anyone being motivated enough to do so considering the lack of good rewards.
I wish I was kidding, but that’s sadly the truth. ABZÛ gained fame early-on as a spiritual successor to Journey, and while I haven’t played that title yet as of the writing of this review, I’m under the impression its appeal rested on seamless exploration of a strange yet beautiful land. ABZÛ, to its credit, occupies a similar vein for about the first third of its runtime, but soon after forsakes that in favor of a repetitive gameplay loop involving your unnamed diver character (Abzû?) opening up gate after gate after gate.
If that weren’t bland enough, such monotony is “broken up” with two other repetitive beats: activating beacons and riding riptides, and while they’re all swaddled-up in a mesmerizing package, the reality is it doesn’t make for an enjoyable game. Visuals can only go so far, and even by walking sim standards, ABZÛ fails to live up to the myriad of titles that have blown up the genre beyond basic ambling: Firewatch gave us a thriller angle, Gone Home nostalgic paraphernalia, and even Layers of Fear had tragic undertones. ABZÛ, au contraire, is nothing but fish, machinery, and water wrapped around a vague tale reportedly inspired by Sumerian Mythology of which you’ll learn very little courtesy of the lack of dialogue. And yes, I get that Journey did the same schtick; however, a quick Wikipedia glance tells me Journey wasn’t interested in conveying some ancient culture’s folklore (that type of storytelling being intrinsically tied to words as much as imagery).
As such, I genuinely didn’t understand what ABZÛ was trying to say about its foreign heritage. Sure, I could glean the general story, but in terms of a deeper ancestral lineage or fable-esque moral, there wasn’t anything tangible to grasp minus basic environmentalism -- a shame considering how little Sumerian-inspired games there are out on the market.
I don’t mean to be too harsh as, graphically-speaking, ABZÛ is most-definitely a near-masterpiece. Like I said in the second paragraph, this is a strikingly-beautiful title ripe with eye candy galore for demersal enthusiasts out there. Because you’re underwater for 95% of the game, you don’t actually don’t get much in the way of liquid physics; however, where ABZÛ excels is in its assortment of marine fauna. It would’ve been very easy to do what the vast majority of games with thallasic settings implement- simply program an assortment of multicolored fish to paddle about as you traverse their habitats.
However, Giant Squid clearly had other plans in mind. You see, every single specimen you encounter in ABZÛ’s world is specially-chiseled: the way they look, the way they move, the way they turn. I went in expecting recycled animations ad nauseam and instead found myself staring in awe at the way different species twiddled their tails or swam upwards, and when we’re talking about HUNDREDS of wavy critters (including extinct ones!), that is a phenomenal achievement. I have to believe someone on Giant Squid’s team was an aspiring biologist in light of the heavy taxonomy on display here, from anglerfish to blue whales to archelon to of course Jaws himself.
Besides the animals, you’ll occasionally come across sunken temples adorned with painted tiles reminiscent of illuminated manuscript covers. They’ve been assembled into paintings, presumably representative of major tales from the Sumerian people, and while I would’ve liked to have seen more of them, what you have here is vivid enough. Other GFX additions I enjoyed were the spreading of oceanic dust whenever you whooshed over it, the parting of flora as you drifted through patches, and Abzu’s eyes turning to match your camera position.
In terms of hitches, my only real complaints would be, as mentioned earlier, the lack of genuine liquid physics for Abzu’s movements when gliding/emerging/submerging (i.e., limited splashing/stroking leaving you nothing but a generic stream), as well as the design for Abzu’s face. I don’t quite know why, but there was something inherently scary about her midnight countenance and slanted eyes -- it reminded me a lot of The Prince of Egypt, which, as amazing a film as it was, had similarly-offputting geometry for its ocular organs.
Sound-wise, ABZÛ is a very confused game. Keeping my ears open throughout, I genuinely got a sense the engineers didn’t know whether they wanted their SFX to have an underwater filter on them or not, this ambivalence leading to a lot of inconsistency. For example, the various turbines and sprawling hatches resound with hydroacoustic fervor; however, the closing of entryways, flow of subaqueous streams, and hum of electronic machinery reverberate as though you were on land. Other phenomena, like withdrawing anemones, animal noises, and waterfalls, are either mute or significantly diminished in sonoric quality. Don’t get me wrong, ABZÛ’s sound design isn’t distracting by any means (all of the above resonating well despite their flaws); however, I can’t say you’ll be as immersed as you should have been.
Thankfully, the game more than makes-up for this with its OST, handled by Journeyman Austin Wintory. Wintory’s always been a Jack-of-all-Trades/Master-of-All type composer, and here he lets that dexterity truly shine via tossing-in a bunch of different beats -- you’ll hear his signature vocals, James Horner-esque orchestral overtures, and even harp-based harmonics throughout your odyssey, and what’s amazing is how well it all bends to the players’ playstyle. Reading the Wikipedia entry, I saw this was deliberately designed by Wintory due to the semi-freeroam nature of the game, and, having beaten it, I can gladly say he has absolutely nailed these cues to a tee: ABZÛ is a title that knows when to speed-up, slow-down, amplify, or downright shut-up as you float around its seascapes. It’s a grand score, my sole quandary being this uppity, pluck-based tune that sometimes played during excursions, its chords sounding out-of-place ala a Super Mario Galaxy track.
If the gameplay had been even half as good as its music ABZÛ would be an instant recommendation, yet you’ll find that isn’t the case, and what’s sad is it didn’t have to be this way: ABZÛ could’ve easily settled for being a swimming simulator within a vast ocean of spectacle; wherein the goal was to simply bathe in those Neptunian dreams we’ve witnessed in countless enterprises ala Avatar, Aquaman, or The Lost Empire. Unfortunately, not only do none of the game’s vistas stay with you, you’re also privy to some genuinely boring gameplay entailing the unlocking of mammothian gateways in order to access hidden shrines (the ultimate goal being to activate all of these shrines). Occasionally, the devs try and mix things up via tossing the diver down a roaring rapid, but, as I hinted at before, even this is mediocre in light of it essentially being on rails(+).
In addition, ABZÛ lacks basic features that would’ve gone a long way towards bestowing it extra value, including a toggle “run” function, as well as photo mode (I seriously don’t understand how that went missing during the development phase given the myriad of unique visual assets about you).
In light of all this, I ultimately was not a fan of the end product. Keep in mind, though, thousands of people out there genuinely enjoyed their time with ABZÛ, and you could very well be one of them -- just don’t forget the very real flaws that cloud this diamond’s shine.
NOTES
+You can technically move to hit these schools of flashing fish, but you’re not in any danger if you don’t touch the controls (plus I’m convinced they only put in this facet for achievements/trophies).
-There are two recurring leitmotifs in the official soundtrack I wish to highlight: first, a somber horn melody, and second, a choir-based harmony that brings to mind similar ones heard in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and The Fate of Atlantis DLC from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (I have to wonder if it’s a just thing composers have consciously-decided to incorporate into seafaring compositions).
-You’ll encounter some fish and structures with glowing eyes/facades, and I have to praise Giant Squid for their quality bioluminescent lighting.
-There are collectables you can acquire, but I don’t see anyone being motivated enough to do so considering the lack of good rewards.
2010
I'm not going to go too in-depth since Darksiders is a very well known/reviewed game, but what I will say is this is essentially a God of War adaptation of Judeo-Christian mythologies, albeit far more respectful than those games (the pre-reboot ones anyway). You play as the embodiment of War seeking to restore his honor after he prematurely arrived on Earth before the Seventh Seal of Hell was broken.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story. It incorporates a lot of lore from the Abrahamic faiths, but dons its own take on them, keeping it all fresh, exciting, and epic. While characters are essentially archetypal, there's usually an adjacent layer to them that gives them a subtly interesting quality. War, for example, has a dry humor that comes out in many scenes, Azrael a sense of shame that gives him an honor quality, Uriel a sense of justice that makes her rise above her duties, etc...
Visually, Darksiders is definitely reminiscent of the Xbox 360 era, but that's far from a bad thing. You do have polygon modelling that is still blocky at times, but the color grading is top notch, really conveying a post-apocalyptic atmosphere to the whole world. Individual locales stand out thanks to this art style, which is adaptable to the different demands of the various ecosystems (amphibious vs desert vs lava caverns vs flora paradise). Cutscenes have surprisingly aged very well and contribute to that aforestated epic scope.
That being said, with the vanilla version I did have an inconsistent framerate that I was only able to alleviate via turning down the camera motion (didn't fix the problem, but helped make it tolerable). Unfortunately, the battle against the sandworms triggered a massive FPS drop when I pulled out the revolver, and Darksiders also crashed once on me courtesy of trying to tab out of the app to adjust the volume. But those were the only technical issues I experienced- game ran smooth otherwise, including the transition to and from cinematic cutscenes and in-game gameplay (looks consistent).
Gameplay was honestly mixed for me. Hack-and-slash button mashing is always fun, but the combo system was weak courtesy of the button combinations being awkward (having to hold a bumper down + Y/X button + direct with the joystick). Half the time my new attacks wouldn't register, and overall attacks that weren't mapped to a single button didn't flow well as part of a combo. Magic abilities could've also been better incorporated rather than making them two separate buttons that produce independent results not tied to War's attacks (the arrow wall around you for example, igniting enemies on fire).
Exploration is another mixed bag. Darksiders opts for the Metroidvania formula of returning to previous areas with new gear, but the problem is the map isn't designed well enough to find those secrets. You can't create markers, you can't even move from left-to-right between multiple areas (the "open world" is blockaded through doors that literally block visual access on the map unless you enter the place behind said door), and while you can tell if you've been to an area or not courtesy of it being lightened up, you cannot tell if you missed something back there because most of the environs don't provide a map showing all these places or keep a collectable icon visible after discovery. Darksiders also suffers from the Skyward Sword problem of most new gear being largely useless after completing the area you were meant to use it in, making me wonder why so much programming effort went into crafting tools like the portal gun or Mask of Darkness.
For all my whining though, the narrative will keep you hooked. The fallen hero is an overused storyline for a reason- it works, and hearkens back to ancient myths that Darksiders clearly draws from. The voice acting is terrific, featuring top actors like Liam O'Brien, Mark Hamill, Troy Baker, Keith Szarabajka, and Phil LaMarr, who evoke deity/supernatural vibes through their voice registry. That being said, one slight criticism here is that too many voices are on the deep end of the spectrum, meaning some character's lack distinction and blend together ala the Akatsuki in the Japanese version of Naruto.
Sound design is good, but could've been more extravagant. Enemies all die/sound the same, weapon hits are synced to material being struck over individuals (i.e. all flesh sounds the same, all stone sounds the same, all metal sounds the same). What you hear is solid, but when you're unleashing the same attacks multiple times you'll notice the repetitious din quickly. The OST does a solid job blending religious sounds with your typical video game motifs of good/bad guys, even though I did feel the latter overtook the game one too many times. I also didn't think any of the bosses had distinct themes minus the Bat in the beginning.
On that note, boss fights are pretty disappointing, particularly the final one that was being built up to. They're all tied to a repetitive gameplay loop that you'll have to repeat whilst avoiding letting your health drop low. In fact, that even extends to minibosses/tough enemies, where you often have to repeat the same tactic of attack, dodge enemy heavy swing, then attack again ad nauseam.
Part of me does wonder if the devs didn't have the budget to consistently fulfill their vision because the first area with the Bat is long, well-paced, and full of a surprising number of puzzle elements that are slowly dissipated as you go to other areas. I'm not saying it's abandoned completely as there still are a lot of puzzles to solve, but when you play the game you'll notice the simplification. The last act, in particular, is a giant fetch quest that drags and doesn't feature anything unique, despite you having all of your tools at your disposal by that point.
Overall though, I had a lot of fun with Darksiders. While I will not be 100 percenting it courtesy of the poor maps, it helps a lot that the core story (for the remastered version since vanilla isn't sold anymore) offers almost as many hours of gameplay as the $20.00 price tag.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story. It incorporates a lot of lore from the Abrahamic faiths, but dons its own take on them, keeping it all fresh, exciting, and epic. While characters are essentially archetypal, there's usually an adjacent layer to them that gives them a subtly interesting quality. War, for example, has a dry humor that comes out in many scenes, Azrael a sense of shame that gives him an honor quality, Uriel a sense of justice that makes her rise above her duties, etc...
Visually, Darksiders is definitely reminiscent of the Xbox 360 era, but that's far from a bad thing. You do have polygon modelling that is still blocky at times, but the color grading is top notch, really conveying a post-apocalyptic atmosphere to the whole world. Individual locales stand out thanks to this art style, which is adaptable to the different demands of the various ecosystems (amphibious vs desert vs lava caverns vs flora paradise). Cutscenes have surprisingly aged very well and contribute to that aforestated epic scope.
That being said, with the vanilla version I did have an inconsistent framerate that I was only able to alleviate via turning down the camera motion (didn't fix the problem, but helped make it tolerable). Unfortunately, the battle against the sandworms triggered a massive FPS drop when I pulled out the revolver, and Darksiders also crashed once on me courtesy of trying to tab out of the app to adjust the volume. But those were the only technical issues I experienced- game ran smooth otherwise, including the transition to and from cinematic cutscenes and in-game gameplay (looks consistent).
Gameplay was honestly mixed for me. Hack-and-slash button mashing is always fun, but the combo system was weak courtesy of the button combinations being awkward (having to hold a bumper down + Y/X button + direct with the joystick). Half the time my new attacks wouldn't register, and overall attacks that weren't mapped to a single button didn't flow well as part of a combo. Magic abilities could've also been better incorporated rather than making them two separate buttons that produce independent results not tied to War's attacks (the arrow wall around you for example, igniting enemies on fire).
Exploration is another mixed bag. Darksiders opts for the Metroidvania formula of returning to previous areas with new gear, but the problem is the map isn't designed well enough to find those secrets. You can't create markers, you can't even move from left-to-right between multiple areas (the "open world" is blockaded through doors that literally block visual access on the map unless you enter the place behind said door), and while you can tell if you've been to an area or not courtesy of it being lightened up, you cannot tell if you missed something back there because most of the environs don't provide a map showing all these places or keep a collectable icon visible after discovery. Darksiders also suffers from the Skyward Sword problem of most new gear being largely useless after completing the area you were meant to use it in, making me wonder why so much programming effort went into crafting tools like the portal gun or Mask of Darkness.
For all my whining though, the narrative will keep you hooked. The fallen hero is an overused storyline for a reason- it works, and hearkens back to ancient myths that Darksiders clearly draws from. The voice acting is terrific, featuring top actors like Liam O'Brien, Mark Hamill, Troy Baker, Keith Szarabajka, and Phil LaMarr, who evoke deity/supernatural vibes through their voice registry. That being said, one slight criticism here is that too many voices are on the deep end of the spectrum, meaning some character's lack distinction and blend together ala the Akatsuki in the Japanese version of Naruto.
Sound design is good, but could've been more extravagant. Enemies all die/sound the same, weapon hits are synced to material being struck over individuals (i.e. all flesh sounds the same, all stone sounds the same, all metal sounds the same). What you hear is solid, but when you're unleashing the same attacks multiple times you'll notice the repetitious din quickly. The OST does a solid job blending religious sounds with your typical video game motifs of good/bad guys, even though I did feel the latter overtook the game one too many times. I also didn't think any of the bosses had distinct themes minus the Bat in the beginning.
On that note, boss fights are pretty disappointing, particularly the final one that was being built up to. They're all tied to a repetitive gameplay loop that you'll have to repeat whilst avoiding letting your health drop low. In fact, that even extends to minibosses/tough enemies, where you often have to repeat the same tactic of attack, dodge enemy heavy swing, then attack again ad nauseam.
Part of me does wonder if the devs didn't have the budget to consistently fulfill their vision because the first area with the Bat is long, well-paced, and full of a surprising number of puzzle elements that are slowly dissipated as you go to other areas. I'm not saying it's abandoned completely as there still are a lot of puzzles to solve, but when you play the game you'll notice the simplification. The last act, in particular, is a giant fetch quest that drags and doesn't feature anything unique, despite you having all of your tools at your disposal by that point.
Overall though, I had a lot of fun with Darksiders. While I will not be 100 percenting it courtesy of the poor maps, it helps a lot that the core story (for the remastered version since vanilla isn't sold anymore) offers almost as many hours of gameplay as the $20.00 price tag.
2020
This review contains spoilers
Note - this game contains a couple scenes that may be triggering to epileptics
Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Primarily game solution spoilers discussed; however, I understand those inherently involve story spoilers which I, admittedly, do touch on as well (though, in my defense, I tried to be vague in regards to those)
My love of cyberpunk has taken me from the labs of Majestic 12 to the real-life streets of Kabukichō, yet all affairs have their limits, and I unfortunately found mine in the form of VirtuaVerse. An indie PnC developed by Theta Division, VirtuaVerse seemingly boasts all the right ingredients for cyberpunk success: corpo-dystopias, grim aesthetics, and of course plenty of neon. However, by drowning its story under an avalanche of contrivances, VirtuaVerse squanders any potential it may have had, becoming the kind of forgettable schlock left behind every gaming generation.
PnCs largely come down to their causal puzzles, and on that front VirtuaVerse heavily stumbles. On the title screen, you’ll see the devs pathetically boast about making their game difficult, but hey, credit where credit’s due - they’ve actually accomplished this feat without falling into Moon Logic territory. I played through about half the game before calling it quits, and during that time encountered plenty of bizarre scenarios: scenarios that either derived their solution from talking to/examining every entity, or, worse, triggering some outlandish Rube Goldberg event that made no sense from a practical standpoint. The former tactic was at least defensible under the banner of encouraging interaction with the world at large (even if they failed to make distinguish special objects from the background), but it genuinely blew my mind whenever I encountered the latter given the presence of more realistic alternatives.
For example, one section has you trying to get the attention of this boatman blasting a radio, but rather than have you simply tap him with the broomstick in your inventory (an item that, mind you, literally serves no other purpose in the game), you’re instead supposed to melt an adjacent hut to fall into the water and knock him overboard. Another scene has you prevented from searching this garbage bin for spare parts courtesy of a crazed hobo, and while it would’ve been easy to just knock the guy away or blast him with a fire extinguisher (another item that ends-up serving no purpose throughout), the actual solution involves something so ridiculous, I’m going to postscript it so as not to ruin the flow of this sentence(+). Now you may retort well Red, maybe they didn’t want to turn your character into a pr!ck, to which I respond they either way did that (more on that later).
As with most generalizations, not everything is bad, and I did enjoy the few brainteasers I resolved on my own, but I’ve always judged PnCs by how much I felt impelled to look-up their answers, and the second I found myself consistently doing that with VirtuaVerse, I knew it was time to call it quits. Life is too short for games that wholly frustrate you, even those latent in the genre you love, and while I acknowledge I’m not the smartest gamer, I feel these criticisms will also hold water for PnC veterans.
If that weren’t enough, VirtuaVerse boasts some unergonomic controls that’ll constantly remind of the superior schemes from Daedalic and Wadjet: the inventory and journal are tied to keyboard buttons, you can’t exit out of accidentally-restarted conversations, and dialogue is automatically processed ala Costume Quest (and no, the toggle option in the settings menu doesn’t affect this). That said, VirtuaVerse does offer the ability to rebind your keys, meaning you can do what I did and simply truss them to the WASD pad for easy convenience. But still, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tie everything to the mouse.
Now, to their credit, the developers did put in place a story mode that reportedly cuts-down on the enigmas in favor of a straightforward “cinematic” experience, but even this abridged version won’t garner much enjoyment due to the lackluster narrative on display. The premise is you’re a loser hacker named Nathan trying to find his girlfriend in an unnamed corporate hellscape, and what you’ll quickly realize is just how much the writers failed at making any of these components engageable in the slightest.
To start with Nathan, I didn’t use the pejorative “loser” for no reason: he is truly pathetic, the kind of sycophantic yes man utterly incapable of standing up for himself whenever he comes across a barrier or rude person. Any coolness derived from his admittedly sweet attire (more on that later) is tossed out the window the second you see him strike up a tune with an adjacent NPC. And look, I get that not every protagonist needs to be a brooding bad@ss ala JC Denton, but given the man’s indulgence in blackhat shenanigans, you’d think he, of all people, would at least warrant a backbone. To add salt to the wounds, the writers took a page out of the Deponia schoolbook of awfulness via throwing-in situations in which you’re forced to ruin an NPC’s life just to progress forward (your hooded hero showing little remorse towards the aftereffects++).
The search for Nate’s girl Jay (and its subsequent developments), on the other hand, is hampered by some of that aforementioned lousy game design: every time he gets even a little close to finding his objective, a deliberately stupid roadblock props up, killing the few ounces of momentum generated in the moment. One of the worst versions of this, for instance, entails Nate actually seeing Jay run into an errant room, only for him to get cockblocked by an usher (even after you present him with the necessary ID!). And that really speaks to another qualm I had with a fair amount of the puzzles -- they bask in pointless elongation.
Have you guys ever seen a conundrum presented with a one-stop-shop-fits-all solution, only for the game to throw-in a couple extra steps the second you found said solution? Yeah, VirtuaVerse features that in spades, their presence indicating an ill-concealed attempt at extending the game’s runtime. One of the more annoying instances of this occurs after you successfully close the office door of a man whose dwelling you’re robbing: instead of letting the closure of said door be enough, the game forces you to find the keys to lock it in order to continue forward. And look, that may sound practical on the surface, but when you’re constantly peppered with such quandaries on top of the aforestated problems, it can be degrading to the process.
None of this is even taking into consideration the number of in-game moments blatantly drawn-out for the sake of irritating the player, like how you’re literally forced to listen to a 30 second Dial-Up screech (twice!) just to advance a phone call.
The cyberpunk setting itself arguably had the potential to subvert these dilemmas (as Dex’s did for its cliche tale), yet Theta failed at delivering on any of its unique prospects. Core to the game’s worldbuilding is advertising, with large companies exploiting augmented reality interfaces to spam, well, spam everywhere in bright neon hues. I’ve always said that AR headsets hold greater potential for market dominance than VR ones due to their balance of reduced motion sickness and easy-synchronicity, and VirtuaVerse remains the first sci-fi game I’ve ever played to actually exemplify such a possibility. Unfortunately, it’s not used for anything other than crazy art assets: you don’t get any interesting histories, no witty observations - only limited backgrounds on the businesses in operation.
Then again, perhaps that superficialness was for the better as the few times the game explores its themes of corporate hegemony, it ends-up devolving into a series of heavyhanded discourses reminiscent of a high schooler's level of nuance. One scene has Nathan and this dealer suck each other off over their mutual hatred of cloud computing; another sees Nathan go off on some tangent about music playlists due to them being arranged by an algorithm compared to human-built band albums. If these parts had at least contained some degree of subtlety, I might’ve been able to tolerate their length; however, not only do they not, they ironically come across as Theta having as much of an agenda as the megacorps they’re lambasting.
Graphically, VirtuaVerse is at least quite beautiful. It takes that early-90s computer gaming aesthetic and pumps it full of dark colors, providing yet another cyberpunk bastion rich in atmosphere: polluted rain falls everywhere, neon luminescence rouses the dilapidated landscapes, and you even get some really creative uses of pixel art, such as barbed motion to indicate swaying lights, wind-swept clothes, and rising smoke from cigarette ends. I praised Nathan’s get-up earlier (the multicolored diodes of his visor being particularly noteworthy), and that attitude extends to the majority of textile work here: it’s working-class chic balanced against individual culture -- the kind of clothing you could actually imagine someone wearing in a downsized area, from the black blazers of conventional streetfolk to the simple shirts & jeans of the distant Nuwakans. Yes, there’ll be gamers who find this retro-style too outdated, or the cyberpunk flare overly-hackneyed, but as I said in my Dex review, I’m a sucker for these kinds of esthetics, and consequently loved what the artisans at Theta did.
Sadly, the sound is nowhere near as good, largely due to some horrendous mixing that both sees the music played at a significantly-higher decibel than the SFX (even after manual adjustments), and outright removed when entering certain buildings (impossible to tell if this was intentional or not). I could’ve tolerated things had the score been to my liking, but given that it primarily goes for, what’s described in-game as synth heavy metal, it ultimately didn’t work for me in light of my admitted averseness to the genre (though I understand this is highly-subjective and that the OST is well-done for an indie release).
Without voice acting, you’ll hear the SFX a lot, and it does its job overall as far as supplementing your actions with appropriate beats. I really appreciated the multiple footstep dins programmed for the different types of terrain Nathan and co. walk on throughout.
In the end, though, the best soundscape wouldn’t have convinced me to keep up with VirtuaVerse. The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.
NOTES
+So you have to do two things: first, get a spiked VR chip via posing as Jay to blackmail a local retailer into selling you the tradeable products for the chip; and second, poisoning the meal of a local sushi critic so that the owner throws out his food, in turn causing the hobo to start pillaging the waste container and providing you an opportunity to slip the VR chip into his stash....yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this is so much more convoluted than simply kicking the dude in the nads.
++Off the top of my head, the above guy is poisoned, another dude gets killed, a third has his shop destroyed, and a whole group has their livelihood ruined (this being the sole instance Nate is kind of regretful over).
-One cool concept in the game was the idea of personal IDs being tied to someone’s entire biometric profile (certainly a believable evolution on SSN!).
Note - as I did not beat the game, this write-up should be taken more as a set of observations than a genuine review
Primarily game solution spoilers discussed; however, I understand those inherently involve story spoilers which I, admittedly, do touch on as well (though, in my defense, I tried to be vague in regards to those)
My love of cyberpunk has taken me from the labs of Majestic 12 to the real-life streets of Kabukichō, yet all affairs have their limits, and I unfortunately found mine in the form of VirtuaVerse. An indie PnC developed by Theta Division, VirtuaVerse seemingly boasts all the right ingredients for cyberpunk success: corpo-dystopias, grim aesthetics, and of course plenty of neon. However, by drowning its story under an avalanche of contrivances, VirtuaVerse squanders any potential it may have had, becoming the kind of forgettable schlock left behind every gaming generation.
PnCs largely come down to their causal puzzles, and on that front VirtuaVerse heavily stumbles. On the title screen, you’ll see the devs pathetically boast about making their game difficult, but hey, credit where credit’s due - they’ve actually accomplished this feat without falling into Moon Logic territory. I played through about half the game before calling it quits, and during that time encountered plenty of bizarre scenarios: scenarios that either derived their solution from talking to/examining every entity, or, worse, triggering some outlandish Rube Goldberg event that made no sense from a practical standpoint. The former tactic was at least defensible under the banner of encouraging interaction with the world at large (even if they failed to make distinguish special objects from the background), but it genuinely blew my mind whenever I encountered the latter given the presence of more realistic alternatives.
For example, one section has you trying to get the attention of this boatman blasting a radio, but rather than have you simply tap him with the broomstick in your inventory (an item that, mind you, literally serves no other purpose in the game), you’re instead supposed to melt an adjacent hut to fall into the water and knock him overboard. Another scene has you prevented from searching this garbage bin for spare parts courtesy of a crazed hobo, and while it would’ve been easy to just knock the guy away or blast him with a fire extinguisher (another item that ends-up serving no purpose throughout), the actual solution involves something so ridiculous, I’m going to postscript it so as not to ruin the flow of this sentence(+). Now you may retort well Red, maybe they didn’t want to turn your character into a pr!ck, to which I respond they either way did that (more on that later).
As with most generalizations, not everything is bad, and I did enjoy the few brainteasers I resolved on my own, but I’ve always judged PnCs by how much I felt impelled to look-up their answers, and the second I found myself consistently doing that with VirtuaVerse, I knew it was time to call it quits. Life is too short for games that wholly frustrate you, even those latent in the genre you love, and while I acknowledge I’m not the smartest gamer, I feel these criticisms will also hold water for PnC veterans.
If that weren’t enough, VirtuaVerse boasts some unergonomic controls that’ll constantly remind of the superior schemes from Daedalic and Wadjet: the inventory and journal are tied to keyboard buttons, you can’t exit out of accidentally-restarted conversations, and dialogue is automatically processed ala Costume Quest (and no, the toggle option in the settings menu doesn’t affect this). That said, VirtuaVerse does offer the ability to rebind your keys, meaning you can do what I did and simply truss them to the WASD pad for easy convenience. But still, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just tie everything to the mouse.
Now, to their credit, the developers did put in place a story mode that reportedly cuts-down on the enigmas in favor of a straightforward “cinematic” experience, but even this abridged version won’t garner much enjoyment due to the lackluster narrative on display. The premise is you’re a loser hacker named Nathan trying to find his girlfriend in an unnamed corporate hellscape, and what you’ll quickly realize is just how much the writers failed at making any of these components engageable in the slightest.
To start with Nathan, I didn’t use the pejorative “loser” for no reason: he is truly pathetic, the kind of sycophantic yes man utterly incapable of standing up for himself whenever he comes across a barrier or rude person. Any coolness derived from his admittedly sweet attire (more on that later) is tossed out the window the second you see him strike up a tune with an adjacent NPC. And look, I get that not every protagonist needs to be a brooding bad@ss ala JC Denton, but given the man’s indulgence in blackhat shenanigans, you’d think he, of all people, would at least warrant a backbone. To add salt to the wounds, the writers took a page out of the Deponia schoolbook of awfulness via throwing-in situations in which you’re forced to ruin an NPC’s life just to progress forward (your hooded hero showing little remorse towards the aftereffects++).
The search for Nate’s girl Jay (and its subsequent developments), on the other hand, is hampered by some of that aforementioned lousy game design: every time he gets even a little close to finding his objective, a deliberately stupid roadblock props up, killing the few ounces of momentum generated in the moment. One of the worst versions of this, for instance, entails Nate actually seeing Jay run into an errant room, only for him to get cockblocked by an usher (even after you present him with the necessary ID!). And that really speaks to another qualm I had with a fair amount of the puzzles -- they bask in pointless elongation.
Have you guys ever seen a conundrum presented with a one-stop-shop-fits-all solution, only for the game to throw-in a couple extra steps the second you found said solution? Yeah, VirtuaVerse features that in spades, their presence indicating an ill-concealed attempt at extending the game’s runtime. One of the more annoying instances of this occurs after you successfully close the office door of a man whose dwelling you’re robbing: instead of letting the closure of said door be enough, the game forces you to find the keys to lock it in order to continue forward. And look, that may sound practical on the surface, but when you’re constantly peppered with such quandaries on top of the aforestated problems, it can be degrading to the process.
None of this is even taking into consideration the number of in-game moments blatantly drawn-out for the sake of irritating the player, like how you’re literally forced to listen to a 30 second Dial-Up screech (twice!) just to advance a phone call.
The cyberpunk setting itself arguably had the potential to subvert these dilemmas (as Dex’s did for its cliche tale), yet Theta failed at delivering on any of its unique prospects. Core to the game’s worldbuilding is advertising, with large companies exploiting augmented reality interfaces to spam, well, spam everywhere in bright neon hues. I’ve always said that AR headsets hold greater potential for market dominance than VR ones due to their balance of reduced motion sickness and easy-synchronicity, and VirtuaVerse remains the first sci-fi game I’ve ever played to actually exemplify such a possibility. Unfortunately, it’s not used for anything other than crazy art assets: you don’t get any interesting histories, no witty observations - only limited backgrounds on the businesses in operation.
Then again, perhaps that superficialness was for the better as the few times the game explores its themes of corporate hegemony, it ends-up devolving into a series of heavyhanded discourses reminiscent of a high schooler's level of nuance. One scene has Nathan and this dealer suck each other off over their mutual hatred of cloud computing; another sees Nathan go off on some tangent about music playlists due to them being arranged by an algorithm compared to human-built band albums. If these parts had at least contained some degree of subtlety, I might’ve been able to tolerate their length; however, not only do they not, they ironically come across as Theta having as much of an agenda as the megacorps they’re lambasting.
Graphically, VirtuaVerse is at least quite beautiful. It takes that early-90s computer gaming aesthetic and pumps it full of dark colors, providing yet another cyberpunk bastion rich in atmosphere: polluted rain falls everywhere, neon luminescence rouses the dilapidated landscapes, and you even get some really creative uses of pixel art, such as barbed motion to indicate swaying lights, wind-swept clothes, and rising smoke from cigarette ends. I praised Nathan’s get-up earlier (the multicolored diodes of his visor being particularly noteworthy), and that attitude extends to the majority of textile work here: it’s working-class chic balanced against individual culture -- the kind of clothing you could actually imagine someone wearing in a downsized area, from the black blazers of conventional streetfolk to the simple shirts & jeans of the distant Nuwakans. Yes, there’ll be gamers who find this retro-style too outdated, or the cyberpunk flare overly-hackneyed, but as I said in my Dex review, I’m a sucker for these kinds of esthetics, and consequently loved what the artisans at Theta did.
Sadly, the sound is nowhere near as good, largely due to some horrendous mixing that both sees the music played at a significantly-higher decibel than the SFX (even after manual adjustments), and outright removed when entering certain buildings (impossible to tell if this was intentional or not). I could’ve tolerated things had the score been to my liking, but given that it primarily goes for, what’s described in-game as synth heavy metal, it ultimately didn’t work for me in light of my admitted averseness to the genre (though I understand this is highly-subjective and that the OST is well-done for an indie release).
Without voice acting, you’ll hear the SFX a lot, and it does its job overall as far as supplementing your actions with appropriate beats. I really appreciated the multiple footstep dins programmed for the different types of terrain Nathan and co. walk on throughout.
In the end, though, the best soundscape wouldn’t have convinced me to keep up with VirtuaVerse. The story is boring, puzzles frustrating, and music too loud. For all the visuals and nightlife ambience, VirtuaVerse falters too much in the other, more important departments.
NOTES
+So you have to do two things: first, get a spiked VR chip via posing as Jay to blackmail a local retailer into selling you the tradeable products for the chip; and second, poisoning the meal of a local sushi critic so that the owner throws out his food, in turn causing the hobo to start pillaging the waste container and providing you an opportunity to slip the VR chip into his stash....yeah, you don’t need me to explain why this is so much more convoluted than simply kicking the dude in the nads.
++Off the top of my head, the above guy is poisoned, another dude gets killed, a third has his shop destroyed, and a whole group has their livelihood ruined (this being the sole instance Nate is kind of regretful over).
-One cool concept in the game was the idea of personal IDs being tied to someone’s entire biometric profile (certainly a believable evolution on SSN!).
2010
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Supernatural mysteries have never been my cup of tea for one reason and one reason only: they rarely set-up consistent rules. When you introduce something as unearthly as magick or spirits, you need consistency in the way your world operates, otherwise anything can go; and if anything can go, what conflicts are your protagonists actually overcoming? What’s to stop them from doing X to subvert Y? Heck, on the flipside, what’s preventing the antagonist from axing them from the get-go? Out of all the fictional media I’ve engaged with, only one work succeeded in being cogent, that being Death Note, though even then it had to fall back on the age-old trope of an almighty god self-handicapped by amusement/boredom/insert emote of your choice.
Yeah, it goes without saying Alan Wake is another one of those occult stories riddled with inconsistencies. It was released in 2010, yet feels like it should’ve come out in the late-90s given the Twin Peaks/X-Files vibes and reliance on adumbral entities (seriously what was with that trope in the 90s? See OoT, Shadow Man, and of course Silent Hill). That’s not to say it’s outdated by any means, but I can definitely see why it failed to reach broader audiences back then- it was tapping into a cultural geist that simply wasn’t relevant at the time. Combine this with an overly-cinematic structure and repetitive gameplay, and you get the perfect skeleton for a cult classic.
That said, I did enjoy parts of the game, albeit with limitations. The premise is you’re a writer named Alan Wake who, along with his wife, heads to the sleepy town of Bright Falls for a long-overdue vacation. Unfortunately, fate has other plans in mind as strange things occur, culminating in Alan awakening one week later with no memory of what transpired and shadow demons everywhere. Amnesiacs having to retrace their footsteps has always been a pretty interesting concept, however, I was admittedly unable to get into the storyline for reasons I’m not too sure of. There are a number of smaller defects, from Wake being a bit of a pr!ck to the grand villain ending up a joke+ (more on both later), but if I had to pinpoint the biggest drawback, it would probably be that AW fails to handle its preternatural elements realistically. Like most urban fantasies, AW is set in a version of our world which happens to contain a paranormal underbelly, yet only one character in the entire cast reacts to this revelation naturally. Everyone else, most notably Wake, treats it as just another Tuesday (in spite of the story emphasizing his knack for skepticism!)
This lack of groundedness is prevalent in other smaller facets that, on their own, don’t mean much, but together add up to several ancillary incongruities: Alan is capable of perfectly using firearms despite never shooting before; random honchos are aware they’re in a pre-scripted narrative, yet conveniently forget that in favor of acting independent; munitions are stored in locations they have no business being located in; and day/night cycles haphazardly swap as the story demands it (seriously, 80% of the game is at night irrespective of a day having 12 hours of sunlight). Some of these complaints are touched upon, but it’s more in a Fourth Wall-esque self-awareness way than genuine explanation (i.e., Alan commenting about grenades being out-of-place in a construction yard).
With all due respect to Remedy, it also seems like they either didn’t plan things well or were shortchanged on dev time. For starters, a large chunk of AW’s explanations and backstory are relegated to a manuscript Alan scribed during his blackout, of which you’ll have to find the (many) pages during your travels. Optional lore being relegated to collectibles has never been an issue, but to do so with important narratorial information is bizarre, especially when you consider you cannot find all of the sheets unless you replay the game on the highest difficulty. To clarify, the plot isn’t confusing if you don’t acquire these notes (I didn’t bother reading most of them after finding out the aforementioned fact); however it does lack information that would otherwise better inform its occurrences.
Secondly are a couple of other story elements that don’t go anywhere- one, much is made about an annual festival called Deerfest, only for it to not play a part down-the-line; and two, you’ll infrequently encounter TVs broadcasting a Twilight Zone-parody called Night Falls that, despite being referenced by NPCs, exists for the sake of existence’s sake (it also doesn’t make sense why Alan would stop to view these episodes when he’s often in a hurry, though more on that later).
Thirdly, Alan’s character arc is inherently flawed. As stated earlier, he comes across as a haughty writer with explicit disdain towards his peers, and while this was clearly intended to be a jumping-off point for him learning self-lessness, the problem is selfishness was never an issue. Like, he genuinely cares for his wife and best friend from the get-go, so why the devs thought he needed to exhibit strong acts of valor down-the-stretch is beyond me. Wake isn’t a bad protagonist by any means (I certainly had no qualms following him), but he’s definitely more forgettable than his fans would have you to believe. The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better, with them often unconditionally doing Wake’s bidding instead of maintaining autonomy. His wife Alice, in particular, is especially bland, which doesn’t bode well considering a large part of the game’s impetus is trying to ensure her safety.
In terms of the cinematic structure, I think it works quite well. Remedy have proven themselves to be less-pretentious/more-competent versions of David Cage, and that’s exhibited beautifully in the myriad of cutscenes you’ll have to watch over the course of your playtime. They’re tautly-scripted, flawlessly edited, and showcase a clear knack for cinematography from the game’s artisans. There’s also not a huge disparity between their composition and the in-game engine, a trait which works wonders considering how well AW holds up. I obviously had issues with Remedy’s proprietary software in Max Payne, but the nine years since then have been very kind as the studio has significantly amped-up their asset creation. Character models, for instance, are refined and lifelike in every aspect of their form, with close examinations disclosing skin pores, fabric lines, and facial strands. Urban interiors, though lesser in quantity, hold a lot more personalized detail than Max Payne ever did- an FBI agent’s hotel room chockful of strewn papers indicates the occupant’s increased obsession; a rock duo’s shed ripe with a longboat and Viking paraphernalia highlights their enthusiasm for all things Norse. It’s a shame you don’t spend much time in any of them as even a few seconds of observation discloses the sheer effort that went into their assemblage.
Outside, things are obviously less quantified given the open spaces and emphasis on forestry, and while you’ll still find a slew of decently-decorated locales (like the aforestated construction yard), it’s clear Remedy was banking on atmosphere more than anything else. I noted the comparisons to Twin Peaks and X-Files earlier, and those vibes definitely come into play during these sections when you’re wandering through this creepy wilderness that’s suffocating Bright Falls. Thanks to a dimly-baked overlay, environments are never obnoxiously dark, and combined with some good wind effects, traversal can be a vivid experience.
Unfortunately, aspects of the graphics haven’t aged all that well (aspects I’ve heard were addressed in the Remaster). To begin with, AW has a big problem with texture streaming, particularly as it pertains to wood-based surfaces, which yes, is a big problem considering the plethora of trees around you. However, it certainly isn’t restricted to bark, and I intermittently caught lapses with metal and boulders.
More jarring, still, are the countenances- outside of Alan and of course cutscenes, no effort was put into giving any NPCs’ face motion, leading to puppet-esque mouth flaps that feel like some demented ventriloquist act. Then again, it’s not like accurate lip syncing was warranted considering the rank mediocrity of the voice acting. Matthew Porretta is your eponymous hero, and it’s clear he was cast more-so for his audiobook proficiencies than anything else as, while his in-game narration and manuscript readings are superb, he stumbles greatly in every other emotional category. Others, including Al’s BFF Barry, a hermit named Cynthia, and an assortment of random NPCs sound downright shrill, with Barry, in particular, coming across like a bad Joe Pesci impersonator. Even the better VAs (the Sheriff, the Doctor, the FBI Agent, Barbara Jagger) simply aren’t given enough material to work with -- in some cases, the longer the game runs, the worse they end up sounding (the Sheriff).
However, none of these qualms come close to the atrocity that is the audio blending as Alan Wake might genuinely have the worst mix I have ever heard in a video game. You guys know how background noise/music in movies sounds louder than dialogue when broadcast from a TV? Well, take just the noise facet, then further take only a few beats from said noise principle and boost it up several decibels and you’ll hear the problem with Alan Wake- gunshots, monster screams, and collisions involving Alan’s avatar are upscaled to annoying degrees whilst everything else is strongly softened. I get they wanted the game to be reminiscent of a film, but to copy/paste a similar dynamic range is ridiculous, especially since the noises they chose aren’t particularly great- weapons are weak, punches sound like Saturday-morning cartoon thuds, and enemies have the stupidest dialogue imaginable. As a result of this system, I genuinely cannot tell you guys anything about the SFX because it was extremely hard to discern dins outside of that trifecta.
The same criticisms apply to the music- outside of cinematic tracks, you’ll be hard-pressed to catch any tunes thanks to the overarching aural diminishment. Now thankfully, the score by Petri Alanko is available on Spotify to be listened to separately, and hearing it while writing this review, I can definitely say it’s solid, though suffers from the same problem Virginia’s OST had in that it’s more befitting for a motion picture than video game….an issue that’s worse here considering AW actually has gameplay. The loop involves you wandering from place-to-place, triggering an emergence of wraiths, shining your flashlight on them to drain their shield, before popping them into oblivion. It definitely does get repetitive, but I will say it’s not as bad as some of the harsher reviews have made it out to be, primarily thanks to a pristine auto-aim which outweighs any frustrations you’d normally get from a half-baked third-person shooter. There were some attempts at introducing variation- you get enemies with different attack patterns for example- but there was undeniably so much more they could have done: maybe introduce different colored lights with their own effects or have a more zestful interface for certain archetypes ala Luigi’s Mansion, I don’t know, I’m just spitballing.
Regardless, even such theoretical changes wouldn’t have absolved the game from three major issues that genuinely made me want to avoid the majority of fights. The first is the spawning- enemies will literally appear behind you without notice, leading to numerous aggravating “sucker punch” moments that could’ve been alleviated had Remedy done the normal thing and simply pulled the camera back just a little. The second is Alan’s dodge: it is atrocious, at least on controller where it is bound to the same button as your sprint, meaning half-the-time it won’t register due to the game believing you want to dash away instead of simply sidestep. The third is the fact that, between chapters and even parts of chapters, Alan will always lose his entire arsenal, forcing you to restock via finding caches and emergency kits. It’s an unfortunate consequence of episodic releases, and one that will bother those of you who purchase the entire bundle- every second you wasted arming yourself is thrown out the window, increasingly killing your motivation to repeat the same process ad nauseam. All three of these in conjunction are the real downsides to the combat, and subsequently convinced me to bypass most encounters via dropping a flair and bolting (note- you’ll have to repeat this a couple of times per/fight as, perhaps anticipating this, the devs made Alan a horribly unfit @sshole capable of running a whole 12-15 seconds before tiring out).
The confusing thing is why Remedy opted to stick solely to combat instead of introducing stealth or even puzzle elements. In one of the last sections of the game, Alan has to create light constructs via enhancing specific sigils, and that honestly could’ve been the template for something more expansive had the developers considered it.
There’s honestly not much else in the way of gameplay. Yeah, you’re technically allowed to explore areas, but there ain’t anything worthwhile in them besides more supplies, the abovementioned papers the majority of gamers aren’t going to read, oh and coffee thermoses! (might seriously be the lamest collectible I have witnessed in a game, and I grew up in the RARE era). Opting to go for these also results in TLOU problem of it not making sense for Alan to waste time scavenging around when the narrative is impelling him towards an imperative objective (cue NPCs awkwardly waiting for you to finish your looting before continuing with their speech). If those weren’t hampering enough, AW suffers from a degenerative camera that auto-clips to Alan’s right no matter how many F&CKING TIMES you manually swap it to the other side. Other nitpicks with the gameplay involve the constant slo-mo whenever enemies initially manifest/you perform a perfect dodge (you know, the thing that was wisely-dropped halfway through Max Payne), Alan having no melee push for enemies that come close, and ranged specters being able to nail you with pinpoint accuracy.
So yeah, in conclusion, Alan Wake is a frustrating endeavor. It has a cool atmosphere, great visuals, and an interesting story, but squanders most of that on unstable concepts and flawed game design. You’ll probably find some enjoyment like I did, but given the moviemaking aesthetic, you could arguably get the same entertainment value from watching a YouTube playthrough
Notes
-Wake’s flashlight is very well-done and arguably the best torch in video game history. I don’t know if its beam is realistic, but it’s functional and useful, which is all that matters.
-Occasionally, the volumetric fog won’t probably render, resulting in those square clusters from seeping light.
-There was something very luscious about Alan’s hair. I know it’s a stationary prop, but the shine made it look well-textured.
-No effort was put into providing bullet impacts for non-enemy surfaces.
-They could’ve eased up on explicitly stating their pop culture references as there are plenty of times where it’s obvious what the writers are alluding to, yet you still get an explanation ala Ready Player One.
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+So the game’s honestly a bit confusing on this front. The idea is there’s this entity literally called the Dark Presence who wants Alan to write a story freeing it from its entombment. Alan managed to get conscious enough during his brainwashing ordeal to escape it, resulting in it attempting to bring him back to complete the story. Except, if it wants Alan to do this, why is it constantly striving to kill him? Whether via the possessed townsfolk or throwing giant pieces of machinery at him, it’s most definitely attempting to end his life, which ironically brings me to the crux of my post- the Dark Presence is completely pathetic. Seriously, you’ve got this all-mighty force equipped with all kinds of black magic and you’re telling me it can’t stop a single regular human being? The writers don’t even try to put the usual impediments you see with this trope, like the Malevolence holding back for sh!ts and giggles. No, it truly is incompetent and consequently takes you out of the story.
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Supernatural mysteries have never been my cup of tea for one reason and one reason only: they rarely set-up consistent rules. When you introduce something as unearthly as magick or spirits, you need consistency in the way your world operates, otherwise anything can go; and if anything can go, what conflicts are your protagonists actually overcoming? What’s to stop them from doing X to subvert Y? Heck, on the flipside, what’s preventing the antagonist from axing them from the get-go? Out of all the fictional media I’ve engaged with, only one work succeeded in being cogent, that being Death Note, though even then it had to fall back on the age-old trope of an almighty god self-handicapped by amusement/boredom/insert emote of your choice.
Yeah, it goes without saying Alan Wake is another one of those occult stories riddled with inconsistencies. It was released in 2010, yet feels like it should’ve come out in the late-90s given the Twin Peaks/X-Files vibes and reliance on adumbral entities (seriously what was with that trope in the 90s? See OoT, Shadow Man, and of course Silent Hill). That’s not to say it’s outdated by any means, but I can definitely see why it failed to reach broader audiences back then- it was tapping into a cultural geist that simply wasn’t relevant at the time. Combine this with an overly-cinematic structure and repetitive gameplay, and you get the perfect skeleton for a cult classic.
That said, I did enjoy parts of the game, albeit with limitations. The premise is you’re a writer named Alan Wake who, along with his wife, heads to the sleepy town of Bright Falls for a long-overdue vacation. Unfortunately, fate has other plans in mind as strange things occur, culminating in Alan awakening one week later with no memory of what transpired and shadow demons everywhere. Amnesiacs having to retrace their footsteps has always been a pretty interesting concept, however, I was admittedly unable to get into the storyline for reasons I’m not too sure of. There are a number of smaller defects, from Wake being a bit of a pr!ck to the grand villain ending up a joke+ (more on both later), but if I had to pinpoint the biggest drawback, it would probably be that AW fails to handle its preternatural elements realistically. Like most urban fantasies, AW is set in a version of our world which happens to contain a paranormal underbelly, yet only one character in the entire cast reacts to this revelation naturally. Everyone else, most notably Wake, treats it as just another Tuesday (in spite of the story emphasizing his knack for skepticism!)
This lack of groundedness is prevalent in other smaller facets that, on their own, don’t mean much, but together add up to several ancillary incongruities: Alan is capable of perfectly using firearms despite never shooting before; random honchos are aware they’re in a pre-scripted narrative, yet conveniently forget that in favor of acting independent; munitions are stored in locations they have no business being located in; and day/night cycles haphazardly swap as the story demands it (seriously, 80% of the game is at night irrespective of a day having 12 hours of sunlight). Some of these complaints are touched upon, but it’s more in a Fourth Wall-esque self-awareness way than genuine explanation (i.e., Alan commenting about grenades being out-of-place in a construction yard).
With all due respect to Remedy, it also seems like they either didn’t plan things well or were shortchanged on dev time. For starters, a large chunk of AW’s explanations and backstory are relegated to a manuscript Alan scribed during his blackout, of which you’ll have to find the (many) pages during your travels. Optional lore being relegated to collectibles has never been an issue, but to do so with important narratorial information is bizarre, especially when you consider you cannot find all of the sheets unless you replay the game on the highest difficulty. To clarify, the plot isn’t confusing if you don’t acquire these notes (I didn’t bother reading most of them after finding out the aforementioned fact); however it does lack information that would otherwise better inform its occurrences.
Secondly are a couple of other story elements that don’t go anywhere- one, much is made about an annual festival called Deerfest, only for it to not play a part down-the-line; and two, you’ll infrequently encounter TVs broadcasting a Twilight Zone-parody called Night Falls that, despite being referenced by NPCs, exists for the sake of existence’s sake (it also doesn’t make sense why Alan would stop to view these episodes when he’s often in a hurry, though more on that later).
Thirdly, Alan’s character arc is inherently flawed. As stated earlier, he comes across as a haughty writer with explicit disdain towards his peers, and while this was clearly intended to be a jumping-off point for him learning self-lessness, the problem is selfishness was never an issue. Like, he genuinely cares for his wife and best friend from the get-go, so why the devs thought he needed to exhibit strong acts of valor down-the-stretch is beyond me. Wake isn’t a bad protagonist by any means (I certainly had no qualms following him), but he’s definitely more forgettable than his fans would have you to believe. The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better, with them often unconditionally doing Wake’s bidding instead of maintaining autonomy. His wife Alice, in particular, is especially bland, which doesn’t bode well considering a large part of the game’s impetus is trying to ensure her safety.
In terms of the cinematic structure, I think it works quite well. Remedy have proven themselves to be less-pretentious/more-competent versions of David Cage, and that’s exhibited beautifully in the myriad of cutscenes you’ll have to watch over the course of your playtime. They’re tautly-scripted, flawlessly edited, and showcase a clear knack for cinematography from the game’s artisans. There’s also not a huge disparity between their composition and the in-game engine, a trait which works wonders considering how well AW holds up. I obviously had issues with Remedy’s proprietary software in Max Payne, but the nine years since then have been very kind as the studio has significantly amped-up their asset creation. Character models, for instance, are refined and lifelike in every aspect of their form, with close examinations disclosing skin pores, fabric lines, and facial strands. Urban interiors, though lesser in quantity, hold a lot more personalized detail than Max Payne ever did- an FBI agent’s hotel room chockful of strewn papers indicates the occupant’s increased obsession; a rock duo’s shed ripe with a longboat and Viking paraphernalia highlights their enthusiasm for all things Norse. It’s a shame you don’t spend much time in any of them as even a few seconds of observation discloses the sheer effort that went into their assemblage.
Outside, things are obviously less quantified given the open spaces and emphasis on forestry, and while you’ll still find a slew of decently-decorated locales (like the aforestated construction yard), it’s clear Remedy was banking on atmosphere more than anything else. I noted the comparisons to Twin Peaks and X-Files earlier, and those vibes definitely come into play during these sections when you’re wandering through this creepy wilderness that’s suffocating Bright Falls. Thanks to a dimly-baked overlay, environments are never obnoxiously dark, and combined with some good wind effects, traversal can be a vivid experience.
Unfortunately, aspects of the graphics haven’t aged all that well (aspects I’ve heard were addressed in the Remaster). To begin with, AW has a big problem with texture streaming, particularly as it pertains to wood-based surfaces, which yes, is a big problem considering the plethora of trees around you. However, it certainly isn’t restricted to bark, and I intermittently caught lapses with metal and boulders.
More jarring, still, are the countenances- outside of Alan and of course cutscenes, no effort was put into giving any NPCs’ face motion, leading to puppet-esque mouth flaps that feel like some demented ventriloquist act. Then again, it’s not like accurate lip syncing was warranted considering the rank mediocrity of the voice acting. Matthew Porretta is your eponymous hero, and it’s clear he was cast more-so for his audiobook proficiencies than anything else as, while his in-game narration and manuscript readings are superb, he stumbles greatly in every other emotional category. Others, including Al’s BFF Barry, a hermit named Cynthia, and an assortment of random NPCs sound downright shrill, with Barry, in particular, coming across like a bad Joe Pesci impersonator. Even the better VAs (the Sheriff, the Doctor, the FBI Agent, Barbara Jagger) simply aren’t given enough material to work with -- in some cases, the longer the game runs, the worse they end up sounding (the Sheriff).
However, none of these qualms come close to the atrocity that is the audio blending as Alan Wake might genuinely have the worst mix I have ever heard in a video game. You guys know how background noise/music in movies sounds louder than dialogue when broadcast from a TV? Well, take just the noise facet, then further take only a few beats from said noise principle and boost it up several decibels and you’ll hear the problem with Alan Wake- gunshots, monster screams, and collisions involving Alan’s avatar are upscaled to annoying degrees whilst everything else is strongly softened. I get they wanted the game to be reminiscent of a film, but to copy/paste a similar dynamic range is ridiculous, especially since the noises they chose aren’t particularly great- weapons are weak, punches sound like Saturday-morning cartoon thuds, and enemies have the stupidest dialogue imaginable. As a result of this system, I genuinely cannot tell you guys anything about the SFX because it was extremely hard to discern dins outside of that trifecta.
The same criticisms apply to the music- outside of cinematic tracks, you’ll be hard-pressed to catch any tunes thanks to the overarching aural diminishment. Now thankfully, the score by Petri Alanko is available on Spotify to be listened to separately, and hearing it while writing this review, I can definitely say it’s solid, though suffers from the same problem Virginia’s OST had in that it’s more befitting for a motion picture than video game….an issue that’s worse here considering AW actually has gameplay. The loop involves you wandering from place-to-place, triggering an emergence of wraiths, shining your flashlight on them to drain their shield, before popping them into oblivion. It definitely does get repetitive, but I will say it’s not as bad as some of the harsher reviews have made it out to be, primarily thanks to a pristine auto-aim which outweighs any frustrations you’d normally get from a half-baked third-person shooter. There were some attempts at introducing variation- you get enemies with different attack patterns for example- but there was undeniably so much more they could have done: maybe introduce different colored lights with their own effects or have a more zestful interface for certain archetypes ala Luigi’s Mansion, I don’t know, I’m just spitballing.
Regardless, even such theoretical changes wouldn’t have absolved the game from three major issues that genuinely made me want to avoid the majority of fights. The first is the spawning- enemies will literally appear behind you without notice, leading to numerous aggravating “sucker punch” moments that could’ve been alleviated had Remedy done the normal thing and simply pulled the camera back just a little. The second is Alan’s dodge: it is atrocious, at least on controller where it is bound to the same button as your sprint, meaning half-the-time it won’t register due to the game believing you want to dash away instead of simply sidestep. The third is the fact that, between chapters and even parts of chapters, Alan will always lose his entire arsenal, forcing you to restock via finding caches and emergency kits. It’s an unfortunate consequence of episodic releases, and one that will bother those of you who purchase the entire bundle- every second you wasted arming yourself is thrown out the window, increasingly killing your motivation to repeat the same process ad nauseam. All three of these in conjunction are the real downsides to the combat, and subsequently convinced me to bypass most encounters via dropping a flair and bolting (note- you’ll have to repeat this a couple of times per/fight as, perhaps anticipating this, the devs made Alan a horribly unfit @sshole capable of running a whole 12-15 seconds before tiring out).
The confusing thing is why Remedy opted to stick solely to combat instead of introducing stealth or even puzzle elements. In one of the last sections of the game, Alan has to create light constructs via enhancing specific sigils, and that honestly could’ve been the template for something more expansive had the developers considered it.
There’s honestly not much else in the way of gameplay. Yeah, you’re technically allowed to explore areas, but there ain’t anything worthwhile in them besides more supplies, the abovementioned papers the majority of gamers aren’t going to read, oh and coffee thermoses! (might seriously be the lamest collectible I have witnessed in a game, and I grew up in the RARE era). Opting to go for these also results in TLOU problem of it not making sense for Alan to waste time scavenging around when the narrative is impelling him towards an imperative objective (cue NPCs awkwardly waiting for you to finish your looting before continuing with their speech). If those weren’t hampering enough, AW suffers from a degenerative camera that auto-clips to Alan’s right no matter how many F&CKING TIMES you manually swap it to the other side. Other nitpicks with the gameplay involve the constant slo-mo whenever enemies initially manifest/you perform a perfect dodge (you know, the thing that was wisely-dropped halfway through Max Payne), Alan having no melee push for enemies that come close, and ranged specters being able to nail you with pinpoint accuracy.
So yeah, in conclusion, Alan Wake is a frustrating endeavor. It has a cool atmosphere, great visuals, and an interesting story, but squanders most of that on unstable concepts and flawed game design. You’ll probably find some enjoyment like I did, but given the moviemaking aesthetic, you could arguably get the same entertainment value from watching a YouTube playthrough
Notes
-Wake’s flashlight is very well-done and arguably the best torch in video game history. I don’t know if its beam is realistic, but it’s functional and useful, which is all that matters.
-Occasionally, the volumetric fog won’t probably render, resulting in those square clusters from seeping light.
-There was something very luscious about Alan’s hair. I know it’s a stationary prop, but the shine made it look well-textured.
-No effort was put into providing bullet impacts for non-enemy surfaces.
-They could’ve eased up on explicitly stating their pop culture references as there are plenty of times where it’s obvious what the writers are alluding to, yet you still get an explanation ala Ready Player One.
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+So the game’s honestly a bit confusing on this front. The idea is there’s this entity literally called the Dark Presence who wants Alan to write a story freeing it from its entombment. Alan managed to get conscious enough during his brainwashing ordeal to escape it, resulting in it attempting to bring him back to complete the story. Except, if it wants Alan to do this, why is it constantly striving to kill him? Whether via the possessed townsfolk or throwing giant pieces of machinery at him, it’s most definitely attempting to end his life, which ironically brings me to the crux of my post- the Dark Presence is completely pathetic. Seriously, you’ve got this all-mighty force equipped with all kinds of black magic and you’re telling me it can’t stop a single regular human being? The writers don’t even try to put the usual impediments you see with this trope, like the Malevolence holding back for sh!ts and giggles. No, it truly is incompetent and consequently takes you out of the story.
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For my initial thoughts on the game, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1086632/
When I first beat Portal all those years ago, it was on a 13x8 laptop screen capped at 1080p with built-in speakers. Thus, in replaying the iconic title on a significantly better set-up, part of me figured it would significantly bolster the experience ... .until I started thinking. See, no matter its revolutionary gameplay loop or ginormous rooms, the truth is Portal’s real strength lay in its fundamentals, fundamentals that wouldn’t drastically change no matter what kind of rig you launched it on.
And so that latter prediction came to pass. While some things were improved in my replay of the iconic puzzle game, it was ultimately more of the same, an aspect that, though inherently positive, did end up yielding its own negatives (more on that later).
Regardless, Portal deserves a proper review, and so we shall begin with the story. The premise is you’re a young woman named Chell stuck in a laboratory run by a malevolent AI named GLaDOS. The Queen Bee wants you to complete some tests utilizing a hi-tech weapon known as the Portal Gun, created by the building’s former occupants, Aperture Sciences, prior to the events of the game. The Portal Gun allows instantaneous travel between two manually-created points, and it’s an item you’ll want to master should you wish to survive GLaDOS’s many many chambers…..and that’s it. Though you get some twists down-the-line, the reality is they aren’t hard to see coming, and, more importantly, don’t mask the fact that Portal just isn’t interested in telling a story. From SHODAN in System Shock to AM in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, we’ve seen these kinds of tales involving regular humans duking it out with super-intelligent agents, and GLaDOS, to Valve’s credit, certainly stands apart on her own merits. It’s just the narrative around her simply isn’t good enough for you to care about anything -- Chell has no characterization or reactions whatsoever despite her precarious situation, the background behind the desolation of the facility is relegated to brief jabs from GLaDOS, and there’s very little indication about the kind of society you’re in (even as this game reportedly takes place alongside Half-Life).
Fans may counterclaim that the sheer amount of dialogue is intended to make-up for these deficits -- that the point of Portal is its satirical jabs at corporate culture, and NOT the overarching dystopia. And that’d definitely be a fair point….were it not for the game being so dang tame. Don’t get me wrong, Portal does throw some nice quibs your way: the idea of employee safety being harped on whilst companies cut costs, the Orwellian-esque monitoring done by bosses on personnel, the nonsensical comp packages propped up by businesses for disgruntled workers, and so forth. That’s all well and good, and genuinely got a laugh out of me at times. The problem is it just doesn’t go far enough -- there’s nothing about mandatory OT, sexual harassment, office politics, unlawful terminations, the travesty that is HR departments, etc…etc…And yes, I get that Portal came out pre-#MeToo Movement; however, these were ideas strongly baked into the American consciousness well around/before the years of Portal’s release.
It’s especially disappointing as, graphically-speaking, Portal nailed that parody-corpo scheme to a tee: the dirty white tile framework highlighting Aperture’s tepid attempts at cleanliness/appearances, the padded cell bricking of the rooms symbolizing socioeconomic imprisonment, the rusty grimy interiors with their blood stains and spurting automatons indicating the true essence of the consortium, all do a fantastic job showcasing the type of rundown soul sucker GLaDOS is desperately trying to maintain. It’s a shame the writing couldn’t capitalize on these aesthetics in an efficient manner.
Beyond the environments, Portal’s artistic virtuosity stretches into other compartments, most notably the eponymous warp zones. No matter what chalken-surface you’re blasting, the transportation ovals always look like they’ve materialized out of said surfaces’ physical coating rather than a secondary skin plastered on-top. Coupled with the illumination effects for the portal device’s spark mechanic, and you’ve got a real testament to the strength of Valve’s artisans.
Like every game, there are drawbacks in the visual department, the lion’s share here ironically manifesting with the Aperture Science elevator. As you’ll quickly find out, this baby is (poorly+) used to disguise the game’s loading screens, and it seems to have been a last minute addition given the shoddy texturing of its interiors in comparison to literally every other environ. Adding onto this, liquid-based exteriors tended to not flow as fluidly as they naturally do in real life, often seeming like rectangular sludge, though I understand that was most likely a limitation of the Source Engine at the time.
Strangely, my worst criticism resides with an aspect you’re not liable to seeing often, that being Chell’s character model. Be prepared to reinject the phrase “uncanny valley” into your vocabulary as this is an utter monstrosity: the way she walks, turns, jumps, and blasts the portal gun are some of the ugliest, jankiest animations I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I don’t know how she got the short-end of the stick given how easy Valve’s made it for players to see her (simply place two portals adjacent to each other), but nonetheless you’ll be glad she’s largely out-of-sight for your playthrough.
On that note, the gameplay is obviously Portal’s core hook, and there’s nothing I can say that summarizes the experience best other than that it’s incredibly well-developed. It would’ve been very easy for Valve to fall prey to difficulty spikes or outright gimmickry, yet that’s not the case here: each level builds upon its predecessors’ tenets, adding new systems you get the hang of very quickly in time for their successor’s new obstacle(s). Whether you’re utilizing gravity for a linear momentum burst or redirecting lasers, it’s smooth, it’s organic, and, most importantly, more than earned its merits among the gaming community.
In my initial observations, one of my points of contention was a pacing issue that afflicted the game in its final act, a critique I no longer hold in this full-fledged write-up. While Portal’s been criticized for having too little content, I found it near-perfect in scope (though those wanting more are entitled to try the optional Advanced Chambers post-completion).
SFX-wise, Portal is surprisingly deep for a game that doesn’t employ extensive object interaction as, while you’ll only ever really have to grasp drones and blocks, every single grabbable item was still granted its own unique din which you can hear courtesy of smashing said item against the nearest wall (e.g., computer towers are a heavy metal vs chairs boast a lighter thin tinge). Voice acting, on the other hand, is a bit more mixed- it should come as no surprise that the bulk of it rests with Ellen McLain as GLaDOS, and though she does a great job, her first bout of screentime sees the editors overlay her performance with some awful misophonic effect that makes Rubik’s the Amazing Cube sound normal by comparison. I get that they were trying to digitize GLaDOS initially as a way of disguising her personified traits (proven by McLain sounding more and more “human” as the game progresses), but those initial stages were definitely rough on my ears.
Still, I can’t deny McLain nails the dark sarcastic tone, and during the final level, is even given a chance to indulge in some of the AI’s hidden personalities. Given her talent, it’s kind of sad McLain never went on to do much outside of Valve projects.
All that said, the real star of Portal rests in the turret drones, mini armed sentries Chell will occasionally have to bypass throughout the abode, as OMYLORDARETHEYSOF%CKING ADORABLE. Pardon my French, but I’ve never encountered an entity in a video game that was simultaneously this dangerous and ABSOLUTELY HUGGABLE (their polite lines upon defeat adding to the cute factor). The voices are technically attributed to McLain too; however, given the overly-computerized filter put on them, it’s not something I can astutely claim came from her aptitude.
Last in the sound trifecta is the music by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky, and it’s quite good, balancing that exploratory and office horror atmosphere the game blatantly generates throughout Chell’s journey. Interestingly, though, listening to the OST separately yielded a much more lackluster experience, and I believe that had to do with its implementation within the game. The way the composers designed the tracks, they’re intended to bleed over into one another between levels, said bleeding concurrently synchronizing with the advent of new themes or storybeats, and that’s just not something you can replicate in a standard music album (basically the compositions aren’t as good a listen outside the game, the exception of course being the Still Alive end credits song).
But in the end, what matters most is the game itself, and Portal more than succeeds. As mentioned in the introduction, Valve mastered the art of fundamentalism: focusing on the perfect ingredients needed to bakea cake the perfect video game recipe. Portal does lose some of its charm in repeat playthroughs; however, for those of you experiencing it for the first time, prepare for an enjoyable treat.
NOTES
+You’ll still have to go through loading buffers between the majority of rooms.
-One thing I did appreciate about Chell’s model were the addition of leg braces, explaining how she’s able to survive long drops/lunges.
-You’ll inconsistently find a radio that emits a really annoying tune.
When I first beat Portal all those years ago, it was on a 13x8 laptop screen capped at 1080p with built-in speakers. Thus, in replaying the iconic title on a significantly better set-up, part of me figured it would significantly bolster the experience ... .until I started thinking. See, no matter its revolutionary gameplay loop or ginormous rooms, the truth is Portal’s real strength lay in its fundamentals, fundamentals that wouldn’t drastically change no matter what kind of rig you launched it on.
And so that latter prediction came to pass. While some things were improved in my replay of the iconic puzzle game, it was ultimately more of the same, an aspect that, though inherently positive, did end up yielding its own negatives (more on that later).
Regardless, Portal deserves a proper review, and so we shall begin with the story. The premise is you’re a young woman named Chell stuck in a laboratory run by a malevolent AI named GLaDOS. The Queen Bee wants you to complete some tests utilizing a hi-tech weapon known as the Portal Gun, created by the building’s former occupants, Aperture Sciences, prior to the events of the game. The Portal Gun allows instantaneous travel between two manually-created points, and it’s an item you’ll want to master should you wish to survive GLaDOS’s many many chambers…..and that’s it. Though you get some twists down-the-line, the reality is they aren’t hard to see coming, and, more importantly, don’t mask the fact that Portal just isn’t interested in telling a story. From SHODAN in System Shock to AM in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, we’ve seen these kinds of tales involving regular humans duking it out with super-intelligent agents, and GLaDOS, to Valve’s credit, certainly stands apart on her own merits. It’s just the narrative around her simply isn’t good enough for you to care about anything -- Chell has no characterization or reactions whatsoever despite her precarious situation, the background behind the desolation of the facility is relegated to brief jabs from GLaDOS, and there’s very little indication about the kind of society you’re in (even as this game reportedly takes place alongside Half-Life).
Fans may counterclaim that the sheer amount of dialogue is intended to make-up for these deficits -- that the point of Portal is its satirical jabs at corporate culture, and NOT the overarching dystopia. And that’d definitely be a fair point….were it not for the game being so dang tame. Don’t get me wrong, Portal does throw some nice quibs your way: the idea of employee safety being harped on whilst companies cut costs, the Orwellian-esque monitoring done by bosses on personnel, the nonsensical comp packages propped up by businesses for disgruntled workers, and so forth. That’s all well and good, and genuinely got a laugh out of me at times. The problem is it just doesn’t go far enough -- there’s nothing about mandatory OT, sexual harassment, office politics, unlawful terminations, the travesty that is HR departments, etc…etc…And yes, I get that Portal came out pre-#MeToo Movement; however, these were ideas strongly baked into the American consciousness well around/before the years of Portal’s release.
It’s especially disappointing as, graphically-speaking, Portal nailed that parody-corpo scheme to a tee: the dirty white tile framework highlighting Aperture’s tepid attempts at cleanliness/appearances, the padded cell bricking of the rooms symbolizing socioeconomic imprisonment, the rusty grimy interiors with their blood stains and spurting automatons indicating the true essence of the consortium, all do a fantastic job showcasing the type of rundown soul sucker GLaDOS is desperately trying to maintain. It’s a shame the writing couldn’t capitalize on these aesthetics in an efficient manner.
Beyond the environments, Portal’s artistic virtuosity stretches into other compartments, most notably the eponymous warp zones. No matter what chalken-surface you’re blasting, the transportation ovals always look like they’ve materialized out of said surfaces’ physical coating rather than a secondary skin plastered on-top. Coupled with the illumination effects for the portal device’s spark mechanic, and you’ve got a real testament to the strength of Valve’s artisans.
Like every game, there are drawbacks in the visual department, the lion’s share here ironically manifesting with the Aperture Science elevator. As you’ll quickly find out, this baby is (poorly+) used to disguise the game’s loading screens, and it seems to have been a last minute addition given the shoddy texturing of its interiors in comparison to literally every other environ. Adding onto this, liquid-based exteriors tended to not flow as fluidly as they naturally do in real life, often seeming like rectangular sludge, though I understand that was most likely a limitation of the Source Engine at the time.
Strangely, my worst criticism resides with an aspect you’re not liable to seeing often, that being Chell’s character model. Be prepared to reinject the phrase “uncanny valley” into your vocabulary as this is an utter monstrosity: the way she walks, turns, jumps, and blasts the portal gun are some of the ugliest, jankiest animations I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I don’t know how she got the short-end of the stick given how easy Valve’s made it for players to see her (simply place two portals adjacent to each other), but nonetheless you’ll be glad she’s largely out-of-sight for your playthrough.
On that note, the gameplay is obviously Portal’s core hook, and there’s nothing I can say that summarizes the experience best other than that it’s incredibly well-developed. It would’ve been very easy for Valve to fall prey to difficulty spikes or outright gimmickry, yet that’s not the case here: each level builds upon its predecessors’ tenets, adding new systems you get the hang of very quickly in time for their successor’s new obstacle(s). Whether you’re utilizing gravity for a linear momentum burst or redirecting lasers, it’s smooth, it’s organic, and, most importantly, more than earned its merits among the gaming community.
In my initial observations, one of my points of contention was a pacing issue that afflicted the game in its final act, a critique I no longer hold in this full-fledged write-up. While Portal’s been criticized for having too little content, I found it near-perfect in scope (though those wanting more are entitled to try the optional Advanced Chambers post-completion).
SFX-wise, Portal is surprisingly deep for a game that doesn’t employ extensive object interaction as, while you’ll only ever really have to grasp drones and blocks, every single grabbable item was still granted its own unique din which you can hear courtesy of smashing said item against the nearest wall (e.g., computer towers are a heavy metal vs chairs boast a lighter thin tinge). Voice acting, on the other hand, is a bit more mixed- it should come as no surprise that the bulk of it rests with Ellen McLain as GLaDOS, and though she does a great job, her first bout of screentime sees the editors overlay her performance with some awful misophonic effect that makes Rubik’s the Amazing Cube sound normal by comparison. I get that they were trying to digitize GLaDOS initially as a way of disguising her personified traits (proven by McLain sounding more and more “human” as the game progresses), but those initial stages were definitely rough on my ears.
Still, I can’t deny McLain nails the dark sarcastic tone, and during the final level, is even given a chance to indulge in some of the AI’s hidden personalities. Given her talent, it’s kind of sad McLain never went on to do much outside of Valve projects.
All that said, the real star of Portal rests in the turret drones, mini armed sentries Chell will occasionally have to bypass throughout the abode, as OMYLORDARETHEYSOF%CKING ADORABLE. Pardon my French, but I’ve never encountered an entity in a video game that was simultaneously this dangerous and ABSOLUTELY HUGGABLE (their polite lines upon defeat adding to the cute factor). The voices are technically attributed to McLain too; however, given the overly-computerized filter put on them, it’s not something I can astutely claim came from her aptitude.
Last in the sound trifecta is the music by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky, and it’s quite good, balancing that exploratory and office horror atmosphere the game blatantly generates throughout Chell’s journey. Interestingly, though, listening to the OST separately yielded a much more lackluster experience, and I believe that had to do with its implementation within the game. The way the composers designed the tracks, they’re intended to bleed over into one another between levels, said bleeding concurrently synchronizing with the advent of new themes or storybeats, and that’s just not something you can replicate in a standard music album (basically the compositions aren’t as good a listen outside the game, the exception of course being the Still Alive end credits song).
But in the end, what matters most is the game itself, and Portal more than succeeds. As mentioned in the introduction, Valve mastered the art of fundamentalism: focusing on the perfect ingredients needed to bake
NOTES
+You’ll still have to go through loading buffers between the majority of rooms.
-One thing I did appreciate about Chell’s model were the addition of leg braces, explaining how she’s able to survive long drops/lunges.
-You’ll inconsistently find a radio that emits a really annoying tune.
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers for FEAR 2 only discussed at the very bottom. Explicit spoilers for the first FEAR discussed throughout
FEAR 2 may be the most conflicted game I’ve ever played, and I’m not talking about my feelings. Like its numerical title, it genuinely feels like a tale of two devs; one who wanted to remake Half-Life 1 versus one who wanted to follow-up on the original FEAR, the result being a smorgasbord of unsatisfying elements wrapped up in a well-optimized package. It’s not bad by any means, however, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better case study in divisive visions, the story being the prime offender.
See, FEAR 2 acts as a sidepiece to the original game, taking place before, during, and after the nuclear event. And yet, what you’ll quickly realize is just how rehashed everything is: you’ve got a spec ops team sent in to stop an Armachan stooge, the discovery of some sickening corpo experiments, and a quiet protagonist boasting a secret connection to Alma. While such “requels” aren’t inherently bad (DKC2 is one of the GOAT video games after all), it’s the lackadaisicality here that hampers FEAR 2’s storytelling as rarely have I played a game that wanted to tell a tale yet simultaneously felt annoyed at having to do so. There was clearly someone at Monolith who had a grand framework in mind for what the game should be (to the point of retconning Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate+), only for their idea to get stuffed away for reasons unknown (this negative duality going back to what I was saying earlier about clashing goals).
If I had to hazard a guess, it was probably because of budgetary concerns - I’m not saying FEAR 1 was perfect, however its dedication to cutscenes and voiced exposition clearly indicated a veritable interest in narrative conveyance. Here, when you’re not being serenaded by the same boring dusty illusion of Alma, you’re treated to forgettable dialogue amidst oodles upon oodles of optional data that should NOT have been optional. I’ve never had an issue with supplementary material expanding upon a game’s mythology, but FEAR 2 takes laziness to new heights by throwing 90% of its explanations and answers into randomized computer files you have to go out of your way to find.
And it’s a shame because, if the info in those PDFs had been orated organically, we could’ve had a riveting sci-fi thriller at our fingertips; you get some genuinely disturbing revelations from a writing team that clearly knew the world they were operating in. Alas, as it stands, you’ll be spending the majority of your time following orders like a good little sycophant, a facet made all the more aggravating by Monolith going the silent hero route again. Mute leads are fine in tales where their personality has no bearing on the story; however, that is NOT the case here with main character Beckett, who serves as the impetus for most of Project Origin’s events courtesy of his unusual link to Alma(++). It becomes genuinely frustrating seeing him placed in situations that would warrant a human reaction, only for his silence to undermine the going-ons about you.
If that wasn’t bad enough, FEAR 2 is continuously plagued by the same two plot holes that ravaged its prequels, and no spoiler tags are necessary because these are literally copy/pasted verbatim. For starters, why are there two Almas? Even if I buy the logic that one represents the day her spirit died vs her body, the former should still be that of a teenager, not the 8-year-old girl you catch intermittently. Secondly, and without a doubt the most vexing, how is she simultaneously all-powerful and all-useless? Seriously, throughout the game she’s capable of vaporizing, brainwashing, and tossing humans about like ragdolls (in addition to, you know, generating hordes of the undead), yet you mean to tell me this same demon can somehow be shaken off? I get that omnipotent villains are hard to write, but the way Alma is scripted, it’s as though the developers didn’t even try to be cogent.
To the game’s credit, a couple mysteries from the first FEAR are cleared up here (such as Alma’s backstory and why certain characters have superhuman reflexes), but when it’s all done through discretionary notes, what you’re ultimately left with is a redux of Half-Life. No really, between the stripped-down narrative and pure obedience, it’s evident Project Origin was trying to go the Half-Life route of environmental storytelling over cinematic exposés, and while they are partially-successful (the school being a masterpiece of game design), even this initiative is brought down by the aforementioned budget cuts. Whereas Half-Life took you through a variety of locales ranging from labs to deserts to of course Xen, Project Origin sees you inside a plethora of drabby interiors indifferent from the numerous corridors you’ve witnessed time-and-time-again in other video games. Here’s a fact for you casuals -- when a game throws you into a subway station for an elongated period of time, it’s a sign that the studio was working with limited capital.
Thankfully, it all looks great courtesy of the LithTech Engine, which has seen a massive facelift from the first FEAR. Not only is the texture streaming superb, but the artisans at Monolith took the time to sculpt tiny little details into the majority of simulacra. During the course of my playthrough, for example, I came across the following minutiae: paintings with full-fledged descriptions etched under their frames, magazines with decked-out covers, towel racks with allocated labels, individual student signatures, guitar cases with specialized stickers, and children’s drawings constituting a variety of forms (like dinosaurs and cities) amongst a plethora of others. The amount of effort that went into crafting this setting is phenomenal, and the unsung artists behind such endeavors deserve all their flowers.
That said, be prepared to have your flashlight out 23/7 as this is an overly-dim game. Yes, it’s set in dingy buildings primarily at night, but that was no excuse for things to be this obscure as, even with the brightness turned up, I literally had to leave my torch on just to make out the ground in front of me (I also recommend turning off the film grain and head bobbing lest you procure a case of motion sickness).
When it comes to the gameplay, everyone knows the OG garnered fame for combining Max Payne’s bullet-time mechanic with slick shooting, and that formula’s been largely-translated to the sequel albeit with dumber AI. Those who read my review of FEAR 1 know that I wasn’t the biggest cheerleader of its enemy intelligence, but those guys were definitely a step above the swarms of thugs you’ll encounter here, who display no sense of tactic other than to trade suppressing fire and lob the occasional grenade. Hampering things further is the easier difficulty - in 1, your slowdown was countered by heavier bullet damage; in Project Origin, Beckett is much more durable, allowing you to abuse the system to a greater extent.
Finally, you’ve no doubt heard about the game’s lack of particle anarchy, and that’s definitely true. For better and for worse, this is a much more conventional FPS, and while you still get the odd extravagant effect like pill bottles popping and water surfaces ricocheting, I can’t deny something was lost with the diminishment of the original’s collateral damage (most items shot simply sprouting a bullet hole over exploding).
Sound isn’t the best either, with weapons, in particular, lacking the punch their previous incarnations had. Combine that with indistinguishable collision blasts and repetitive ghost wailing for the supernatural elements and you have a rather tepid soundscape. Still, I’ll take it over the score, which is obnoxious to a fault. When I was playing the game, I remember thinking how intrusive and cacophonous the music sounded, and unfortunately listening to it separately didn’t alleviate this memory as the vast majority of pieces are simply loud melodies. There technically is diversity, with my ear detecting electronica, native vocals, and even a zurna-esque instrument, but all of these additions are directed towards pure bombast instead of something memorable.
What’s particularly bizarre about FEAR 2’s score is the sheer number of tracks it has. The YouTube playlist identifies 80, and while that does include alternatives that didn't make it into the final release, it’s still a significant amount for a game under 8 hours. Heck, I’ve played numerous AAA games with significantly less music, and though it’s not a bad thing to include more tunes, the quality just wasn't there to justify their integration (not to mention I doubt most gamers will hear the lion’s share of them).
With regards to the voice acting, all I’ll say is it’s adequate. No one is especially strong, yet none detract from the experience either. And that’s a great way to describe FEAR 2 as a whole: a fine enough diversion. If you’re looking for an action game that’ll kill 7-8 hours of your time, you can’t go wrong here as the gunplay’s solid, visuals beautiful, and storybeats easy to follow. It’s just a shame the end product doesn’t live up to the potential someone at Monolith clearly hoped it would be, with the narrative being lackluster, Alma pathetic, and the horror elements poorly implemented. The palpable lethargy on display genuinely makes you wonder what happened between 1 and 2’s releases.
NOTES
-One cool sound effect is shooting pianos generates flat keyboard notes.
-For the record, not all the tracks are loud, but even the quieter ones like Return to Lobby and Principal’s Office have a noticeable thumping.
-Just like with the first game, FEAR 2 has its own out-of-place white nerd; Snakefist. Thankfully, he’s nowhere near as annoying as Mapes was.
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SPOILERS
+I naturally find such retcons to be pathetic in general, but what’s strange is it wasn't even necessary. Perseus Mandate focuses on a completely different thread, while the Point Man’s absence in FEAR 2 makes Extraction Point’s events unintrusive. Unless the argument is Alma can’t be in two places at once, I don’t see why Monolith chose to remove the DLCs from continuity.
++Beckett has a high stat called “telesthetic potential,” that makes him attractive to Alma to the point of her wanting to mate with him. It’s a juvenile set-up that isn’t properly explained (or if it was, was done so in the background) -- why does Alma randomly want to procreate when she already has two children out in the world (and can revive phantoms)? Why is it so easy for Beckett to resist her? If Alma is so desperate to copulate with Beckett, why does she let him waltz into dangerous situations instead of dispersing all enemies? How does she even succeed at the end when he manages to activate the machine (and, you know, blatantly doesn’t do the act….do the writers not know how sex works?). I also found it more than a bit creepy to have contrasting images of a naked adult Alma with her younger child version.
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FEAR 2 may be the most conflicted game I’ve ever played, and I’m not talking about my feelings. Like its numerical title, it genuinely feels like a tale of two devs; one who wanted to remake Half-Life 1 versus one who wanted to follow-up on the original FEAR, the result being a smorgasbord of unsatisfying elements wrapped up in a well-optimized package. It’s not bad by any means, however, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better case study in divisive visions, the story being the prime offender.
See, FEAR 2 acts as a sidepiece to the original game, taking place before, during, and after the nuclear event. And yet, what you’ll quickly realize is just how rehashed everything is: you’ve got a spec ops team sent in to stop an Armachan stooge, the discovery of some sickening corpo experiments, and a quiet protagonist boasting a secret connection to Alma. While such “requels” aren’t inherently bad (DKC2 is one of the GOAT video games after all), it’s the lackadaisicality here that hampers FEAR 2’s storytelling as rarely have I played a game that wanted to tell a tale yet simultaneously felt annoyed at having to do so. There was clearly someone at Monolith who had a grand framework in mind for what the game should be (to the point of retconning Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate+), only for their idea to get stuffed away for reasons unknown (this negative duality going back to what I was saying earlier about clashing goals).
If I had to hazard a guess, it was probably because of budgetary concerns - I’m not saying FEAR 1 was perfect, however its dedication to cutscenes and voiced exposition clearly indicated a veritable interest in narrative conveyance. Here, when you’re not being serenaded by the same boring dusty illusion of Alma, you’re treated to forgettable dialogue amidst oodles upon oodles of optional data that should NOT have been optional. I’ve never had an issue with supplementary material expanding upon a game’s mythology, but FEAR 2 takes laziness to new heights by throwing 90% of its explanations and answers into randomized computer files you have to go out of your way to find.
And it’s a shame because, if the info in those PDFs had been orated organically, we could’ve had a riveting sci-fi thriller at our fingertips; you get some genuinely disturbing revelations from a writing team that clearly knew the world they were operating in. Alas, as it stands, you’ll be spending the majority of your time following orders like a good little sycophant, a facet made all the more aggravating by Monolith going the silent hero route again. Mute leads are fine in tales where their personality has no bearing on the story; however, that is NOT the case here with main character Beckett, who serves as the impetus for most of Project Origin’s events courtesy of his unusual link to Alma(++). It becomes genuinely frustrating seeing him placed in situations that would warrant a human reaction, only for his silence to undermine the going-ons about you.
If that wasn’t bad enough, FEAR 2 is continuously plagued by the same two plot holes that ravaged its prequels, and no spoiler tags are necessary because these are literally copy/pasted verbatim. For starters, why are there two Almas? Even if I buy the logic that one represents the day her spirit died vs her body, the former should still be that of a teenager, not the 8-year-old girl you catch intermittently. Secondly, and without a doubt the most vexing, how is she simultaneously all-powerful and all-useless? Seriously, throughout the game she’s capable of vaporizing, brainwashing, and tossing humans about like ragdolls (in addition to, you know, generating hordes of the undead), yet you mean to tell me this same demon can somehow be shaken off? I get that omnipotent villains are hard to write, but the way Alma is scripted, it’s as though the developers didn’t even try to be cogent.
To the game’s credit, a couple mysteries from the first FEAR are cleared up here (such as Alma’s backstory and why certain characters have superhuman reflexes), but when it’s all done through discretionary notes, what you’re ultimately left with is a redux of Half-Life. No really, between the stripped-down narrative and pure obedience, it’s evident Project Origin was trying to go the Half-Life route of environmental storytelling over cinematic exposés, and while they are partially-successful (the school being a masterpiece of game design), even this initiative is brought down by the aforementioned budget cuts. Whereas Half-Life took you through a variety of locales ranging from labs to deserts to of course Xen, Project Origin sees you inside a plethora of drabby interiors indifferent from the numerous corridors you’ve witnessed time-and-time-again in other video games. Here’s a fact for you casuals -- when a game throws you into a subway station for an elongated period of time, it’s a sign that the studio was working with limited capital.
Thankfully, it all looks great courtesy of the LithTech Engine, which has seen a massive facelift from the first FEAR. Not only is the texture streaming superb, but the artisans at Monolith took the time to sculpt tiny little details into the majority of simulacra. During the course of my playthrough, for example, I came across the following minutiae: paintings with full-fledged descriptions etched under their frames, magazines with decked-out covers, towel racks with allocated labels, individual student signatures, guitar cases with specialized stickers, and children’s drawings constituting a variety of forms (like dinosaurs and cities) amongst a plethora of others. The amount of effort that went into crafting this setting is phenomenal, and the unsung artists behind such endeavors deserve all their flowers.
That said, be prepared to have your flashlight out 23/7 as this is an overly-dim game. Yes, it’s set in dingy buildings primarily at night, but that was no excuse for things to be this obscure as, even with the brightness turned up, I literally had to leave my torch on just to make out the ground in front of me (I also recommend turning off the film grain and head bobbing lest you procure a case of motion sickness).
When it comes to the gameplay, everyone knows the OG garnered fame for combining Max Payne’s bullet-time mechanic with slick shooting, and that formula’s been largely-translated to the sequel albeit with dumber AI. Those who read my review of FEAR 1 know that I wasn’t the biggest cheerleader of its enemy intelligence, but those guys were definitely a step above the swarms of thugs you’ll encounter here, who display no sense of tactic other than to trade suppressing fire and lob the occasional grenade. Hampering things further is the easier difficulty - in 1, your slowdown was countered by heavier bullet damage; in Project Origin, Beckett is much more durable, allowing you to abuse the system to a greater extent.
Finally, you’ve no doubt heard about the game’s lack of particle anarchy, and that’s definitely true. For better and for worse, this is a much more conventional FPS, and while you still get the odd extravagant effect like pill bottles popping and water surfaces ricocheting, I can’t deny something was lost with the diminishment of the original’s collateral damage (most items shot simply sprouting a bullet hole over exploding).
Sound isn’t the best either, with weapons, in particular, lacking the punch their previous incarnations had. Combine that with indistinguishable collision blasts and repetitive ghost wailing for the supernatural elements and you have a rather tepid soundscape. Still, I’ll take it over the score, which is obnoxious to a fault. When I was playing the game, I remember thinking how intrusive and cacophonous the music sounded, and unfortunately listening to it separately didn’t alleviate this memory as the vast majority of pieces are simply loud melodies. There technically is diversity, with my ear detecting electronica, native vocals, and even a zurna-esque instrument, but all of these additions are directed towards pure bombast instead of something memorable.
What’s particularly bizarre about FEAR 2’s score is the sheer number of tracks it has. The YouTube playlist identifies 80, and while that does include alternatives that didn't make it into the final release, it’s still a significant amount for a game under 8 hours. Heck, I’ve played numerous AAA games with significantly less music, and though it’s not a bad thing to include more tunes, the quality just wasn't there to justify their integration (not to mention I doubt most gamers will hear the lion’s share of them).
With regards to the voice acting, all I’ll say is it’s adequate. No one is especially strong, yet none detract from the experience either. And that’s a great way to describe FEAR 2 as a whole: a fine enough diversion. If you’re looking for an action game that’ll kill 7-8 hours of your time, you can’t go wrong here as the gunplay’s solid, visuals beautiful, and storybeats easy to follow. It’s just a shame the end product doesn’t live up to the potential someone at Monolith clearly hoped it would be, with the narrative being lackluster, Alma pathetic, and the horror elements poorly implemented. The palpable lethargy on display genuinely makes you wonder what happened between 1 and 2’s releases.
NOTES
-One cool sound effect is shooting pianos generates flat keyboard notes.
-For the record, not all the tracks are loud, but even the quieter ones like Return to Lobby and Principal’s Office have a noticeable thumping.
-Just like with the first game, FEAR 2 has its own out-of-place white nerd; Snakefist. Thankfully, he’s nowhere near as annoying as Mapes was.
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SPOILERS
+I naturally find such retcons to be pathetic in general, but what’s strange is it wasn't even necessary. Perseus Mandate focuses on a completely different thread, while the Point Man’s absence in FEAR 2 makes Extraction Point’s events unintrusive. Unless the argument is Alma can’t be in two places at once, I don’t see why Monolith chose to remove the DLCs from continuity.
++Beckett has a high stat called “telesthetic potential,” that makes him attractive to Alma to the point of her wanting to mate with him. It’s a juvenile set-up that isn’t properly explained (or if it was, was done so in the background) -- why does Alma randomly want to procreate when she already has two children out in the world (and can revive phantoms)? Why is it so easy for Beckett to resist her? If Alma is so desperate to copulate with Beckett, why does she let him waltz into dangerous situations instead of dispersing all enemies? How does she even succeed at the end when he manages to activate the machine (and, you know, blatantly doesn’t do the act….do the writers not know how sex works?). I also found it more than a bit creepy to have contrasting images of a naked adult Alma with her younger child version.
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2017
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Despite the fame of its predecessor, it’s not surprising Finding Paradise fell under the radar: To the Moon was too popular to be a cult classic, yet too indie to be mainstream. Had it been the former, enough fans would’ve kept interest strong over the years; had it been the latter, bigger publications would’ve reported on a sequel's development.
Regardless, quality has nothing to do with recognition, and so the question that remains is, is Finding Paradise worth checking out? Well, after my less-than-stellar experience with A Bird Story, I went in expecting to write-off it off as another saccharine publication from Freebird Games. Thankfully, that assumption failed to pan out as Finding Paradise is a notable improvement upon both its prequels, providing a stronger story that gives me hope for the future of this franchise (even as it is encumbered by thematic flaws).
Eva and Neil are back, this time to fulfill dying man Colin’s wish of having a more satisfying life. The catch is he doesn’t want the majority of his biography changed, this cognitive dissonance causing his mind to boomerang the two scientists between past and future events. What exactly does he want and why is there so much psychothermic resistance? That’s up to find out should you play the game.
The first thing you’ll notice about Finding Paradise is its tempo: this is a game that excels at pacing. The general formula is you’ll enter a memory, see a scene play out, then run around clicking random objects until you get enough orbs to unlock the next stage. Unlike To the Moon, you’re not spending an inordinate amount of time per an area, but rather hopping-and-leaving within a five minute timeframe, and while this may seem short, the writing does a tremendous job of being bite-size yet filling. Rarely do you feel like you’re wasting your time meandering about aimlessly: spaces are contained, token placement intuitive, and the dialogue succinct at conveying the purpose of this remembrance.
That said, all the consistency in the world wouldn’t have mattered if the story wasn’t up to par, and that’s luckily not the case here. As stated above, I preferred Finding Paradise over To the Moon, and given the limited gameplay of both titles, that obviously came down to the quality of the narratives. To the Moon had a solid synopsis it executed relatively well for 2/3s of its run, but where it went wrong (IMO) was in the last act wherein Eva acted way out of character in a vain attempt at resolving the storyline. Finding Paradise has no such deviations, its own finale incorporating a surprisingly well-thought-out climax that satisfyingly quells the rising action. It has its own issues for sure, namely regarding its implicatory themes+, but these are mostly offset by creator Kan Gao’s sure-handed direction. Whereas it seemed TTM wanted to elicit an emotion first, tell a story second, here it’s the opposite situation and, as a result, the sadder moments end up feeling a lot more natural and consequently earned.
Aiding this accomplishment is the humor, which has been significantly dialed-back from the ampleness of yore. Though this was probably done to showcase Neil’s character development, the effect, nonetheless, is a more-tonally consistent work that manages to be equal parts funny and dramatic (the 4th Wall gags being particularly humorous). While Gao still hasn’t found the perfect balance, Finding Paradise is a definite sign of his growth as a writer.
Besides the spoilery criticism, I only had two other problems with the story: one, some of the endgame dialogues drag-on longer than needed; and two, there’s a B-plot threaded throughout the game whose sole purpose is to set-up a sequel.++ It’d be one thing if it was just a cliffhanger the way Neil’s heartbeat in TTM was; however, not only does it constantly pop up here, but it involves the participation of two additional colleagues of Neil’s (one of whom is particularly annoying).
Graphically, Finding Paradise has seen a slight uptick from its predecessor, particularly in the facial department. I was stunned by the sheer amount of emotional range Freebird was able to convey on the RPG Maker’s miniscule sprites -- from twitching eyebrows to partially-closed eyelids, you can easily glean the mood of an NPC without reading a single sentence. Freebird has also done a wonderful job rendering clothing as smaller articles like ties, jewelry, and buttons are all discernible, even from a cursory glance. However, it’s the sheer diversity of environments that’ll garner the most acclaim as the developers truly went all out in this department. From what I can remember about TTM, it was a lot more mundane as far as stagecraft: you had bedrooms, parks, and schoolhouses amongst other conventional buildings. Those facilities are here too, but the larger scope of the story entails a greater amount of spaces on top of them, from airplane interiors to aquariums, and it became a genuine treat to not know what you were going to get hit with each time you advanced.
Unfortunately, for all the strengths in the writing and visuals, the lack of voice acting continues to be a plague on this series. While I get the games were intended to be a throwback to 90s SNES titles (which, at best, featured limited grunts and groans), the reality is good performances would’ve elevated Gao’s script significantly. As it stands, you’ll have to contend with a proxy-substitute in the way of music, the results of which are a mixed bag as a whole. Gao did the composing himself, and objectively speaking it’s a very good score; alternatively sweeping and bounded when it needs to be. But, similar to the problem I had with Rumbling Hearts’s OST, its biggest issue is its implementation in the narrative- when you’re only boosting the volume during emotional beats, the outcome is hackneyed melodrama that feels manipulative at best. It really is a case where Gao should’ve left the music editing up to an impartial third-party as he was evidently incapable of translacing his compositions within the structure of the game.
SFX, on the other hand, has been overly-skimped on: outside of the orb shooting and one notable cutscene (you’ll know it when you see it), there’s nothing that stands out, leaving us with the gameplay which, as noted earlier, is very sparse courteous of these titles being story catalysts. The only thing you’ve got is a tile-matching minigame you need to complete at the end of each level, and it’s as easy as any Candy Crush release.
As such, make your purchasing decision off of whether you think the story will be to your liking as, despite the clear musical intentions, this is a well-crafted tale free of cloying syrup ala A Bird Story. That said, unless you’re fine with walking around nonstop, this may not be a game for you.
NOTES
-No, you do not have to play A Bird Story to understand anything in Finding Paradise. See the spoiler tag below as to why a popular fan theory is wrong too.+++
-The game does a slightly better job of digging into the ethics of memory rewriting, but I wish future entries (should they come about) actually explore it to its fullest.
-Part of me wonders if more was initially intended in terms of choice given that you find numerous instances of Colin’s regrets, instances that are stored in your notes section.
-Finding Paradise strangely does not have any Steam achievements despite there being many actions that would’ve resulted in their garnering.
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+The grand resolution comes down to the scientists realizing Colin is dissatisfied because he suppressed his imaginary friend Faye and was not able to live out his greater aspirations. To fix this, they reinsert her into his life in order to provide him closure. I find this problematic because it’s basically saying make-believe pals are healthy for children on up, when that is so far from the truth. Western society honestly has this issue of masking unhealthy psychological processes as things to be admired, when the reality is they should be wrung out of adolescence: traits like shyness, nervousness, anxiety, ADD, and overactive imaginations. There are ways to promote creativity in kids without nurturing such toxic conditions, the latter of which is blatantly done here.
++Neil has been creating a separate, unsanctioned machine. Its purpose is kept hidden, though it’s implied to be tied to his heart condition. And the annoying character is Dr. Winters.
+++People claim that Faye is a humanoid representation of the bird, yet in one flashback Colin explicitly talks to her about the bird friend he had.
Despite the fame of its predecessor, it’s not surprising Finding Paradise fell under the radar: To the Moon was too popular to be a cult classic, yet too indie to be mainstream. Had it been the former, enough fans would’ve kept interest strong over the years; had it been the latter, bigger publications would’ve reported on a sequel's development.
Regardless, quality has nothing to do with recognition, and so the question that remains is, is Finding Paradise worth checking out? Well, after my less-than-stellar experience with A Bird Story, I went in expecting to write-off it off as another saccharine publication from Freebird Games. Thankfully, that assumption failed to pan out as Finding Paradise is a notable improvement upon both its prequels, providing a stronger story that gives me hope for the future of this franchise (even as it is encumbered by thematic flaws).
Eva and Neil are back, this time to fulfill dying man Colin’s wish of having a more satisfying life. The catch is he doesn’t want the majority of his biography changed, this cognitive dissonance causing his mind to boomerang the two scientists between past and future events. What exactly does he want and why is there so much psychothermic resistance? That’s up to find out should you play the game.
The first thing you’ll notice about Finding Paradise is its tempo: this is a game that excels at pacing. The general formula is you’ll enter a memory, see a scene play out, then run around clicking random objects until you get enough orbs to unlock the next stage. Unlike To the Moon, you’re not spending an inordinate amount of time per an area, but rather hopping-and-leaving within a five minute timeframe, and while this may seem short, the writing does a tremendous job of being bite-size yet filling. Rarely do you feel like you’re wasting your time meandering about aimlessly: spaces are contained, token placement intuitive, and the dialogue succinct at conveying the purpose of this remembrance.
That said, all the consistency in the world wouldn’t have mattered if the story wasn’t up to par, and that’s luckily not the case here. As stated above, I preferred Finding Paradise over To the Moon, and given the limited gameplay of both titles, that obviously came down to the quality of the narratives. To the Moon had a solid synopsis it executed relatively well for 2/3s of its run, but where it went wrong (IMO) was in the last act wherein Eva acted way out of character in a vain attempt at resolving the storyline. Finding Paradise has no such deviations, its own finale incorporating a surprisingly well-thought-out climax that satisfyingly quells the rising action. It has its own issues for sure, namely regarding its implicatory themes+, but these are mostly offset by creator Kan Gao’s sure-handed direction. Whereas it seemed TTM wanted to elicit an emotion first, tell a story second, here it’s the opposite situation and, as a result, the sadder moments end up feeling a lot more natural and consequently earned.
Aiding this accomplishment is the humor, which has been significantly dialed-back from the ampleness of yore. Though this was probably done to showcase Neil’s character development, the effect, nonetheless, is a more-tonally consistent work that manages to be equal parts funny and dramatic (the 4th Wall gags being particularly humorous). While Gao still hasn’t found the perfect balance, Finding Paradise is a definite sign of his growth as a writer.
Besides the spoilery criticism, I only had two other problems with the story: one, some of the endgame dialogues drag-on longer than needed; and two, there’s a B-plot threaded throughout the game whose sole purpose is to set-up a sequel.++ It’d be one thing if it was just a cliffhanger the way Neil’s heartbeat in TTM was; however, not only does it constantly pop up here, but it involves the participation of two additional colleagues of Neil’s (one of whom is particularly annoying).
Graphically, Finding Paradise has seen a slight uptick from its predecessor, particularly in the facial department. I was stunned by the sheer amount of emotional range Freebird was able to convey on the RPG Maker’s miniscule sprites -- from twitching eyebrows to partially-closed eyelids, you can easily glean the mood of an NPC without reading a single sentence. Freebird has also done a wonderful job rendering clothing as smaller articles like ties, jewelry, and buttons are all discernible, even from a cursory glance. However, it’s the sheer diversity of environments that’ll garner the most acclaim as the developers truly went all out in this department. From what I can remember about TTM, it was a lot more mundane as far as stagecraft: you had bedrooms, parks, and schoolhouses amongst other conventional buildings. Those facilities are here too, but the larger scope of the story entails a greater amount of spaces on top of them, from airplane interiors to aquariums, and it became a genuine treat to not know what you were going to get hit with each time you advanced.
Unfortunately, for all the strengths in the writing and visuals, the lack of voice acting continues to be a plague on this series. While I get the games were intended to be a throwback to 90s SNES titles (which, at best, featured limited grunts and groans), the reality is good performances would’ve elevated Gao’s script significantly. As it stands, you’ll have to contend with a proxy-substitute in the way of music, the results of which are a mixed bag as a whole. Gao did the composing himself, and objectively speaking it’s a very good score; alternatively sweeping and bounded when it needs to be. But, similar to the problem I had with Rumbling Hearts’s OST, its biggest issue is its implementation in the narrative- when you’re only boosting the volume during emotional beats, the outcome is hackneyed melodrama that feels manipulative at best. It really is a case where Gao should’ve left the music editing up to an impartial third-party as he was evidently incapable of translacing his compositions within the structure of the game.
SFX, on the other hand, has been overly-skimped on: outside of the orb shooting and one notable cutscene (you’ll know it when you see it), there’s nothing that stands out, leaving us with the gameplay which, as noted earlier, is very sparse courteous of these titles being story catalysts. The only thing you’ve got is a tile-matching minigame you need to complete at the end of each level, and it’s as easy as any Candy Crush release.
As such, make your purchasing decision off of whether you think the story will be to your liking as, despite the clear musical intentions, this is a well-crafted tale free of cloying syrup ala A Bird Story. That said, unless you’re fine with walking around nonstop, this may not be a game for you.
NOTES
-No, you do not have to play A Bird Story to understand anything in Finding Paradise. See the spoiler tag below as to why a popular fan theory is wrong too.+++
-The game does a slightly better job of digging into the ethics of memory rewriting, but I wish future entries (should they come about) actually explore it to its fullest.
-Part of me wonders if more was initially intended in terms of choice given that you find numerous instances of Colin’s regrets, instances that are stored in your notes section.
-Finding Paradise strangely does not have any Steam achievements despite there being many actions that would’ve resulted in their garnering.
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+The grand resolution comes down to the scientists realizing Colin is dissatisfied because he suppressed his imaginary friend Faye and was not able to live out his greater aspirations. To fix this, they reinsert her into his life in order to provide him closure. I find this problematic because it’s basically saying make-believe pals are healthy for children on up, when that is so far from the truth. Western society honestly has this issue of masking unhealthy psychological processes as things to be admired, when the reality is they should be wrung out of adolescence: traits like shyness, nervousness, anxiety, ADD, and overactive imaginations. There are ways to promote creativity in kids without nurturing such toxic conditions, the latter of which is blatantly done here.
++Neil has been creating a separate, unsanctioned machine. Its purpose is kept hidden, though it’s implied to be tied to his heart condition. And the annoying character is Dr. Winters.
+++People claim that Faye is a humanoid representation of the bird, yet in one flashback Colin explicitly talks to her about the bird friend he had.
2004
Should you actually choose to continue forth with Far Cry, PLEASE get/use FCAM from the beginning as you are unable to switch profiles down-the-line without restarting your save file
NOTE -- as I did not complete the game, this review should not be taken as a serious critique, but more-so as a set of observations.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like to give up on video games. No matter how much I may disagree or dislike some aspect of a title, I know significant effort was put into its overall conception, and that effort consequently deserves to be rewarded with a full-fledged critique. Yet, as I get older, I find myself pondering the idea of time- we all have a finite amount of it on this planet, and when we decide to invest some of that into playing a game, the question each and every one of us should be asking is, am I having fun? And, if not, is there a point where I anticipate the gameplay loop becoming fun?
If the answer to that follow-up is also no, then perhaps it’s in your best interest to drop whatever you’re playing. At least, that’s the conclusion I came to when attempting to beat the original Far Cry. As you can easily surmise, this is the entity that began Ubisoft's eponymous cash cow, though unlike later members of the series, it was developed by Crytek three years before they made their own mark on the industry with Crysis. Unfortunately, if Crysis was a glorified tech demo, Far Cry is a glorified beta: its fascinating aspects bogged down by technical issue after technical issue.
Let’s get one thing straight -- this is a broken game: not too cracked to be unplayable, but fissured enough to make it overly-frustrating, and no matter how much the “get gud” crowd may gaslight you, take solace in knowing you’re not hallucinating. Enemies have extraordinary sightlines coupled with pinpoint accuracy, and while such design schemes have been successfully used in other ventures (most notably All Ghillied Up), here it’s so aggravating I’m convinced it was not intended. The sultry of apologists out there will claim Far Cry to be this strategy shooter wherein you’re meant to observe a post from a distance, mark the goons on your map, and employ some gambit to cull them with minimal self-injury. First off, that’s not true (more on that later), but secondly, even if it was, I would have no problem with it -- not every game needs to be a run-and-gunner, and it certainly fits in with the premise of a lone wolf taking on an army of mercs. The problem is stealth is completely defective due to those aforementioned sightlines imbuing every approach of yours with a 90% chance of failure, and when one guy is alerted, the rest of his cohorts gain awareness, no matter their distance from patient zero. Yes, it’s easy enough to shake them off, however their displaced movements combined with a refusal to return to previous walking patterns ruins any pre-planned stratagem you may have had.
Highlighting with your binoculars is also faulty, not only because it’s impossible to catch every single thug, but because even those you successfully snag end-up rendered as confusing triangles on the minimap (a minimap that, for the record, does not indicate elevation and goes outright bonkers whenever you enter an interior). And to any gamers out there thinking they can deal with miscellaneous mercs via playing it by ear in the field, understand Far Cry’s directional sound simply isn’t good enough to warrant discerning NPC locations via dialogue. Taking all of this into account, I genuinely found there was no point in trying to be stealthy because you were eventually going to get caught, meaning it was better to find some decent cover and simply trade fire from the get-go. Sadly, this is where the “pinpoint accuracy” dilemma comes into play as your HP gets knocked down very quickly. Against a few enemies I could see these duels being fine, but 9 times out of 10 you’re up against squads of 12+ men coming at you from multiple angles. Sure you can pick-&-pop, however even this tactic is impacted by numerous confounding variables: enemies are capable of seeing and shooting through walls; the many acres of foliage block your view but not theirs; grenades lack an indicator; RPGs, snipers, and helo gunners are potential one-hit KOs, and, worst of all, you have a bloody checkpoint system that forces you to literally reset a block should you not reach that invisible star barrel.
Now I’m sure the cost-sunk fanboys will come out of the gutter to tell me I was playing the game wrong, that I needed to be smarter and slower in my approaches, so let me give you normies a mind twist I alluded to above - Far Cry has TONS of mandatory combat! I obviously can’t speak for the game as a whole, but in the 4+ hours I played my character was put into many close-quarters situations wherein he was charged with taking out an entire attack force without ANY prior opportunities for stealth. One section has you defending a fort as it's assaulted by Black Hawks and rocketeering boats; another sees you paragliding from a cliff only to conveniently meet a chopper midair; and still an additional instance involves you battling your way across a ship deck to a spare lifeboat. You got vehicular shootings, air-deployed goons, alarm triggers, and more I’m sure I'm missing, all while contending with the aforestated issues of impeccable vision cones and deadeye accuracy.
And look, maybe the game was intended to be hard. Granted, I was playing on the normal difficulty (and consequently expected an appropriately-tuned experience…), but that could’ve very well been the intended challenge, and certainly plenty of franchises ala Ghosts 'n Goblins exist for the sole purpose of vexing buyers. Fair enough. But anyone who goes around telling you the game is a black box masterpiece or deliberately-geared towards “strategic” playthroughs is lying to you. I said it before and I’ll say it again- Far Cry 1 is broken, and what’s funny is I didn’t even make it to the part of the game that most reviewers agree is unfairly brutal: the Trigen (see my guy GManLives’s video to get an in-depth breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmkCCih1T00&).
Now, from what I understand, Far Cry wasn’t always like this. It was only after the release of a patch called 1.5 that a number of these defects arose, and such an update must’ve severely affected the source code as no mod exists to absolve it to this day. I prefaced this critique by mentioning FCAM as it does address some of the qualms: enemy viewing is no longer extraneous, mercs can’t shoot through walls, and you have a quick save button in the menu (negating checkpoints). These are definitely great implementations, but the elephant in the room is that the other issues aren’t tackled, and in my honest opinion those are still big enough to justify labeling the game too knackered to be worth a run.
I don’t want to sound like it’s all bad as there is a lot to enjoy about the gameplay. The shooting is still great with weapons handling fantastically (in fact, one of my reservations with FCAM is that it adds iron sights when the vanilla aiming was better), and enemy AI is pretty decent: some will amble in the open stupidly, but the majority are either flanking, fragging, or going prone to draw you out/avoid fire. When it comes to duking it out with patrols you really do have to be smart, and at its best Far Cry genuinely makes you feel like Rambo, sneaking through the wilderness against unsuspecting nobodies. It’s a shame those moments are few-and-far-between.
The technical facets aren’t particularly noteworthy. Far Cry was no doubt impressive when it came out, helping popularize what I’ve called the deserted island trope via its coastal beachfront, submersible waterways, yellow-green vegetation, and bright open sky, and that art design remains pretty dang gorgeous to this day. That said, the graphics are regrettably held back by outdated texture streaming that glazes everything with an atypical fuzz. Leaves, grass, and streams are generally fine, however, everything else, from trunks to the skyline, are way too hazy, as though the cameraman forgot to leave the autofocus on. Hampering things further is improper polygon modeling for the slopes, forcing you to indulge in the tried-and-true tactic of bunnyhopping to ascend a hill.
With regards to the music, I obviously didn’t beat enough of the game to rate its OST minus the main theme, which I felt was a bit too bombastic sounding despite being well-composed. SFX, on the other hand, is pretty good; firing and reloading mechanisms are sharp, whilst footsteps boast that soft yet distinct thud you’d expect from forestral traversal. I did feel the game overused stock animal sounds for fauna that were pretty blatantly not in the world (nothing but birds), though I understand Crytek was trying to conceive an untamed atmosphere.
Voice acting, at the point I was in the story, was pretty negative. NPCs are as hit-or-miss as you’d expect in a Ubisoft product, while main character Jack Carver literally comes across like an 80 action hero parody. Perhaps that was deliberate, but something tells me it wasn’t given how good his handler, Doyle, is. Played by a guy named Cornell Womack, Doyle has one of those genuinely pleasant voices like the Transistor, making you want to follow whatever plan he's laid out.
Sadly, he doesn’t have much of a presence in the early parts of the narrative, the whole of which I cannot give an oversight on due to the lack of subtitles and dedicating audio settings for vocals. Wikipedia provides the following synopsis (“Jack Carver has left his mysterious and bitter past behind him and dropped out of society to run a boat-charter business in the South Pacific. He is hired by a female journalist named Valerie Constantine to take her secretly to an uncharted island in Micronesia. After Val takes off on her own with a jet ski, Jack's boat is blown apart by a rocket, but he survives by diving into the water”), which sounds pretty cool, but having played the beginning I can tell you it’s nonsense. Outside of an amazing intro showcasing said boat attack, there’s NOTHING about Jack’s background or why he was even sailing the rig in the first place (Far Cry must be one of those games that summarized things in its CD case menu).
But look, it’s not like a great plot would’ve been able to overcome the gameplay dilemmas. While Far Cry deserves its place in history, it’s best left aside as a relic of over-ambition.
NOTES
-You can’t cook grenades.
-Lip syncing is surprisingly on point, even if the mouth movements are grandiose.
NOTE -- as I did not complete the game, this review should not be taken as a serious critique, but more-so as a set of observations.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like to give up on video games. No matter how much I may disagree or dislike some aspect of a title, I know significant effort was put into its overall conception, and that effort consequently deserves to be rewarded with a full-fledged critique. Yet, as I get older, I find myself pondering the idea of time- we all have a finite amount of it on this planet, and when we decide to invest some of that into playing a game, the question each and every one of us should be asking is, am I having fun? And, if not, is there a point where I anticipate the gameplay loop becoming fun?
If the answer to that follow-up is also no, then perhaps it’s in your best interest to drop whatever you’re playing. At least, that’s the conclusion I came to when attempting to beat the original Far Cry. As you can easily surmise, this is the entity that began Ubisoft's eponymous cash cow, though unlike later members of the series, it was developed by Crytek three years before they made their own mark on the industry with Crysis. Unfortunately, if Crysis was a glorified tech demo, Far Cry is a glorified beta: its fascinating aspects bogged down by technical issue after technical issue.
Let’s get one thing straight -- this is a broken game: not too cracked to be unplayable, but fissured enough to make it overly-frustrating, and no matter how much the “get gud” crowd may gaslight you, take solace in knowing you’re not hallucinating. Enemies have extraordinary sightlines coupled with pinpoint accuracy, and while such design schemes have been successfully used in other ventures (most notably All Ghillied Up), here it’s so aggravating I’m convinced it was not intended. The sultry of apologists out there will claim Far Cry to be this strategy shooter wherein you’re meant to observe a post from a distance, mark the goons on your map, and employ some gambit to cull them with minimal self-injury. First off, that’s not true (more on that later), but secondly, even if it was, I would have no problem with it -- not every game needs to be a run-and-gunner, and it certainly fits in with the premise of a lone wolf taking on an army of mercs. The problem is stealth is completely defective due to those aforementioned sightlines imbuing every approach of yours with a 90% chance of failure, and when one guy is alerted, the rest of his cohorts gain awareness, no matter their distance from patient zero. Yes, it’s easy enough to shake them off, however their displaced movements combined with a refusal to return to previous walking patterns ruins any pre-planned stratagem you may have had.
Highlighting with your binoculars is also faulty, not only because it’s impossible to catch every single thug, but because even those you successfully snag end-up rendered as confusing triangles on the minimap (a minimap that, for the record, does not indicate elevation and goes outright bonkers whenever you enter an interior). And to any gamers out there thinking they can deal with miscellaneous mercs via playing it by ear in the field, understand Far Cry’s directional sound simply isn’t good enough to warrant discerning NPC locations via dialogue. Taking all of this into account, I genuinely found there was no point in trying to be stealthy because you were eventually going to get caught, meaning it was better to find some decent cover and simply trade fire from the get-go. Sadly, this is where the “pinpoint accuracy” dilemma comes into play as your HP gets knocked down very quickly. Against a few enemies I could see these duels being fine, but 9 times out of 10 you’re up against squads of 12+ men coming at you from multiple angles. Sure you can pick-&-pop, however even this tactic is impacted by numerous confounding variables: enemies are capable of seeing and shooting through walls; the many acres of foliage block your view but not theirs; grenades lack an indicator; RPGs, snipers, and helo gunners are potential one-hit KOs, and, worst of all, you have a bloody checkpoint system that forces you to literally reset a block should you not reach that invisible star barrel.
Now I’m sure the cost-sunk fanboys will come out of the gutter to tell me I was playing the game wrong, that I needed to be smarter and slower in my approaches, so let me give you normies a mind twist I alluded to above - Far Cry has TONS of mandatory combat! I obviously can’t speak for the game as a whole, but in the 4+ hours I played my character was put into many close-quarters situations wherein he was charged with taking out an entire attack force without ANY prior opportunities for stealth. One section has you defending a fort as it's assaulted by Black Hawks and rocketeering boats; another sees you paragliding from a cliff only to conveniently meet a chopper midair; and still an additional instance involves you battling your way across a ship deck to a spare lifeboat. You got vehicular shootings, air-deployed goons, alarm triggers, and more I’m sure I'm missing, all while contending with the aforestated issues of impeccable vision cones and deadeye accuracy.
And look, maybe the game was intended to be hard. Granted, I was playing on the normal difficulty (and consequently expected an appropriately-tuned experience…), but that could’ve very well been the intended challenge, and certainly plenty of franchises ala Ghosts 'n Goblins exist for the sole purpose of vexing buyers. Fair enough. But anyone who goes around telling you the game is a black box masterpiece or deliberately-geared towards “strategic” playthroughs is lying to you. I said it before and I’ll say it again- Far Cry 1 is broken, and what’s funny is I didn’t even make it to the part of the game that most reviewers agree is unfairly brutal: the Trigen (see my guy GManLives’s video to get an in-depth breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmkCCih1T00&).
Now, from what I understand, Far Cry wasn’t always like this. It was only after the release of a patch called 1.5 that a number of these defects arose, and such an update must’ve severely affected the source code as no mod exists to absolve it to this day. I prefaced this critique by mentioning FCAM as it does address some of the qualms: enemy viewing is no longer extraneous, mercs can’t shoot through walls, and you have a quick save button in the menu (negating checkpoints). These are definitely great implementations, but the elephant in the room is that the other issues aren’t tackled, and in my honest opinion those are still big enough to justify labeling the game too knackered to be worth a run.
I don’t want to sound like it’s all bad as there is a lot to enjoy about the gameplay. The shooting is still great with weapons handling fantastically (in fact, one of my reservations with FCAM is that it adds iron sights when the vanilla aiming was better), and enemy AI is pretty decent: some will amble in the open stupidly, but the majority are either flanking, fragging, or going prone to draw you out/avoid fire. When it comes to duking it out with patrols you really do have to be smart, and at its best Far Cry genuinely makes you feel like Rambo, sneaking through the wilderness against unsuspecting nobodies. It’s a shame those moments are few-and-far-between.
The technical facets aren’t particularly noteworthy. Far Cry was no doubt impressive when it came out, helping popularize what I’ve called the deserted island trope via its coastal beachfront, submersible waterways, yellow-green vegetation, and bright open sky, and that art design remains pretty dang gorgeous to this day. That said, the graphics are regrettably held back by outdated texture streaming that glazes everything with an atypical fuzz. Leaves, grass, and streams are generally fine, however, everything else, from trunks to the skyline, are way too hazy, as though the cameraman forgot to leave the autofocus on. Hampering things further is improper polygon modeling for the slopes, forcing you to indulge in the tried-and-true tactic of bunnyhopping to ascend a hill.
With regards to the music, I obviously didn’t beat enough of the game to rate its OST minus the main theme, which I felt was a bit too bombastic sounding despite being well-composed. SFX, on the other hand, is pretty good; firing and reloading mechanisms are sharp, whilst footsteps boast that soft yet distinct thud you’d expect from forestral traversal. I did feel the game overused stock animal sounds for fauna that were pretty blatantly not in the world (nothing but birds), though I understand Crytek was trying to conceive an untamed atmosphere.
Voice acting, at the point I was in the story, was pretty negative. NPCs are as hit-or-miss as you’d expect in a Ubisoft product, while main character Jack Carver literally comes across like an 80 action hero parody. Perhaps that was deliberate, but something tells me it wasn’t given how good his handler, Doyle, is. Played by a guy named Cornell Womack, Doyle has one of those genuinely pleasant voices like the Transistor, making you want to follow whatever plan he's laid out.
Sadly, he doesn’t have much of a presence in the early parts of the narrative, the whole of which I cannot give an oversight on due to the lack of subtitles and dedicating audio settings for vocals. Wikipedia provides the following synopsis (“Jack Carver has left his mysterious and bitter past behind him and dropped out of society to run a boat-charter business in the South Pacific. He is hired by a female journalist named Valerie Constantine to take her secretly to an uncharted island in Micronesia. After Val takes off on her own with a jet ski, Jack's boat is blown apart by a rocket, but he survives by diving into the water”), which sounds pretty cool, but having played the beginning I can tell you it’s nonsense. Outside of an amazing intro showcasing said boat attack, there’s NOTHING about Jack’s background or why he was even sailing the rig in the first place (Far Cry must be one of those games that summarized things in its CD case menu).
But look, it’s not like a great plot would’ve been able to overcome the gameplay dilemmas. While Far Cry deserves its place in history, it’s best left aside as a relic of over-ambition.
NOTES
-You can’t cook grenades.
-Lip syncing is surprisingly on point, even if the mouth movements are grandiose.
This is a review of the first DLC for Control. As such spoilers will be discussed for the vanilla game
For my critique of the base game, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311820/
For my critique of the second expansion pack, AWE, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311826/
The Foundation is an appropriate title, taking place in the bottomest rung of the Oldest House whilst Jesse uncovers the origins of the FBC HQ. Is it worth tackling? Well, considering it’s basically a post-story main mission, there’s no reason not to, even as the gameplay starts to feel repetitive.
Story-wise, Foundation plays like a glorified sidequest wherein an extradimensional threat is wreaking havoc on the Oldest House. This time around, the threat is an actual part of the Astral Plane, but functionally it doesn’t play out any differently from the myriad of Altered Items Jesse has had to quell before. It is a little nice learning more about The Board; however, unless you were really into the lore of the vanilla game, I don’t see that being a selling point for casual gamers. Regarding the discovery of the Oldest House’s past, that’s unfortunately divulged via more good old-fashioned tape recordings which somehow drag on longer than anything you’ll hear in the base game.
From a gameplay-perspective, Foundation adds two new powers to Jesse’s repertoire you’ll learn at different points of the game (no doubt done in a vain attempt at preserving the pseudo-Metroidvania framing of the DLC): one which allows her to summon forth crystals at marked locations, and one which allows her Service Weapon to shatter said crystals. Neither can be used outside of the new areas, nor are they utilized for intricate puzzle-platforming in spite of their potential.
A couple new enemy archetypes have been concocted, though only one really stood-out: pickaxe-wielding Hiss with deeper health bars. While they are a bit of a challenge when placed alongside other foes, they ultimately couldn’t help feeling like reskinned axmen from the first Alan Wake.
Visually, Foundation takes place in a similar setting to the base game’s quarry area, albeit one caked with iron oxide dust ala Mars. As a sucker for all things red, I considered it beautiful, the addition of dust plumes and footprints adding to the aesthetic.
But yeah, those are about the only fresh facets here. Foundation is a fine enough diversion to pass the time, and I did appreciate seeing a more confident Jesse, however I can’t say you’ll be recalling its contents anytime in the future.
NOTES
-There’s a side mission that presumably sets-up the events of Control 2.
-No new music tracks.
For my critique of the base game, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311820/
For my critique of the second expansion pack, AWE, see https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1311826/
The Foundation is an appropriate title, taking place in the bottomest rung of the Oldest House whilst Jesse uncovers the origins of the FBC HQ. Is it worth tackling? Well, considering it’s basically a post-story main mission, there’s no reason not to, even as the gameplay starts to feel repetitive.
Story-wise, Foundation plays like a glorified sidequest wherein an extradimensional threat is wreaking havoc on the Oldest House. This time around, the threat is an actual part of the Astral Plane, but functionally it doesn’t play out any differently from the myriad of Altered Items Jesse has had to quell before. It is a little nice learning more about The Board; however, unless you were really into the lore of the vanilla game, I don’t see that being a selling point for casual gamers. Regarding the discovery of the Oldest House’s past, that’s unfortunately divulged via more good old-fashioned tape recordings which somehow drag on longer than anything you’ll hear in the base game.
From a gameplay-perspective, Foundation adds two new powers to Jesse’s repertoire you’ll learn at different points of the game (no doubt done in a vain attempt at preserving the pseudo-Metroidvania framing of the DLC): one which allows her to summon forth crystals at marked locations, and one which allows her Service Weapon to shatter said crystals. Neither can be used outside of the new areas, nor are they utilized for intricate puzzle-platforming in spite of their potential.
A couple new enemy archetypes have been concocted, though only one really stood-out: pickaxe-wielding Hiss with deeper health bars. While they are a bit of a challenge when placed alongside other foes, they ultimately couldn’t help feeling like reskinned axmen from the first Alan Wake.
Visually, Foundation takes place in a similar setting to the base game’s quarry area, albeit one caked with iron oxide dust ala Mars. As a sucker for all things red, I considered it beautiful, the addition of dust plumes and footprints adding to the aesthetic.
But yeah, those are about the only fresh facets here. Foundation is a fine enough diversion to pass the time, and I did appreciate seeing a more confident Jesse, however I can’t say you’ll be recalling its contents anytime in the future.
NOTES
-There’s a side mission that presumably sets-up the events of Control 2.
-No new music tracks.
2016
I’ll begin by saying that this review should not be taken seriously: in fact, I don’t even know if you can call it a review. Like with Jet Set Radio (https://www.backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/456111/), I have given up trying to play this game because of mechanics I consider to be flawed to the point of making completionist endeavors fruitless. As such, little more than 2.5 hours have been logged, meaning there is no doubt I have missed out content that would better inform a real opinion.
So why did I quit on Enter the Gungeon? It comes down to one term: RNG. We’ve all played games that adopted Diablo’s loot system wherein beating areas culminated in a randomized treasure that was either groan-inducing or worth the trouble. Now, imagine that applied to multiple aspects of a game: the quality of weapons you get, the items you find (or don’t find), the layout of the map, the bosses, the bosses’ lairs, and enemy spawn points. Imagine all of those features lathered with scattershot probability and zero-sense of progression and you will hopefully see why I ended up abandoning ship.
As ETG is a roguelike, some fans may claim that I am simply not used to what are ultimately standard components of the genre. It is true that ETG is my first official entry into roguelikes, but a little research shows that what I am complaining about isn’t conventional amongst them. Yes, procedurally generated rooms are common; however, the range on their drops is definitively capped, and, more importantly, you get an idea that you are advancing forward. In ETG, neither of those things are present - one run can see you instantly acquire a flame-shooting shotgun that allows you to blitz right on through; the next can literally give you nothing, forcing you to try to make it to the end with only your starter pistol.
I cannot stress enough just how irritating this whole enterprise is. Player skill is thrown-out the window in favor of a dice roll that makes the difference between a grind-a-thon and smooth-sailing. Sure, you can technically engage in some form of strategy ala tactfully dodging and returning fire, but given the Bullet Hell frenzy of enemy (and boss) attacks, this, at best, drags the pacing of fights to a crawl (antithetical to the nature of schmups) or, at worst, makes them feel like cheat-fests, especially on higher floors where the defense and attack power of these monsters increases. It’s not that such brawls are particularly hard, it’s that the risk-reward ratio is inherently corrupted.
The combat isn't the only thing that takes a hit as a result of the RNG armaments. Exploration is severely discouraged since clearing chambers requires risking your HP in slugfests with swarms of creatures: why bother unveiling the fog of war when the rewards aren’t guaranteed to match the risks? You’re better off immediately engaging the head honcho upon finding the entrance to his/her abode than frolicking around the rest of the map in the hopes of discovering some secret or public cache; there is literally no point in blasting your way through demon-after-demon if you’re not guaranteed something tangible.
To counter the stupidity of this game design, Enter the Gungeon throws in a few alleviating elements, though you’ll quickly find that each of these holds severe flaws that undermine their very purpose! First are the presence of two stores: one on the hub surface, the other inside. The former sells new weapons with currency earned from beating bosses, but these just get inserted into the loot generator amidst the other useless schlock; the second are a variety of items, but these too are subject to the RNG governing the game as a whole, meaning one layout the vender can have healing items, keys, or new guns you desperately need, the other more inadequate junk.
Second is the coloration of contraband chests- you’ll quickly learn that the hues of depositories dictate the quality of their spoils. Once again, though, the chance-based apparatus combined with the limited number of obtainable keys makes the premise an inherent gamble: you’re going to waste time and potentially hitpoints looking for a lockbox, and then further use up (and/or spend money on) a latchkey, only to get a freakin’ crossbow after the endeavor.
Both these pathetic attempts at checking the RNG are degraded by an additional problem- the lack of descriptions on objects. With guns, this is tolerable since you can quickly surmise the power/spread of one via shooting it; with other weapons, though, it’s hit-or-miss. Examining any in your inventory brings up a description that may explain what it does, but just as often opts for a vague mythological blurb akin to a Pokedex entry. You’re better off consulting the wiki than squandering gold on something that may not even help your playthrough (whether or not that’s a valid solution for a video game is up for debate).
That vagueness extends to a lot of features in Enter the Gungeon. Besides a small tutorial that teaches the basics of jumping and shooting, you’re not given any instructions on other facets, like elemental effects or what to do about that weird guy in the sewer. Regardless, I don’t find this to be a particularly bad part of the game since those are minor in the grand scheme of things.
It’s a shame that the RNG taints things because almost every other aspect of Enter the Gungeon is solid. The sprite-based character models and medieval-flavored architecture bask under a dark rainbow of colored enviros, making for a ghastily vibrant world. The procedural algorithm does a decent job at freshening stages up each time you have a go at them, and the inclusion of numerous breakable objects is both surprising and welcoming, especially during shootouts. Combat flows fine (the number of guns at your cold dead fingertips has been covered extensively by other publications), and the 80s-esque arcade OST does a good job naturally transitioning between vestiges whilst keeping the adrenaline of firefights pumping.
That being said, I said “almost” for a reason- small gripes come up, such as the reused SFX for the aforementioned destroyable objects, minor ability variations between each of the controllable protagonists, the sparse story against the grand lore, and the lackluster design of most of the beasties (though the bosses look pretty sweet).
But even if these were resolved, they wouldn’t be able to overcome the faults I raved enough about earlier. Again though, this isn’t a legitimate review, and clearly a lot of people have had tons of fun with Enter the Gungeon and its randomness. I unfortunately wasn’t one of them. Maybe it’d be better with multiplayer….
So why did I quit on Enter the Gungeon? It comes down to one term: RNG. We’ve all played games that adopted Diablo’s loot system wherein beating areas culminated in a randomized treasure that was either groan-inducing or worth the trouble. Now, imagine that applied to multiple aspects of a game: the quality of weapons you get, the items you find (or don’t find), the layout of the map, the bosses, the bosses’ lairs, and enemy spawn points. Imagine all of those features lathered with scattershot probability and zero-sense of progression and you will hopefully see why I ended up abandoning ship.
As ETG is a roguelike, some fans may claim that I am simply not used to what are ultimately standard components of the genre. It is true that ETG is my first official entry into roguelikes, but a little research shows that what I am complaining about isn’t conventional amongst them. Yes, procedurally generated rooms are common; however, the range on their drops is definitively capped, and, more importantly, you get an idea that you are advancing forward. In ETG, neither of those things are present - one run can see you instantly acquire a flame-shooting shotgun that allows you to blitz right on through; the next can literally give you nothing, forcing you to try to make it to the end with only your starter pistol.
I cannot stress enough just how irritating this whole enterprise is. Player skill is thrown-out the window in favor of a dice roll that makes the difference between a grind-a-thon and smooth-sailing. Sure, you can technically engage in some form of strategy ala tactfully dodging and returning fire, but given the Bullet Hell frenzy of enemy (and boss) attacks, this, at best, drags the pacing of fights to a crawl (antithetical to the nature of schmups) or, at worst, makes them feel like cheat-fests, especially on higher floors where the defense and attack power of these monsters increases. It’s not that such brawls are particularly hard, it’s that the risk-reward ratio is inherently corrupted.
The combat isn't the only thing that takes a hit as a result of the RNG armaments. Exploration is severely discouraged since clearing chambers requires risking your HP in slugfests with swarms of creatures: why bother unveiling the fog of war when the rewards aren’t guaranteed to match the risks? You’re better off immediately engaging the head honcho upon finding the entrance to his/her abode than frolicking around the rest of the map in the hopes of discovering some secret or public cache; there is literally no point in blasting your way through demon-after-demon if you’re not guaranteed something tangible.
To counter the stupidity of this game design, Enter the Gungeon throws in a few alleviating elements, though you’ll quickly find that each of these holds severe flaws that undermine their very purpose! First are the presence of two stores: one on the hub surface, the other inside. The former sells new weapons with currency earned from beating bosses, but these just get inserted into the loot generator amidst the other useless schlock; the second are a variety of items, but these too are subject to the RNG governing the game as a whole, meaning one layout the vender can have healing items, keys, or new guns you desperately need, the other more inadequate junk.
Second is the coloration of contraband chests- you’ll quickly learn that the hues of depositories dictate the quality of their spoils. Once again, though, the chance-based apparatus combined with the limited number of obtainable keys makes the premise an inherent gamble: you’re going to waste time and potentially hitpoints looking for a lockbox, and then further use up (and/or spend money on) a latchkey, only to get a freakin’ crossbow after the endeavor.
Both these pathetic attempts at checking the RNG are degraded by an additional problem- the lack of descriptions on objects. With guns, this is tolerable since you can quickly surmise the power/spread of one via shooting it; with other weapons, though, it’s hit-or-miss. Examining any in your inventory brings up a description that may explain what it does, but just as often opts for a vague mythological blurb akin to a Pokedex entry. You’re better off consulting the wiki than squandering gold on something that may not even help your playthrough (whether or not that’s a valid solution for a video game is up for debate).
That vagueness extends to a lot of features in Enter the Gungeon. Besides a small tutorial that teaches the basics of jumping and shooting, you’re not given any instructions on other facets, like elemental effects or what to do about that weird guy in the sewer. Regardless, I don’t find this to be a particularly bad part of the game since those are minor in the grand scheme of things.
It’s a shame that the RNG taints things because almost every other aspect of Enter the Gungeon is solid. The sprite-based character models and medieval-flavored architecture bask under a dark rainbow of colored enviros, making for a ghastily vibrant world. The procedural algorithm does a decent job at freshening stages up each time you have a go at them, and the inclusion of numerous breakable objects is both surprising and welcoming, especially during shootouts. Combat flows fine (the number of guns at your cold dead fingertips has been covered extensively by other publications), and the 80s-esque arcade OST does a good job naturally transitioning between vestiges whilst keeping the adrenaline of firefights pumping.
That being said, I said “almost” for a reason- small gripes come up, such as the reused SFX for the aforementioned destroyable objects, minor ability variations between each of the controllable protagonists, the sparse story against the grand lore, and the lackluster design of most of the beasties (though the bosses look pretty sweet).
But even if these were resolved, they wouldn’t be able to overcome the faults I raved enough about earlier. Again though, this isn’t a legitimate review, and clearly a lot of people have had tons of fun with Enter the Gungeon and its randomness. I unfortunately wasn’t one of them. Maybe it’d be better with multiplayer….
1985
Played on the NES Classic
With the recent release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder on Switch, I thought I’d take a look at the original entry that started it all back in the day. Enter SMB, an independent platformer that not only boosted its parent company into AAA status, but revolutionized the video game industry as a whole. Question is, like most classics, how well does it hold up? Unfortunately the answer is not well, not well at all.
The problem is pretty straightforward- Mario controls like a cloud. He has an incredibly floaty jump that makes it difficult to gauge his landing zone, and while it would’ve been possible to eventually adapt to this format, it’s significantly compounded by a secondary issue, that being the momentum slide: every time the plumber alights, he stumbles a couple of steps before stopping. On platforms of a decent length with no enemies, it’s of course fine, but being a Mario game built on precise leaps and last-minute dodges, it ends up turning into a frustrating endeavor chockful of deaths you can be sure were [mostly] not your fault.
Now you may be thinking well Red, clearly that was done to encourage rapid forward progression over start-and-stop bounding, to which I say no. Sure, you can find a myriad of YouTube videos showcasing players who mastered the game’s levels to the point of effortless completion, but for fellow casuals out there, the design is not quite there. Plenty of zones, particularly in the later worlds and Bowser’s castles, involve you having to time your jump, and they’re simply not something you can rush through.
On top of all this, SMB (obviously) lacks modern platformer additions we’ve all gotten used to which are consequently hard to remove from our muscle memory, namely midair adjustments and exact collision detection. With the former, you guys know how, in most jump-’n’-runs, you’re capable of changing orientation and free-fall direction whilst in the middle of a bound? Yeah, you can only do the first here, and so expect a number of premature deaths out of that natural gamer reflex of trying to haphazardly adjust during an airy saltation.
The latter is pretty self-explanatory: either because of the early pixel models or improper coding, you can’t always determine when you’re in proximity of getting struck by a foe or vice-versa, and while nowhere near an annoyance, it bears notation regardless. If you need more salt in your wounds, the A button becomes intermittently unresponsive whenever you hold down B to run.
Don’t get me wrong, SMB is, at times, a fun game- the sheer amount of creativity Nintendo shoved into the cartridge, from enemy variety to secret areas, is admirable, and I was consistently surprised by every new addition I encountered between levels. But this is a game I could not beat without exploiting the NES Classic’s save scumming feature, and though I respect OG players who succeeded with three lives in the old days, it’s not a game I can recommend to newcomers in good faith.
NOTES
-Not much to say about the technical facets: 8-bit Mario’s sound, music, and graphics have all entered pop culture lexicon to the point of exquisite renown. I did experience some issues wherein enemy models would fade in-and-out, and most of the visual diversity you witness seemingly derives primarily from color-palette swaps over fresh arthouse assets, but those are slim pickings for a title built by a very small team with limited resources.
-I will say, I do wish there had been more tracks composed for the game as you’ll only ever hear four: the seminal main theme, Bowser’s Castle, underwater, and underground.
-Yes, I did beat ALL the levels (abstaining from exploiting the 1-2 warp zip).
-The fireflower can turn stages (including fights with Bowser) into a gloriously-igneous charade. True, there are a lot of dangers which risk you losing it, but part of me wonders if Nintendo intended the iconic power-up to be this OP.
-On that note, I wasn’t a fan of a hit while in fireflower status knocking you all the way down to mini Mario instead of depowered big Mario first (a sign that I’ve gotten too used to later entries).
With the recent release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder on Switch, I thought I’d take a look at the original entry that started it all back in the day. Enter SMB, an independent platformer that not only boosted its parent company into AAA status, but revolutionized the video game industry as a whole. Question is, like most classics, how well does it hold up? Unfortunately the answer is not well, not well at all.
The problem is pretty straightforward- Mario controls like a cloud. He has an incredibly floaty jump that makes it difficult to gauge his landing zone, and while it would’ve been possible to eventually adapt to this format, it’s significantly compounded by a secondary issue, that being the momentum slide: every time the plumber alights, he stumbles a couple of steps before stopping. On platforms of a decent length with no enemies, it’s of course fine, but being a Mario game built on precise leaps and last-minute dodges, it ends up turning into a frustrating endeavor chockful of deaths you can be sure were [mostly] not your fault.
Now you may be thinking well Red, clearly that was done to encourage rapid forward progression over start-and-stop bounding, to which I say no. Sure, you can find a myriad of YouTube videos showcasing players who mastered the game’s levels to the point of effortless completion, but for fellow casuals out there, the design is not quite there. Plenty of zones, particularly in the later worlds and Bowser’s castles, involve you having to time your jump, and they’re simply not something you can rush through.
On top of all this, SMB (obviously) lacks modern platformer additions we’ve all gotten used to which are consequently hard to remove from our muscle memory, namely midair adjustments and exact collision detection. With the former, you guys know how, in most jump-’n’-runs, you’re capable of changing orientation and free-fall direction whilst in the middle of a bound? Yeah, you can only do the first here, and so expect a number of premature deaths out of that natural gamer reflex of trying to haphazardly adjust during an airy saltation.
The latter is pretty self-explanatory: either because of the early pixel models or improper coding, you can’t always determine when you’re in proximity of getting struck by a foe or vice-versa, and while nowhere near an annoyance, it bears notation regardless. If you need more salt in your wounds, the A button becomes intermittently unresponsive whenever you hold down B to run.
Don’t get me wrong, SMB is, at times, a fun game- the sheer amount of creativity Nintendo shoved into the cartridge, from enemy variety to secret areas, is admirable, and I was consistently surprised by every new addition I encountered between levels. But this is a game I could not beat without exploiting the NES Classic’s save scumming feature, and though I respect OG players who succeeded with three lives in the old days, it’s not a game I can recommend to newcomers in good faith.
NOTES
-Not much to say about the technical facets: 8-bit Mario’s sound, music, and graphics have all entered pop culture lexicon to the point of exquisite renown. I did experience some issues wherein enemy models would fade in-and-out, and most of the visual diversity you witness seemingly derives primarily from color-palette swaps over fresh arthouse assets, but those are slim pickings for a title built by a very small team with limited resources.
-I will say, I do wish there had been more tracks composed for the game as you’ll only ever hear four: the seminal main theme, Bowser’s Castle, underwater, and underground.
-Yes, I did beat ALL the levels (abstaining from exploiting the 1-2 warp zip).
-The fireflower can turn stages (including fights with Bowser) into a gloriously-igneous charade. True, there are a lot of dangers which risk you losing it, but part of me wonders if Nintendo intended the iconic power-up to be this OP.
-On that note, I wasn’t a fan of a hit while in fireflower status knocking you all the way down to mini Mario instead of depowered big Mario first (a sign that I’ve gotten too used to later entries).
2016
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
Firewatch is a graphic adventure developed by Campo Santo in 2016. I’d call it a rare case of a walking sim penetrating the zeitgeist, but seeing as how a number of titles have done just that (good & bad), it seems they’ve outgrown the constraints of a formerly niche genre. Still, even within those parameters, Firewatch was one of the more notable releases given the large amount of press it garnered; I distinctly remember all the major news outlets and indie rags raving over this one as though it were the Second Coming.
While there’s no such thing as bad publicity, such acclamation never bodes well for a smaller-scale product as it inherently sets expectations too high- expectations that should never be handed to a walking sim of all things. It means certain newcomers will enter the game anticipating great highs, only to foam at the mouth when their unrealistic standards aren’t met- compare the Metacritic audience scores of Gone Home & Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture with The Stanley Parable (a game that didn’t get much pre-release hype) and you’ll see what I mean.
Thankfully, Firewatch wasn’t hit as hard by review trolls, however I’d still advise going into it with tempered hopes due to an inconsistent narrative. The premise is you’re controlling a, surprise surprise, fire watcher named Henry at Shoshone National Forest in the 1980s. Ole Hank arrived to escape some demons from his past, and in the process has inadvertently sparked a kinship with fellow lookout Delilah. Without delving into spoilers, things start off fine before the two begin experiencing weird events at the park; events that appear intrinsically tied to them.
We’ve seen this “Stranger in a Strange Land” set-up replicated in multiple pieces of media, and the reason it works is because it’s perfectly fine-tuned to the needs of any mystery: both the player and protagonist are in the same boat as far as being fish-out-of-water, and the unknown factor pervades every element of the world. Firewatch initially does a fantastic job molding this template for its own story, but where it goes wrong (IMO) is in its failure to sufficiently connect those introductory moments with the second half of the game.+ In some ways, it feels like you’re playing two different tales as everything about the first part is only tangentially related to its narratological successor, and it shouldn’t come as a shock when I say the latter isn’t as good. It abandons the grounded framework in favor of more outlandish and conspiratorial traits, which yeah, technically make sense given the 80s backdrop, but which consequently haven’t aged as well due to that generational restriction. For all the criticism the ending has received, I actually did appreciate it harkening back to the original atmosphere, though keep in mind it has plenty of issues in its own right(++), one of those being its reliance on optional dialogue. See, you spend most, if not all of, Firewatch strolling from Point A to Point B, and to fill in the empty space, the developers threw in a bunch of conversations you may instigate via telling Delilah about an observation of something in your surroundings. The problem is a good chunk of these are actually necessary to understanding the endgame revelations, meaning if you missed out on any of them while playing, you’ll probably be less-than-satisfied by aspects of the finale (yes, this did happen to me, despite my extensive reconnaissance for all things examinable).
Besides the story, the biggest appeal of Firewatch was clearly intended to be the characters, and on that front we once again get mixed results. Henry is a rather stoic individual whose personality is primarily shaped via a good old-fashioned dialogue wheel. It’s a bit of an unfortunate decision as, while I understand why the writers did it, it ultimately comes across as arbitrary due to the lack of any branching effects -- the yarn unwinds exactly as it was planned, and though you’ll obviously hear different lines from Delilah, it doesn’t culminate in multiple endings, nor substantially differentiate the plot to warrant extra playthroughs. And because there are no tangible corollaries, the result is Henry turning into a rather forgettable demi-avatar in spite of his interesting backstory.
Delilah, on the other hand, fares a lot better due to being an unmodifiable character, and while it’s true you can somewhat affect her personality through the timing/type of rejoinder (or lack thereof), she’s not going to deviate from her core personality, that being a middle-aged smart@ss with just the right balance of snark and drama. Due to the slice-of-life nature of the script, I wouldn’t say she lights up the game the way other charismatic females have done before, but she definitely goes a long way towards counterbalancing Henry’s phlegmaticness.
Sadly, the biggest problem with the two’s relationship is the absence of strong chemistry between the voice actors. I know this is a highly-subjective complaint, but I personally never felt a genuine bond connecting the pair the way I did with say Simon & Catherine in Soma or even Cole & Moya in InFAMOUS. The performers (Rich Sommer/Cissy Jones) do a good job with what they’re given, but it seems each was cast based on their individual audition tapes over shared screen test results. And considering Firewatch’s heavy reliance on their banter, this deficiency is more detrimental to the experience than probably envisioned.
There are a few other miscellaneous voices you’ll hear over your journey, and though hit-or-miss, none stay long enough to leave a lasting impression. On the flipside, the score by Chris Remo is quietly memorable, usually taking a backseat to the general exploration before crescendoing during a dramatic story beat (a testament to the adept music editing). As you can imagine from the cover art, Firewatch indulges in those timeless melodies typically associated with campfire gatherings, the bulk of them conveyed via a good old-fashioned acoustic guitar (or what sounds like one anyway). That’s not to say Remo exclusively abides by it (I recall numerous percussion-focused tracks, as well as one synth-heavy composition) but they are definitely in the minority and not quite as potent as their stringed predecessors.
Regarding the SFX it’s surprisingly deep, with distinguishable clangs contingent on the item and impact surfaces’ material: cans, bottles, books, and balls vary not only amidst each other, but also among their own kin depending on where you toss them (grass versus a bed versus hardwood etc….). I didn’t detect divergences based on velocity; however, it’s not like it matters because you’ll almost never have to engage with this physics system, making the set-up admirable yet moot (note, I say this meaning the game should’ve incorporated it more, not that it should’ve been abandoned by the engineers).
Where Firewatch’s sound stumbles is in its ambience, or rather absence of ambience. Despite being set in a verdure ecosystem, you’ll hardly run into any animals, and when you do hear calls tied to certain species (birds, bugs) 9 times out of 10 they lack a distinguishable source. Even customary dins like forestal breezes and generator hums feel more stocky than manually-conceived, and it’s consequently a bit of a shame that the game has to fallback on its OST in lieu of an adequate soundscape.
But it’s the visuals you’ve no doubt heard the most raving about, and on that front there’s definitely a lot of truth. Those of you who have read my past reviews will know I’ve never been big on Unity games, and while Firewatch still has a few of the engine’s rougher elements (overly-sleek rocks, clipping, uncanny appendages) this is definitely a case where virtuosity outweighs defects. Campo Santo has brought to life that romanticized outdoorsy aesthetic I’m sure every kid dreamed of at some point in their life; you know, that fantasy of running through an orchard decked in springtime hues as the sparrows chirped on yonder. Much like Boggly Woods or the Villa Auditore, this is one of those serene video game locations you want to spend time in for the sake of inner peace, and it’s honestly not surprising why the devs threw in a free roam mode. The graphic design may seem repetitive at first, but look closer and you’ll notice a lot of underrated details accompanying Shoshone, chief among these being the sheer amount of tree genera. Like Dear Esther did with rocks, Firewatch has assembled a smorgasbord of perennial taxonomies to behold, a chart in your post identifying their specific classification should you wish to know it. Couple it all with some fantastic shadowcasting conditional on their soft sways and cloud overseers and you can imagine where the game’s immersion factor comes from. Considering how often trees get copy/pasted in video games, even in ones focused on exploration, this was a pleasant surprise and one I hope players take note of.
Unfortunately, exploration is significantly infringed upon by the map design, which is deliberately restrictive for no discernible reason outside of elongating the story. You’re forced to stick to set paths as every other avenue is deliberately blocked-off, and while a number of these are reasonable (unscalable mountains), it literally makes no sense why Henry can’t bypass others ala stomping on piles of bramble or ascending a small outcrop. It’s not an aggravating issue by any means, however the obviousness of the scheme coupled with large backtracking renders it a bit displeasing.
Gameplay, there isn’t much to say- per their namesake, walking sims are about walking, and you’re going to be doing just that…A LOT. You can pull out a map, compass, and of course radio, rotate certain objects, and dash to your heart’s content without worrying about a stamina meter. On the flip side, all other actions (climbing/descending/leaping) are purely automated and consequently come across as a little outdated by eighth generation standards. Still, I’ll give immense credit to Campo Santo for at least programming two different animations depending on whether you’re running or trudging.
In the end, though, it’s clear your appreciation of Firewatch will rest on its story over anything else, and contrary to what critics say, there’s a greater divagation of opinions towards that component. My spoiler-free tl;dr is you’ll enjoy the journey, but more than likely forget about it the second you move onto your next game. And for some, that’ll be sufficient.
NOTES
-For a game about fire safety, did no one else find it bizarre how Henry keeps two flammable gas tanks right next to his tower???
-I can’t be the only person who thinks Henry sounds like a young Ron Desantis?
-There’s a notes menu completely devoid of anything, making me wonder if it was an abandoned feature accidentally left in the game.
-You get a camera to photograph random stuff, and while you’re occasionally advised to do so by Delilah, it’s never mandated and has no impact on the story (making me wonder if it was another abandoned feature as well). You’re able to upload the photos you take with it on a separate menu in the title screen, but when I tried to do so it literally caused the game to freeze up on me twice. Combine that with the fact that the camera only holds 20 shots and you’re better off using the screen capture function (for PC gamers anyway).
-The rotate function is severely underrated in terms of its animations- I loved being able to slowly peel/unpeel an object from left-to-right/vice-versa.
-You’ll find a lot of airplane books written by the same author. Makes me wonder if they had some concept involving him that never came to fruition.
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+Firewatch initially spends an inordinate amount of time on Henry reckoning with his dementia-ridden wife and her hostile parents before completely forgetting about it until the end. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense for Henry to stop prioritizing that aspect of his life in light of more pressing matters, but a more furnished script would’ve found a way to connect those introductory psychological anguishes with the later stresses/toils Henry deals with. As it stands, it comes across as a half-baked way of giving him depth that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.
The larger issue, however, is how Firewatch sets-up a genuinely better premise before succumbing elsewhere. One of the introductory chapters sees Henry confront two teenage arsonists who later mysteriously vanish, and the idea of Henry and Delilah having to contend with a serial killer or other nefarious actor playing to their sense of isolation could’ve made for a tense ride! As it stands, the replacement is an overcomplicated scheme by a former scout’s father to derail the two from discovering the body of his son (whose cause of death is up for interpretation) hidden in a cave. Instead of doing the smart thing like, oh I don’t know, setting fire to the area or causing a permanent cave-in, he opts to engage in odd tactics like making Delilah and Henry believe they’re being spied on by the government. It honestly feels like the writers didn’t know how to characterize this antagonist (Ned Goodwin), leading to many holes in his personality: for instance, if his son’s death was truly an accident, why wouldn’t he be upfront about the situation from the get-go? On the opposite end, if he didn’t want anyone to find out, why not dispose of the body through one of the aforementioned means? Heck, why create a tape confessing everything to Henry? I know they claim he’s suffering from some mental illness, but that honestly seems lazy and disrespectful to actual sufferers.
As a result of these endeavors, Henry and Delilah also come off as really dumb. Like, if you think about it, it’s actually silly that they would believe the government would randomly conduct a psyop experiment on two federal employees integral to preserving a national forest (you know, a year after a huge fire ravaged Yellowstone, which the game explicitly references).
++I pretty much discussed the ending above, with Henry finding a recording from Goodwin detailing what transpired. I know there are plenty of fans who wanted something deeper or more sensational, but I truly didn’t mind a grounded resolution. As I explained, I found the whole conspiratorial thought process absurd from the get-go, so the concept that it was actually the machinations of a disturbed individual was a welcome return-to-form (even if late). No, my personal qualms (besides those outlined earlier) concerned the decision to not have Henry and Delilah meet in-person. I’m not against the concept since you never saw anyone before (clearly anyway), so it thematically would’ve been concise; however, the lame-@ss reasoning they give is amateurish, with Delilah acting out-of-character via opting to hightail out of Shoshone before Henry gets there for no logical reason. I’m sure the game’s apologists will come out with some justification, but no amount of reasoning can cover up it being utterly stupid and purely done for the sake of Campo Santo not having to craft & animate a new character model.
That said, I will give the devs props for maintaining a level of tension and unease during Henry’s trek to the evac site- when you’re capable of such a feat, it indicates real talent.
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Firewatch is a graphic adventure developed by Campo Santo in 2016. I’d call it a rare case of a walking sim penetrating the zeitgeist, but seeing as how a number of titles have done just that (good & bad), it seems they’ve outgrown the constraints of a formerly niche genre. Still, even within those parameters, Firewatch was one of the more notable releases given the large amount of press it garnered; I distinctly remember all the major news outlets and indie rags raving over this one as though it were the Second Coming.
While there’s no such thing as bad publicity, such acclamation never bodes well for a smaller-scale product as it inherently sets expectations too high- expectations that should never be handed to a walking sim of all things. It means certain newcomers will enter the game anticipating great highs, only to foam at the mouth when their unrealistic standards aren’t met- compare the Metacritic audience scores of Gone Home & Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture with The Stanley Parable (a game that didn’t get much pre-release hype) and you’ll see what I mean.
Thankfully, Firewatch wasn’t hit as hard by review trolls, however I’d still advise going into it with tempered hopes due to an inconsistent narrative. The premise is you’re controlling a, surprise surprise, fire watcher named Henry at Shoshone National Forest in the 1980s. Ole Hank arrived to escape some demons from his past, and in the process has inadvertently sparked a kinship with fellow lookout Delilah. Without delving into spoilers, things start off fine before the two begin experiencing weird events at the park; events that appear intrinsically tied to them.
We’ve seen this “Stranger in a Strange Land” set-up replicated in multiple pieces of media, and the reason it works is because it’s perfectly fine-tuned to the needs of any mystery: both the player and protagonist are in the same boat as far as being fish-out-of-water, and the unknown factor pervades every element of the world. Firewatch initially does a fantastic job molding this template for its own story, but where it goes wrong (IMO) is in its failure to sufficiently connect those introductory moments with the second half of the game.+ In some ways, it feels like you’re playing two different tales as everything about the first part is only tangentially related to its narratological successor, and it shouldn’t come as a shock when I say the latter isn’t as good. It abandons the grounded framework in favor of more outlandish and conspiratorial traits, which yeah, technically make sense given the 80s backdrop, but which consequently haven’t aged as well due to that generational restriction. For all the criticism the ending has received, I actually did appreciate it harkening back to the original atmosphere, though keep in mind it has plenty of issues in its own right(++), one of those being its reliance on optional dialogue. See, you spend most, if not all of, Firewatch strolling from Point A to Point B, and to fill in the empty space, the developers threw in a bunch of conversations you may instigate via telling Delilah about an observation of something in your surroundings. The problem is a good chunk of these are actually necessary to understanding the endgame revelations, meaning if you missed out on any of them while playing, you’ll probably be less-than-satisfied by aspects of the finale (yes, this did happen to me, despite my extensive reconnaissance for all things examinable).
Besides the story, the biggest appeal of Firewatch was clearly intended to be the characters, and on that front we once again get mixed results. Henry is a rather stoic individual whose personality is primarily shaped via a good old-fashioned dialogue wheel. It’s a bit of an unfortunate decision as, while I understand why the writers did it, it ultimately comes across as arbitrary due to the lack of any branching effects -- the yarn unwinds exactly as it was planned, and though you’ll obviously hear different lines from Delilah, it doesn’t culminate in multiple endings, nor substantially differentiate the plot to warrant extra playthroughs. And because there are no tangible corollaries, the result is Henry turning into a rather forgettable demi-avatar in spite of his interesting backstory.
Delilah, on the other hand, fares a lot better due to being an unmodifiable character, and while it’s true you can somewhat affect her personality through the timing/type of rejoinder (or lack thereof), she’s not going to deviate from her core personality, that being a middle-aged smart@ss with just the right balance of snark and drama. Due to the slice-of-life nature of the script, I wouldn’t say she lights up the game the way other charismatic females have done before, but she definitely goes a long way towards counterbalancing Henry’s phlegmaticness.
Sadly, the biggest problem with the two’s relationship is the absence of strong chemistry between the voice actors. I know this is a highly-subjective complaint, but I personally never felt a genuine bond connecting the pair the way I did with say Simon & Catherine in Soma or even Cole & Moya in InFAMOUS. The performers (Rich Sommer/Cissy Jones) do a good job with what they’re given, but it seems each was cast based on their individual audition tapes over shared screen test results. And considering Firewatch’s heavy reliance on their banter, this deficiency is more detrimental to the experience than probably envisioned.
There are a few other miscellaneous voices you’ll hear over your journey, and though hit-or-miss, none stay long enough to leave a lasting impression. On the flipside, the score by Chris Remo is quietly memorable, usually taking a backseat to the general exploration before crescendoing during a dramatic story beat (a testament to the adept music editing). As you can imagine from the cover art, Firewatch indulges in those timeless melodies typically associated with campfire gatherings, the bulk of them conveyed via a good old-fashioned acoustic guitar (or what sounds like one anyway). That’s not to say Remo exclusively abides by it (I recall numerous percussion-focused tracks, as well as one synth-heavy composition) but they are definitely in the minority and not quite as potent as their stringed predecessors.
Regarding the SFX it’s surprisingly deep, with distinguishable clangs contingent on the item and impact surfaces’ material: cans, bottles, books, and balls vary not only amidst each other, but also among their own kin depending on where you toss them (grass versus a bed versus hardwood etc….). I didn’t detect divergences based on velocity; however, it’s not like it matters because you’ll almost never have to engage with this physics system, making the set-up admirable yet moot (note, I say this meaning the game should’ve incorporated it more, not that it should’ve been abandoned by the engineers).
Where Firewatch’s sound stumbles is in its ambience, or rather absence of ambience. Despite being set in a verdure ecosystem, you’ll hardly run into any animals, and when you do hear calls tied to certain species (birds, bugs) 9 times out of 10 they lack a distinguishable source. Even customary dins like forestal breezes and generator hums feel more stocky than manually-conceived, and it’s consequently a bit of a shame that the game has to fallback on its OST in lieu of an adequate soundscape.
But it’s the visuals you’ve no doubt heard the most raving about, and on that front there’s definitely a lot of truth. Those of you who have read my past reviews will know I’ve never been big on Unity games, and while Firewatch still has a few of the engine’s rougher elements (overly-sleek rocks, clipping, uncanny appendages) this is definitely a case where virtuosity outweighs defects. Campo Santo has brought to life that romanticized outdoorsy aesthetic I’m sure every kid dreamed of at some point in their life; you know, that fantasy of running through an orchard decked in springtime hues as the sparrows chirped on yonder. Much like Boggly Woods or the Villa Auditore, this is one of those serene video game locations you want to spend time in for the sake of inner peace, and it’s honestly not surprising why the devs threw in a free roam mode. The graphic design may seem repetitive at first, but look closer and you’ll notice a lot of underrated details accompanying Shoshone, chief among these being the sheer amount of tree genera. Like Dear Esther did with rocks, Firewatch has assembled a smorgasbord of perennial taxonomies to behold, a chart in your post identifying their specific classification should you wish to know it. Couple it all with some fantastic shadowcasting conditional on their soft sways and cloud overseers and you can imagine where the game’s immersion factor comes from. Considering how often trees get copy/pasted in video games, even in ones focused on exploration, this was a pleasant surprise and one I hope players take note of.
Unfortunately, exploration is significantly infringed upon by the map design, which is deliberately restrictive for no discernible reason outside of elongating the story. You’re forced to stick to set paths as every other avenue is deliberately blocked-off, and while a number of these are reasonable (unscalable mountains), it literally makes no sense why Henry can’t bypass others ala stomping on piles of bramble or ascending a small outcrop. It’s not an aggravating issue by any means, however the obviousness of the scheme coupled with large backtracking renders it a bit displeasing.
Gameplay, there isn’t much to say- per their namesake, walking sims are about walking, and you’re going to be doing just that…A LOT. You can pull out a map, compass, and of course radio, rotate certain objects, and dash to your heart’s content without worrying about a stamina meter. On the flip side, all other actions (climbing/descending/leaping) are purely automated and consequently come across as a little outdated by eighth generation standards. Still, I’ll give immense credit to Campo Santo for at least programming two different animations depending on whether you’re running or trudging.
In the end, though, it’s clear your appreciation of Firewatch will rest on its story over anything else, and contrary to what critics say, there’s a greater divagation of opinions towards that component. My spoiler-free tl;dr is you’ll enjoy the journey, but more than likely forget about it the second you move onto your next game. And for some, that’ll be sufficient.
NOTES
-For a game about fire safety, did no one else find it bizarre how Henry keeps two flammable gas tanks right next to his tower???
-I can’t be the only person who thinks Henry sounds like a young Ron Desantis?
-There’s a notes menu completely devoid of anything, making me wonder if it was an abandoned feature accidentally left in the game.
-You get a camera to photograph random stuff, and while you’re occasionally advised to do so by Delilah, it’s never mandated and has no impact on the story (making me wonder if it was another abandoned feature as well). You’re able to upload the photos you take with it on a separate menu in the title screen, but when I tried to do so it literally caused the game to freeze up on me twice. Combine that with the fact that the camera only holds 20 shots and you’re better off using the screen capture function (for PC gamers anyway).
-The rotate function is severely underrated in terms of its animations- I loved being able to slowly peel/unpeel an object from left-to-right/vice-versa.
-You’ll find a lot of airplane books written by the same author. Makes me wonder if they had some concept involving him that never came to fruition.
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+Firewatch initially spends an inordinate amount of time on Henry reckoning with his dementia-ridden wife and her hostile parents before completely forgetting about it until the end. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense for Henry to stop prioritizing that aspect of his life in light of more pressing matters, but a more furnished script would’ve found a way to connect those introductory psychological anguishes with the later stresses/toils Henry deals with. As it stands, it comes across as a half-baked way of giving him depth that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.
The larger issue, however, is how Firewatch sets-up a genuinely better premise before succumbing elsewhere. One of the introductory chapters sees Henry confront two teenage arsonists who later mysteriously vanish, and the idea of Henry and Delilah having to contend with a serial killer or other nefarious actor playing to their sense of isolation could’ve made for a tense ride! As it stands, the replacement is an overcomplicated scheme by a former scout’s father to derail the two from discovering the body of his son (whose cause of death is up for interpretation) hidden in a cave. Instead of doing the smart thing like, oh I don’t know, setting fire to the area or causing a permanent cave-in, he opts to engage in odd tactics like making Delilah and Henry believe they’re being spied on by the government. It honestly feels like the writers didn’t know how to characterize this antagonist (Ned Goodwin), leading to many holes in his personality: for instance, if his son’s death was truly an accident, why wouldn’t he be upfront about the situation from the get-go? On the opposite end, if he didn’t want anyone to find out, why not dispose of the body through one of the aforementioned means? Heck, why create a tape confessing everything to Henry? I know they claim he’s suffering from some mental illness, but that honestly seems lazy and disrespectful to actual sufferers.
As a result of these endeavors, Henry and Delilah also come off as really dumb. Like, if you think about it, it’s actually silly that they would believe the government would randomly conduct a psyop experiment on two federal employees integral to preserving a national forest (you know, a year after a huge fire ravaged Yellowstone, which the game explicitly references).
++I pretty much discussed the ending above, with Henry finding a recording from Goodwin detailing what transpired. I know there are plenty of fans who wanted something deeper or more sensational, but I truly didn’t mind a grounded resolution. As I explained, I found the whole conspiratorial thought process absurd from the get-go, so the concept that it was actually the machinations of a disturbed individual was a welcome return-to-form (even if late). No, my personal qualms (besides those outlined earlier) concerned the decision to not have Henry and Delilah meet in-person. I’m not against the concept since you never saw anyone before (clearly anyway), so it thematically would’ve been concise; however, the lame-@ss reasoning they give is amateurish, with Delilah acting out-of-character via opting to hightail out of Shoshone before Henry gets there for no logical reason. I’m sure the game’s apologists will come out with some justification, but no amount of reasoning can cover up it being utterly stupid and purely done for the sake of Campo Santo not having to craft & animate a new character model.
That said, I will give the devs props for maintaining a level of tension and unease during Henry’s trek to the evac site- when you’re capable of such a feat, it indicates real talent.
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This review contains spoilers
There is no way to torch this game without going into spoilers, sorry
The Stillness of the Wind is garbage, the kind of pretentious crap that could only come from the indie scene. Oh yes, I know it's more popular to rag on AAA games, to lambast big devs for their “soulless” products- believe me, two hours of this trash and you’ll be begging for the next Anthem. On all the fundamentals, let me repeat, on ALL the fundamentals it fails, doling out slop in a vain attempt at producing art. Such a title represents the worst aspects of the independent market and should be AVOIDED in every sense of the word.
I’ll briefly talk about the positives because, yes, they do exist, and I’d rather get them out of the way before tearing their progenitor apart. Visually, we’ve got another one of those plain art styles that actually works quite well here. You spend your entire playthrough on a farm laden with primary colours which successfully evoke that pastoral, rural feel Lambic Studios was evidently going for: objects are rendered in simple shapes, interiors look homely, and a gentle breeze swings through the land. Various filters are applied to simulate such dynamic events as diurnal cycles and tropospheric weather, and while the latter do make the screen a bit too visibly aberrated, the effect ultimately serves its purpose. On the aural side, Stillness boasts a surprising amount of onomatopoeia for the few animals you manage- it’ll eventually get repetitive, but at least effort was made for a feature otherwise overlooked in most games of this genre.
Aaaaaaaaaaand, that’s about all the pros. Let’s begin the drubbing with a couple of lighter jabs to the afore-discussed departments, starting with the lack of ground texturing. Zero effort has been put into making this land look arable, the smooth yellow surfaces resembling a giant desert than anything else. I get they were hearkening back to the original Harvest Moon, which also flaunted a mustard acreage, but there you could at least tell the terrain was soil; here, unless you whack the dirt with your hoe, you’re going to be witnessing sandy beaches galore. Secondly, a weird patchwork scheme has been implemented for a select number of exteriors; I suppose it’s okay for rooftops and textiles, however, when you see sheep decked with the same motif, it can’t help but seem bizarre. Lastly, character models are pretty misshapen; I couldn’t tell hair apart from clothing, and faces are literally just empty circles.
SFX is pretty uninspired as a whole, coming across like run-of-the-mill acoustic files someone stumbled upon in an audio library. The few music compositions you hear are fine yet unmemorable, akin to rejected tracks from Little House on the Prairie. Voice acting is either grunts or whistles, the latter of which is pretty blatantly done by a male for your female protagonist Talma.
Nonetheless, all of these are trivial criticisms spiritually present in other games- no, the real source of my hatred lies in the story and gameplay. See, Stillness wants to be this deep, morose tale about the winds of change, about how dreams collapse against the realities of society and the fallout that has on an older person. It depicts this through an anecdotal yarn wherein Talma receives letters from her friends and family who, prior to the start of the game, left for greener pastures, and who are now writing back about their declining status. Pure text-based narratives have been effective in past releases like “Papers, Please”, so this wasn’t an inherently bad tactic, but where Stillness goes wrong is in how nonsensical its world is. You’ll hear about things like people traveling to space colonies or children disappearing/reappearing ala The 4400, and you consequently never get a sense of what this place is like. It’s clearly not a metaphorical representation of any locale in our realm of existence, and it clearly has supernatural qualities, so how am I, as an average joe, supposed to empathize with whatever obstacles Talma’s kin are facing? Can I really understand the yearnings of an unruly child if aliens can abduct her at a moment’s notice? Should I really care if my cousin’s business is falling apart when a flip in circumstances is just around the corner? The lack of natural rules destroys any kind of foundation sympathy could have arisen from because you are simply unable to comprehend why things are happening the way they are. And for a game that’s clearly trying to evoke a vintage feel with its agrarian aesthetics, these futuristic elements seem extra out-of-place.
Then again, there’s a good chance I’m flat-out misinterpreting everything as the writing is F&CK-ING terrible. Seriously, every single epistle is written like a first-year Literature Major’s essay, chock-full of elongated paragraphs and flowery prose that obscure what should have been direct messages. They’re confusing, hifalutin, and utterly forgettable. For all the crude stuff that’s happening, Talma’s family somehow finds the time to scribe these pompous missives that make them seem like high-brow caricatures. Not once did I ever believe I was reading about a real person with real problems, which ruined any immersion Lambic was attempting to educe in players. What’s worse is their scripticians couldn’t even be bothered to type-up a SINGLE response from Talma upon perusing these reports- if the whole point of the game was to show her withering away from her familial legacy getting tarnished, why the bloody h&ll would you avoid conveying ANY internal thoughts towards what are, even at best, unfortunate circumstances? You’re telling me they had the time to scrawl reflections on random items strewn throughout the millhouse, yet couldn’t do sh!t for the biggest part of the game?
And for a title that’s purely reliant on such bulletins for its storytelling, it’s amazing that not only are there barely any of them (I counted less than 20), but that they’re completely optional to retrieve. No seriously, you get them from a passing trader who has a history with Talma, and rather than automate this process or at least have him drop them off in her mailbox, you’re instead required to manually request each parcel. And should you forget or outright miss the guy, you’re SOL (then again, per the above, it’s not like you’re foregoing anything important….).
This serves as a good transition to the gameplay, which is where Stillness of the Wind broke me. At first glance, it seems like a conventional farming simulator -- you head outside, till squares, grow provisions, exploit your animals for commodities, scavenge outside, rinse-and-repeat. Yet what you don’t realize is that this is all a lie! You see, NOTHING you do matters because the genius devs want you to fail in the most contrived, pathetic ways possible. Through scripted events, all your livestock perish, your plants wilt, your land folds, and Talma ultimately dies. Maybe their stupid excuse for a story had some thematic threads this torture schematic was meant to support, but when a video game literally subverts its very systems for the sake of bad writing, it becomes the definition of a joke. The worst thing a game can do is waste its player’s time, and that is exactly what Stillness does -- from the get-go you’re presented with the untruth that your actions matter, that you can actually forage a future amidst the depressing news from outside, yet that’s all a grand deception meant to make you squander away hours indulging in activities you can literally skip (more on that later), no doubt to artificially elongate the playtime.
The paltry of apologists out there may stake the claim that, per my parameters, any game that ends with its main character dying is inherently a fool’s errand. Not even close to being true. The purpose of a video game is to entertain, and if partaking in its mechanisms produces a fun experience, then the end result will be a good time regardless of the fate of the protagonist. Nothing about Stillness is enjoyable in the slightest: Talma moves slow, farming comes down to generic quick-time events, you’re not given item descriptions for what’s a harvestable staple versus useless floret, you’re not told the value of anything you grow, you’re provided no indication of future weather patterns, there is literally no way of knowing when the tradesman will come by or skip a day, you can’t upgrade any of your tools, you’re forced to travel a considerable distance just to get water, and, most annoying of all, any extra animals you breed are deliberately slain during scripted wolf sequences (your gun doing jacksh!t against them).
There are additional boneheaded decisions that make Stillness even more frustrating than it needed to be: your does are only able to be milked at night despite roaming about 24/7 like it’s no one’s business; heralding the day forces you to sit through this elongated cutscene of the camera zooming in as Talma opens the door; there’s no entrance to the back of your ranch, necessitating you to walk ALL THE WAY AROUND just to pick stuff there; reading letters results in Talma pointlessly sitting on a chair and taking a noticeable second to get her @ss off it. Worse yet, Talma has an invisible stamina meter you need to restore with food, however, the game doesn’t bother telling you how much each edible replenishes.
None of this is even taking into account the bugs, which aren’t gamebreaking, but do make an already irritating experience all the more vexing. Sometimes Talma will refuse to milk the goats (and no, it’s not cause they're pregnant or that it’s night- she just doesn’t do it); petting an animal is apparently supposed to impel it to follow you, but that doesn’t happen, and if one happens to escape its pen you have to literally push it back inside; and finally, newly birthed lambs sometimes lose their color, becoming translucent outlines.
But guess what? As I alluded to earlier, you don’t have to engage in any of this aggravating rubbish because, plot twist, Talma doesn’t need to eat! You could literally boot up the game, peddle all your belongings (including your beasts of burden), ignore the postman, sit back, sip cocoa until the day ends, go to bed, rinse & repeat and you’d get the exact same result as someone like me who meandered for three hours on end+. I’d say just skip straight to sleeping, but, perhaps realizing this would expose their product for the hackery it is, the devs have prevented you from being able to do that until sundown.
Not that you’ll want to partake in this because I do not recommend The Stillness of the Wind in any way, shape, or form. It’s a title that was so desperate to be some avante-garde standout that it wholly missed the mark of what it means to be a video game. It’s not even worth a YouTube watch and is best left forgotten.
Notes
+There technically are multiple endings contingent on miniscule actions you do, but they're only minorly-different from their brethren.
-You're able to walk an extended distance in all directions: an idiotic decision given Talma's sluggish gait and the absence of anything worthwhile to find. Throw this as yet another trick the devs inputted to deceive gamers into thinking their product is bigger than it is.
The Stillness of the Wind is garbage, the kind of pretentious crap that could only come from the indie scene. Oh yes, I know it's more popular to rag on AAA games, to lambast big devs for their “soulless” products- believe me, two hours of this trash and you’ll be begging for the next Anthem. On all the fundamentals, let me repeat, on ALL the fundamentals it fails, doling out slop in a vain attempt at producing art. Such a title represents the worst aspects of the independent market and should be AVOIDED in every sense of the word.
I’ll briefly talk about the positives because, yes, they do exist, and I’d rather get them out of the way before tearing their progenitor apart. Visually, we’ve got another one of those plain art styles that actually works quite well here. You spend your entire playthrough on a farm laden with primary colours which successfully evoke that pastoral, rural feel Lambic Studios was evidently going for: objects are rendered in simple shapes, interiors look homely, and a gentle breeze swings through the land. Various filters are applied to simulate such dynamic events as diurnal cycles and tropospheric weather, and while the latter do make the screen a bit too visibly aberrated, the effect ultimately serves its purpose. On the aural side, Stillness boasts a surprising amount of onomatopoeia for the few animals you manage- it’ll eventually get repetitive, but at least effort was made for a feature otherwise overlooked in most games of this genre.
Aaaaaaaaaaand, that’s about all the pros. Let’s begin the drubbing with a couple of lighter jabs to the afore-discussed departments, starting with the lack of ground texturing. Zero effort has been put into making this land look arable, the smooth yellow surfaces resembling a giant desert than anything else. I get they were hearkening back to the original Harvest Moon, which also flaunted a mustard acreage, but there you could at least tell the terrain was soil; here, unless you whack the dirt with your hoe, you’re going to be witnessing sandy beaches galore. Secondly, a weird patchwork scheme has been implemented for a select number of exteriors; I suppose it’s okay for rooftops and textiles, however, when you see sheep decked with the same motif, it can’t help but seem bizarre. Lastly, character models are pretty misshapen; I couldn’t tell hair apart from clothing, and faces are literally just empty circles.
SFX is pretty uninspired as a whole, coming across like run-of-the-mill acoustic files someone stumbled upon in an audio library. The few music compositions you hear are fine yet unmemorable, akin to rejected tracks from Little House on the Prairie. Voice acting is either grunts or whistles, the latter of which is pretty blatantly done by a male for your female protagonist Talma.
Nonetheless, all of these are trivial criticisms spiritually present in other games- no, the real source of my hatred lies in the story and gameplay. See, Stillness wants to be this deep, morose tale about the winds of change, about how dreams collapse against the realities of society and the fallout that has on an older person. It depicts this through an anecdotal yarn wherein Talma receives letters from her friends and family who, prior to the start of the game, left for greener pastures, and who are now writing back about their declining status. Pure text-based narratives have been effective in past releases like “Papers, Please”, so this wasn’t an inherently bad tactic, but where Stillness goes wrong is in how nonsensical its world is. You’ll hear about things like people traveling to space colonies or children disappearing/reappearing ala The 4400, and you consequently never get a sense of what this place is like. It’s clearly not a metaphorical representation of any locale in our realm of existence, and it clearly has supernatural qualities, so how am I, as an average joe, supposed to empathize with whatever obstacles Talma’s kin are facing? Can I really understand the yearnings of an unruly child if aliens can abduct her at a moment’s notice? Should I really care if my cousin’s business is falling apart when a flip in circumstances is just around the corner? The lack of natural rules destroys any kind of foundation sympathy could have arisen from because you are simply unable to comprehend why things are happening the way they are. And for a game that’s clearly trying to evoke a vintage feel with its agrarian aesthetics, these futuristic elements seem extra out-of-place.
Then again, there’s a good chance I’m flat-out misinterpreting everything as the writing is F&CK-ING terrible. Seriously, every single epistle is written like a first-year Literature Major’s essay, chock-full of elongated paragraphs and flowery prose that obscure what should have been direct messages. They’re confusing, hifalutin, and utterly forgettable. For all the crude stuff that’s happening, Talma’s family somehow finds the time to scribe these pompous missives that make them seem like high-brow caricatures. Not once did I ever believe I was reading about a real person with real problems, which ruined any immersion Lambic was attempting to educe in players. What’s worse is their scripticians couldn’t even be bothered to type-up a SINGLE response from Talma upon perusing these reports- if the whole point of the game was to show her withering away from her familial legacy getting tarnished, why the bloody h&ll would you avoid conveying ANY internal thoughts towards what are, even at best, unfortunate circumstances? You’re telling me they had the time to scrawl reflections on random items strewn throughout the millhouse, yet couldn’t do sh!t for the biggest part of the game?
And for a title that’s purely reliant on such bulletins for its storytelling, it’s amazing that not only are there barely any of them (I counted less than 20), but that they’re completely optional to retrieve. No seriously, you get them from a passing trader who has a history with Talma, and rather than automate this process or at least have him drop them off in her mailbox, you’re instead required to manually request each parcel. And should you forget or outright miss the guy, you’re SOL (then again, per the above, it’s not like you’re foregoing anything important….).
This serves as a good transition to the gameplay, which is where Stillness of the Wind broke me. At first glance, it seems like a conventional farming simulator -- you head outside, till squares, grow provisions, exploit your animals for commodities, scavenge outside, rinse-and-repeat. Yet what you don’t realize is that this is all a lie! You see, NOTHING you do matters because the genius devs want you to fail in the most contrived, pathetic ways possible. Through scripted events, all your livestock perish, your plants wilt, your land folds, and Talma ultimately dies. Maybe their stupid excuse for a story had some thematic threads this torture schematic was meant to support, but when a video game literally subverts its very systems for the sake of bad writing, it becomes the definition of a joke. The worst thing a game can do is waste its player’s time, and that is exactly what Stillness does -- from the get-go you’re presented with the untruth that your actions matter, that you can actually forage a future amidst the depressing news from outside, yet that’s all a grand deception meant to make you squander away hours indulging in activities you can literally skip (more on that later), no doubt to artificially elongate the playtime.
The paltry of apologists out there may stake the claim that, per my parameters, any game that ends with its main character dying is inherently a fool’s errand. Not even close to being true. The purpose of a video game is to entertain, and if partaking in its mechanisms produces a fun experience, then the end result will be a good time regardless of the fate of the protagonist. Nothing about Stillness is enjoyable in the slightest: Talma moves slow, farming comes down to generic quick-time events, you’re not given item descriptions for what’s a harvestable staple versus useless floret, you’re not told the value of anything you grow, you’re provided no indication of future weather patterns, there is literally no way of knowing when the tradesman will come by or skip a day, you can’t upgrade any of your tools, you’re forced to travel a considerable distance just to get water, and, most annoying of all, any extra animals you breed are deliberately slain during scripted wolf sequences (your gun doing jacksh!t against them).
There are additional boneheaded decisions that make Stillness even more frustrating than it needed to be: your does are only able to be milked at night despite roaming about 24/7 like it’s no one’s business; heralding the day forces you to sit through this elongated cutscene of the camera zooming in as Talma opens the door; there’s no entrance to the back of your ranch, necessitating you to walk ALL THE WAY AROUND just to pick stuff there; reading letters results in Talma pointlessly sitting on a chair and taking a noticeable second to get her @ss off it. Worse yet, Talma has an invisible stamina meter you need to restore with food, however, the game doesn’t bother telling you how much each edible replenishes.
None of this is even taking into account the bugs, which aren’t gamebreaking, but do make an already irritating experience all the more vexing. Sometimes Talma will refuse to milk the goats (and no, it’s not cause they're pregnant or that it’s night- she just doesn’t do it); petting an animal is apparently supposed to impel it to follow you, but that doesn’t happen, and if one happens to escape its pen you have to literally push it back inside; and finally, newly birthed lambs sometimes lose their color, becoming translucent outlines.
But guess what? As I alluded to earlier, you don’t have to engage in any of this aggravating rubbish because, plot twist, Talma doesn’t need to eat! You could literally boot up the game, peddle all your belongings (including your beasts of burden), ignore the postman, sit back, sip cocoa until the day ends, go to bed, rinse & repeat and you’d get the exact same result as someone like me who meandered for three hours on end+. I’d say just skip straight to sleeping, but, perhaps realizing this would expose their product for the hackery it is, the devs have prevented you from being able to do that until sundown.
Not that you’ll want to partake in this because I do not recommend The Stillness of the Wind in any way, shape, or form. It’s a title that was so desperate to be some avante-garde standout that it wholly missed the mark of what it means to be a video game. It’s not even worth a YouTube watch and is best left forgotten.
Notes
+There technically are multiple endings contingent on miniscule actions you do, but they're only minorly-different from their brethren.
-You're able to walk an extended distance in all directions: an idiotic decision given Talma's sluggish gait and the absence of anything worthwhile to find. Throw this as yet another trick the devs inputted to deceive gamers into thinking their product is bigger than it is.