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This review contains spoilers
One of the great things about playing a variety of games is each new experience has a chance of revealing something new about you and your preferences as a gamer. When I reviewed the original Just Cause, for example, I found the gunplay and missions to be enjoyable and diverse, but was ultimately unable to recommend the title because the world wasn’t fun to navigate in. In some ways, Sleeping Dogs was the opposite- the gunplay is mediocre and the vast majority of the missions fall into a repetitive slog of either duking it out with some guys or engaging in a one-too-many cover shoots. And yet, the world was so vibrant and the driving mechanics a blast to initiate that I ultimately enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) my time with Sleeping Dogs. What this says about me is that I prefer mediocre open worlds with good navigation over non-mediocre ones with bad navigation. That being said, the aforementioned problems do consign my recommendation under the banner of “wait for a sale”.
I’ve always been a story-driven guy, and here Sleeping Dogs doesn’t quite deliver on what it evidently set-out to do. You play as Wei Shen, a former Hong Kong native working as an undercover cop for an unnamed police organization. Shen is sent to infiltrate the Sun On Yee Triad gang as part of a long-term operation to bring it down. Despite being highly-qualified, Shen’s motivations are much darker, involving subtle revenge over the death of his younger sister years earlier. As Shen gets deeper into this criminal underworld and commits more egregious acts in the name of dismantling the Sun On Yee, the question becomes how far he’s willing to go before he ends up losing himself…..at least, that’s what the writers’ intentions were.
There are many issues with Sleeping Dogs’s narrative, but here are the biggest ones: first off, we don’t actually get to see anything regarding Shen’s backstory or upbringing, which the contemporary timeline heavily relies on. Shen is welcomed into the Sun On Yee thanks to his childhood friend Jackie, and the aforementioned death of his sister is brought up by his police compatriots as a reason to keep a closer watch on him. But outside of those small instances, the vast, vast majority of the backstory is relegated to optional reports you can read via Shen’s phone. They’re all well-written, but reading something and watching it are two very different things, especially in a visual medium like a video game. Because he doesn’t speak about his past much, having some cutscenes to consistently refresh/refer to would have gone a long way towards keeping that vengeance motif alive throughout the narrative. Alas, I wasn’t quite able to put myself in Shen’s shoes, which hurt the power of the story.
The second biggest issue is how the degradation of Shen’s psyche is depicted. It’s clear the writers were trying to evoke vigilante tales of good men being forced to shed their morality to achieve justice in an indecent world (Law Abiding Citizen, Death Wish, etc…), but again that fails because we don’t get enough of who Shen was beforehand- when we meet him, he’s already a no-nonsense ass-kicker who doesn’t mind doing criminal acts for the sake of moving up in the eyes of the Sun On Yee leaders. As such, there’s no real character arc b/c the Shen from the beginning is no different from the Shen of the end. You can maybe argue that he commits more brutal acts as the game progresses, but you’re already capable of some pretty brutal takedowns from the get-go, making this a possible case of ludonarrative dissonance. But even if the takedowns weren’t there at-first, I didn’t see anything significantly different to constitute a character arc- he’s still helping the police, he’s still yelling at his police compatriots for trying to hold him back from achieving his mission, and he’s still getting angry for acts of wrongdoing committed against his friends.
The game tries to counter this via two things: one, having Shen experience dialogue flashbacks whenever he wakes up between missions that replay conversations with NPCs pointing out how Shen is taking things too personally; and two, incorporating some unique dialogue in an optional sidequest involving Shen finding and returning Jade statues to his former Martial Arts Sensei- doing so results in them talking about Shen’s past for a few seconds and how he’s become different.
The problem with the former is that it’s quite honestly a bit lazy (we couldn’t even get full-video flashbacks using the EXISTING cutscenes?) and doesn’t affect the plot in the slightest. The problem with the latter is that it’s all optional, meaning you experience it inconsistently with the pace of the narrative, it’s very minimal, and also doesn’t affect the plot in the slightest.
Now, those failures aside, where Sleeping Dogs succeeds narratively is in its build-up of character relations. Shen is coming into this setting as a semi-outsider, and so he has to go through the typical initiation process of proving his loyalty and worth to the gang. Doing so earns their respect, resulting in them taking him in, first as a warrior, then as a friend, and finally as a family member. No matter the rings of leadership, this development is pretty consistent, and I never once felt that Shen was unrealistically rising to the top like some Mary Sue/Gary Stu. It’s a shame that a lot of those build-ups rest on repetitive mission structures, but more on that below.
The ending does feel a bit rushed and is ultimately unsatisfying. It’s strange because it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger/wraps up things decently well, but it felt like there was a lot more to tell- a longer story that could have continued forth. I guess that’s what sequels are for, which Sleeping Dogs doesn’t have a chance of getting (though if Shenmue III proved anything, it’s that long-gestating follow-ups are a possibility). Overall, the story will entertain you enough, but falls far short of its larger ambitions.
If there’s one thing I can praise it for, though, it is for giving solid pacing for the completion of side content. A lot of these open world adventures are often unable to do one or the other: you either have an engaging narrative that you can’t divert from because each mission endgame necessitates you immediately continuing forth with the next sequence, or the base storyline is so forgettable that you get lost in the side stuff without even feeling compelled to go back on the main track. Sleeping Dogs is solid enough that you want to keep experiencing Shen’s journey, but rarely do the missions have that urgency-feeling to them. Those that do tend to either involve emotional story beats or are reduced to mandatory cutscenes that play immediately after being triggered in-game. I wish more AAA or even indie open world games that capitalize on lots of side content followed a Sleeping Dogs-esque model.
Graphically, I actually can’t even appropriately talk about the game because my gaming PC was unable to run it at the highest settings! Perhaps that’s a huge praise in and of itself- that a 2012 title was able to outdo a computer from the late 2010s.
Hong Kong truly looks beautiful. There was a strong attempt by the developers to achieve an authenticity to the real-life city (at the time) that you can read about on Wikipedia, and I have no doubt that they succeeded. I know they were probably trying to harken back to old-school Hong Kong movies, but I honestly couldn’t help but feel that there were some cyberpunk influences as well. Neon signs light-up nearly every area, and there’s a dynamic rain system that darkens the cityscape with a cascading torrent like in classic cyberpunk works. There was also an attempt at depicting the different socioeconomic strata in Hong Kong, with poorer districts filled with rundown hotels and regularly-dressed working class people contrasting visually with the wealthier areas filled with nicer cars, better-looking buildings, and expensively-clothed NPCs. While more could have been done on the latter front to make things stand out even more (and had some of that play a part in the storyline, thereby giving it subtle sociopolitical commentary), I can’t deny that the end product is stunning and beautiful to this day. Seeing neon reflections on the drenched asphalt will always be a sight to behold.
But there are graphical problems that prevail. Skin is arguably the biggest issue due to its inconsistency- NPCs, from the ones wandering the streets to the ones in cutscenes (everything is rendered through the in-game engine) can vary significantly. Sometimes you’ll get characters who look fleshy and full-fledged, while other times you’ll see models that would not look out of place from the PS2/early-Xbox 360 era. I’m not sure if this was an engine issue or a consequence of me having to slightly downgrade the graphics, but I feel it was too prevalent to be the latter and it can be distracting, especially when you have a great model interacting with a mediocre one in the same scene! Texturing in general is irregular, with streets and signs often looking great but interiors and paraphernalia inside said interiors often faltering when you look at it for more than 5 seconds.
The final things I didn’t like were 1) how Sleeping Dogs dialogue is often too much compared to the distance you need to drive between points advancing a story and 2) the inconsistent continuity between gameplay and cutscene. Like I said before, Sleeping Dogs doesn’t use prerendered cutscenes, meaning clothing your character has or cars they are driving stay the same when a cutscene occurs...for the most part. There were times where I switched weapons or my car sustained damage, only for the consequent cutscene to act like none of those things occurred, and it was temporarily immersion breaking.
There is also a lot of clipping, particularly whenever objects or people come into contact with curbs, edges, and foliage, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I read that there is a lot of criticism towards the draw distance, however I personally never had an issue with it- given that it’s set in a metropolis with a multitude of buildings and a low-hanging camera, Sleeping Dogs doesn’t benefit from having sights you can gaze at in the horizon. And the haziness you do see can be more believably chalked up to pollution than Dishonored or AC Syndicate due to the lower graphical quality of everything.
If I can end on a fully positive note, it’s the vehicles. There are a lot of automobiles and bikes you can drive and/or purchase, and each has a distinct, handmade craft to it in a way that rivals even GTA. The damage these cars sustain whenever you do some kinetic activity is beautifully conveyed, with scuffs, scratches, shattered glass, to collapsing parts having a tangible causal effect to them over a preprogrammed occurrence, if that makes sense.
Sound is the next category, and it is a giant disappointment. I’ll begin with the SFX because I have a lot to say- it’s so generic. NPC screams/grunts, breakable object sounds, and ESPECIALLY vehicular engines (which constitute most of the soundscape you will experience) have maybe 1-2 dins repeated ad nauseam. And seriously, I could not be more disappointed with the cars: why a sedan sounds the exact bloody same as a sports car or freakin motorcycle is beyond me. Trucks are at least different, but you barely drive those so it’s small praise. Guns have some variety as well if only because there are few models in the game, but they still come off as weak compared to other AAA titles with firearms. The only thing that felt consistently good were the takedowns, though I can’t say whether that came from a genuine auditory cue from them or my general appreciation for their brutality/use in combat.
Voice acting is mostly mediocre. Will Yun Lee does a good job as Shen, and I was a big fan of Byron Mann’s portrayal of Shen’s handler Raymond despite his limited screentime (wish there was more), but a lot of the other Asian actors failed to make their characters standout. I wonder if part of this had to do with the game being English with some Chinese words thrown in Animus-style, but rarely did I feel intimidated or entertained by the mobsters. A ton of celebrities were also hired to do round out the supporting cast, but you’ll be disappointed to know that the majority of them, from Emma Stone to Lucy Liu, are barely in the game, having maybe 2 missions that abruptly end whatever excuse for a sidequest the writers drummed up for them. Of the ones that have a longer haul, they did a good job, with credit to Tom Wilkinson and Kelly Hu in particular for standing out as Shen’s law enforcement coworkers. As far as generic NPCs go, don’t even get me started- there were times where Sleeping Dogs made me miss Oblivion.
The score by Jeff Tymoschuk plays its part. I didn’t find many moments that stood out particularly, but there was also nothing distracting. One of the things that kind of hurts the OST is all the driving you do. Sleeping Dogs managed to license a lot of music, and your car is restricted to only playing music from the radio stations you can switch between. As such, much like with Suicide Squad, the score often takes a backseat to whatever pop music (pop music as in popular music, not the genre) you’re playing. Personally, I would’ve liked to have heard an older-school Chinese influenced soundtrack in the background as those instruments always stood out to me whenever I heard them.
But overall, sound is lackluster. As gorgeous as Hong Kong is, it never feels like a lively city, even when you’re talking through the markets or through crowds of people, which is a huge component of atmosphere-making.
Finally, we get to gameplay, which is where the crux of Sleeping Dogs’s appeal rests. Gameplay is divided into two categories: driving/movement and combat. As you can probably guess from my opening paragraph, I loved the driving. Of all the non-racers with cars that I have played, from GTA to Watch_Dogs to even Arkham Knight, Sleeping Dogs outdoes all of them (with the exception of two flaws). The developers successfully achieved that balance of acceleration and turning, allowing you to successfully maneuver your way through tight-knit streets and corners. There are a lot of races in the game, and I’m generally not a fan of racing minigames since the driving mechanics usually falter. But because Sleeping Dogs successfully created a system of vehicular movement that was truly enjoyable, I eagerly completed all of them.
The exceptions I referred to earlier, though, regard the camera and reverse driving. Unless you are shooting, don’t even bother trying to move the camera, as it will get all janky and give you a headache. Trying to reverse longer than a couple of inches is even worse, as suddenly the car looses cohesion and sends you twisting and turning elsewhere. Now, these didn’t impair my enjoyment because the default camera is solid (and when you have to engage in driving shoot-outs, the manual camera is good) and you never have to reverse for an extended period of time.
Unfortunately, movement on foot is a lot more limited. One of the recurring problems you’ll find with Sleeping Dogs is how it seems to incorporate or build some concept/mechanic, only to falter in seeing it through to its completion, meaning you get a lot of half-designed ideas. The parkour is one of these- Wei is able to initiate animations that climb structures or leap beams or slide across cars, but it isn’t evenly incorporated around the game’s world in the same vein as an Assassin Creed or even Far Cry game. A frustrating thing that can happen is when you are on a highway or overlooking a body of water and you are unable to jump over the former’s guardrail or the latter’s fence because for some reason the devs didn’t think to expand the parkour to them. It really limits the pathfinding to linearity, despite there being a decent system in place. There’s also no jump button, so there’s that.
With combat, look, I’ll be blunt- you’re getting discount Arkham. Sleeping Dogs tries to ape the freeflow system albeit with a different martial arts style and slightly different set-up: instead of attack, counter, stun you got attack, counter, grapple. But the general idea is the same of moving between guys, wailing on each of them whilst avoiding getting interrupted. The problem is the flow just isn’t there- enemy detection is very hit-or-miss, meaning there’s a good chance you don’t move to your next intended target. Making things harder is that all enemy archetypes have access to a block that prevents them from being struck. The idea is obviously that you’re supposed to grapple them, but the issue here is that this stance is indistinguishable from their regular pose, meaning you can’t know for certain whether a thug has their guard up versus just standing there. Sleeping Dogs also has the annoying feature of you being unable to attack guys who are attacking you- you have no choice but to counter. Compare all this to Arkham where the flow was smooth, only certain enemies could block you, and you could uppercut someone instead of countering them (though the catch was that was often slower).
One slight saving grace of Sleeping Dog’s hand-to-hand are the environmental takedowns I alluded to earlier. There are a surprising amount of them, and a lot of missions have you going to areas that include even more unique opportunities like skewering someone on a bunch of swordfish or releasing a car hood on their skull. Absolutely brutal, sadistic, and fun to do.
No matter my complaints, you can have fun with the fighting in a button-mashy kinda way. What you CAN’T have fun with are the gun shootouts. Geez, this entire system felt like it was tacked on late into the development cycle because someone at United Front Games realized that the Chinese Triads probably use guns in addition to h2h. Rather than fleshing out the latter system and dealing with the unrealistic nature of gunless Hong Kong syndicates, you get this cheap cover shooter thrown in that takes all the worst problems of the subgenre and combines them into one category: weak-feeling firearms, bullet sponge enemies that don’t realistically react to getting shot (seriously, they’ll hop around for a bit, then go back to guns ablazing as though a shot to the leg means nothing), mediocre AI, respawning enemies, poor aiming, and downright terrible hit detection if you’re even a little far from a thug (and I’m not just talking from single-shot weapons, which would be understandable; I’m talking spreadable ones like shotguns and assault rifles). It would’ve been so much better if the devs had focused on crafting a unique martial arts combat interface over throwing in this downright poor aspect. The worst part is you don’t even get access to any guns for side content UNTIL you beat the story, not even from stores, making it feel even more tacked on to the world.
All combat-related upgrades (whether new perks/abilities, unlockable skills like finding guns in cop cars, or moves) are gained via three systems: triad points, cop points, and jade statues. Triad points are only earned from story missions (which are replayable) and involve you doing violent/criminal things; cop points can be earned from the story or from doing law enforcement related side missions (cop missions or drug busts)- in story, they’re honestly annoying to get as 3 are given by default and decrease if do anything like break property, hit a civilian, or even fail a parkour hotkey. Thank goodness the game gives you the option to earn them through other means as the story mission ones were annoying to gather, especially in missions that involve you driving; finally, jade statues (as I talked about before) are strewn throughout the game world- returning them to Wei’s sensei allows you to purchase an additional combo move, and these were honestly pretty sweet and downright necessary for the fight club side missions. That being said, there are a couple of limb breaking ones that do admittedly allow you to cheese the combat by virtue of them being OP.
There’s an additional experience system called Face which you get from completing races and other side missions- tbh, there were so many ways to earn face that the level 10 cap was way too short IMO. Regardless, raising your face value gives you benefits in the game world like access to new vehicles and discounts at stores, so it’s worth investing in.
Despite all these experience systems, Sleeping Dogs isn’t an RPG. You won’t have to grind for anything, and I really appreciated how all upgrades were unlockable from side content rather than grinding or purchasing from a store (the only things you can buy are clothes and vehicles). It lent the title a bit of an old-school feel that is lacking in a lot of AAA titles.
I liked being able to switch between side missions and story objectives with a click of the joystick. Wish more games did this over having to go through the map or a menu.
But does that side content make up for the flaws in the narrative? Unfortunately, no. I did love the races, but almost everything else was straight-up repetitive despite some dialogue variation: you’re either engaging in a shootout, driving someone while engaging in a shootout, chasing down someone who robbed you, or fighting a bunch of guys in a mosh pit amongst other small variations. The repetitiveness honestly brought back memories of Spider-Man 2’s side stuff. Now, Sleeping Dogs’s world was visually interesting enough that I had no problem completing things, but I don’t imagine others maintaining this same fortitude for long.
Even the nonrepetitive stuff feels half-baked. You’ll remember I noted that one recurring problem with Sleeping Dogs is it introduces stuff that it doesn’t further develop. The romance side missions are a big example of this, wherein Shen will go on a date with someone, then they break-up with him or (in the case of Stone’s character) don’t even show-up. It felt so unfulfilling. There’s a series dedicated to Shen helping this scientist with his high-tech car that ends with Shen just deciding to take it and the guy saying okay in an anticlimactic way (also opens up a series of new side missions involving using said car, albeit it literally comes down to you just staying in one place and shooting enemy cars that drive-by). There are other missions where Shen will agree to do some parkour moves for a random guy. All dumb.
The sole exception are three case missions wherein you help Inspector Tang solve crimes in Hong Kong. They had their own unique narrative to them, worked alongside the main story, and were very engaging. It’s a dang shame there were only three of them as I wanted a lot more!
There are collectibles in the form of locked briefcases that contain money and articles of clothing (and sometimes guns!), health shrines that increase your health, and security cameras that can be hacked and….do nothing. All of these can be unlocked on your map once you do the romance side missions (why they’re tied to them idk, but I’m grateful for the perk). On the topic of romance missions, there’s also karaoke songs that you can play (the gameplay being a mediocre version of Guitar Hero), and I hope it was Will Yun Lee actually singing!
There are a couple of short story DLC that come with the Definitive Edition on Steam. Because they are set after the main game, I have to mention spoilers about them so I’ll post them at the very end. But if you want a tl;dr, Year of the Snake sucks and Nightmare in Northpoint is awesome.
In the end, I definitely think Sleeping Dogs is fun enough to warrant a playthrough. You’ll fall in love with Hong Kong and the driving is the best I’ve experienced in a AAA title. At a $20.00 asking price, you’re definitely getting your bang for your buck, even if you get tired of the side stuff.
SPOILERS
The first is “Year of the Snake,” which starts off relatively interesting- you have Shen being punished for his chaotic actions in the main narrative via being demoted to traffic cop. As this is happening, a new cult terrorist group emerges wanting to destroy Hong Kong. Sadly, that concept is wasted on a storyline that doesn’t even try to be a storyline- it literally is more like a bunch of side missions that were marked as “story missions” that do not build up or culminate in anything but a lackluster finale. Shen having to deal with the consequences of his behavior is thrown out the window as he basically does whatever he wants with barely any pushback. The worst part is how, despite taking place after the events of the main game, you aren’t given access to any of your extra combat abilities since Shen is forced to wear a cop uniform that restricts him to tasering people he grapples and handcuffing people he charges. There was only one new takedown thrown in and triggering cops is an instant game over since Shen gets kicked off the force. You also get a pointless collectible in the form of evidence bags that don’t even get marked on the map, and to top it all off, no visual change is done to the game world (despite taking place in a separate file) outside of some fireworks. The only thing I did like was the reports section in the phone containing new data. Overall, a disappointment.
The second one, Nightmare in North Point, is a lot like Undead Nightmare in that it features Shen dealing with a supernatural threat -- jiangshi or Chinese vampire-zombies arising from the dead after a tormented mobster named Smiley Cat arises to seek revenge on those who wronged him. The narrative here was deliberately humorous, but the thing I really enjoyed was how there was actual build-up and storytelling going on with each mission. Things felt better designed, and while the structure was repetitive (go to an area and beat up Jiangshi), I did like how there was a drive towards a singular goal and a bit of a mystery regarding Smiley Cat. The decision to have Vincent be Shen’s ghost partner over Jackie was admittedly odd since the two didn’t have a real friendship in the main game, but Osric Chau did an excellent job playing him during his moments. The new Jiang Shi and Yaoguai enemies are beautifully designed, containing that ethereal nightmare quality to them that has come from Chinese Mythology; you get another set of reports that focus on aspects of Chinese traditions/folklore; there is an actual aesthetic change, with mist floating through the streets, a blue twilight filter on camera, and NPC civilians having glowing eyes and disappearing in a fiery animation whenever they are knocked-out/killed. Some new takedowns have been added as well.
Unfortunately, there were flaws, namely Smiley Cat- his voice acting was terrible and I feel the writers could’ve made him more serious than he actually was. The idea of Shen having to face the vengeful spirits of people he’d killed in the main game was solid, but the short nature of the storyline meant that these interactions were limited to just three of the guys and ultimately a bit rushed. Finally, the Jiang Shi are taken out like regular thugs, albeit requiring a grapple takedown (although you can still beat them with environmental takedowns). They pretty much fight like regular thugs (and bleed like them too strangely despite being ghostly), making them reskins in a way despite their sick visage- more could’ve been done here for sure (the Yaoguai are at least unique in their attack patterns and teleportation skills).
Overall though, it’s clear that effort was put into Nightmare in North Point compared to Year of the Snake, and I enjoyed my time with it. Also no pointless collectibles, so that’s a plus (although a LOT of repetitive side missions involving just fighting more and more zombies).
I’ve always been a story-driven guy, and here Sleeping Dogs doesn’t quite deliver on what it evidently set-out to do. You play as Wei Shen, a former Hong Kong native working as an undercover cop for an unnamed police organization. Shen is sent to infiltrate the Sun On Yee Triad gang as part of a long-term operation to bring it down. Despite being highly-qualified, Shen’s motivations are much darker, involving subtle revenge over the death of his younger sister years earlier. As Shen gets deeper into this criminal underworld and commits more egregious acts in the name of dismantling the Sun On Yee, the question becomes how far he’s willing to go before he ends up losing himself…..at least, that’s what the writers’ intentions were.
There are many issues with Sleeping Dogs’s narrative, but here are the biggest ones: first off, we don’t actually get to see anything regarding Shen’s backstory or upbringing, which the contemporary timeline heavily relies on. Shen is welcomed into the Sun On Yee thanks to his childhood friend Jackie, and the aforementioned death of his sister is brought up by his police compatriots as a reason to keep a closer watch on him. But outside of those small instances, the vast, vast majority of the backstory is relegated to optional reports you can read via Shen’s phone. They’re all well-written, but reading something and watching it are two very different things, especially in a visual medium like a video game. Because he doesn’t speak about his past much, having some cutscenes to consistently refresh/refer to would have gone a long way towards keeping that vengeance motif alive throughout the narrative. Alas, I wasn’t quite able to put myself in Shen’s shoes, which hurt the power of the story.
The second biggest issue is how the degradation of Shen’s psyche is depicted. It’s clear the writers were trying to evoke vigilante tales of good men being forced to shed their morality to achieve justice in an indecent world (Law Abiding Citizen, Death Wish, etc…), but again that fails because we don’t get enough of who Shen was beforehand- when we meet him, he’s already a no-nonsense ass-kicker who doesn’t mind doing criminal acts for the sake of moving up in the eyes of the Sun On Yee leaders. As such, there’s no real character arc b/c the Shen from the beginning is no different from the Shen of the end. You can maybe argue that he commits more brutal acts as the game progresses, but you’re already capable of some pretty brutal takedowns from the get-go, making this a possible case of ludonarrative dissonance. But even if the takedowns weren’t there at-first, I didn’t see anything significantly different to constitute a character arc- he’s still helping the police, he’s still yelling at his police compatriots for trying to hold him back from achieving his mission, and he’s still getting angry for acts of wrongdoing committed against his friends.
The game tries to counter this via two things: one, having Shen experience dialogue flashbacks whenever he wakes up between missions that replay conversations with NPCs pointing out how Shen is taking things too personally; and two, incorporating some unique dialogue in an optional sidequest involving Shen finding and returning Jade statues to his former Martial Arts Sensei- doing so results in them talking about Shen’s past for a few seconds and how he’s become different.
The problem with the former is that it’s quite honestly a bit lazy (we couldn’t even get full-video flashbacks using the EXISTING cutscenes?) and doesn’t affect the plot in the slightest. The problem with the latter is that it’s all optional, meaning you experience it inconsistently with the pace of the narrative, it’s very minimal, and also doesn’t affect the plot in the slightest.
Now, those failures aside, where Sleeping Dogs succeeds narratively is in its build-up of character relations. Shen is coming into this setting as a semi-outsider, and so he has to go through the typical initiation process of proving his loyalty and worth to the gang. Doing so earns their respect, resulting in them taking him in, first as a warrior, then as a friend, and finally as a family member. No matter the rings of leadership, this development is pretty consistent, and I never once felt that Shen was unrealistically rising to the top like some Mary Sue/Gary Stu. It’s a shame that a lot of those build-ups rest on repetitive mission structures, but more on that below.
The ending does feel a bit rushed and is ultimately unsatisfying. It’s strange because it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger/wraps up things decently well, but it felt like there was a lot more to tell- a longer story that could have continued forth. I guess that’s what sequels are for, which Sleeping Dogs doesn’t have a chance of getting (though if Shenmue III proved anything, it’s that long-gestating follow-ups are a possibility). Overall, the story will entertain you enough, but falls far short of its larger ambitions.
If there’s one thing I can praise it for, though, it is for giving solid pacing for the completion of side content. A lot of these open world adventures are often unable to do one or the other: you either have an engaging narrative that you can’t divert from because each mission endgame necessitates you immediately continuing forth with the next sequence, or the base storyline is so forgettable that you get lost in the side stuff without even feeling compelled to go back on the main track. Sleeping Dogs is solid enough that you want to keep experiencing Shen’s journey, but rarely do the missions have that urgency-feeling to them. Those that do tend to either involve emotional story beats or are reduced to mandatory cutscenes that play immediately after being triggered in-game. I wish more AAA or even indie open world games that capitalize on lots of side content followed a Sleeping Dogs-esque model.
Graphically, I actually can’t even appropriately talk about the game because my gaming PC was unable to run it at the highest settings! Perhaps that’s a huge praise in and of itself- that a 2012 title was able to outdo a computer from the late 2010s.
Hong Kong truly looks beautiful. There was a strong attempt by the developers to achieve an authenticity to the real-life city (at the time) that you can read about on Wikipedia, and I have no doubt that they succeeded. I know they were probably trying to harken back to old-school Hong Kong movies, but I honestly couldn’t help but feel that there were some cyberpunk influences as well. Neon signs light-up nearly every area, and there’s a dynamic rain system that darkens the cityscape with a cascading torrent like in classic cyberpunk works. There was also an attempt at depicting the different socioeconomic strata in Hong Kong, with poorer districts filled with rundown hotels and regularly-dressed working class people contrasting visually with the wealthier areas filled with nicer cars, better-looking buildings, and expensively-clothed NPCs. While more could have been done on the latter front to make things stand out even more (and had some of that play a part in the storyline, thereby giving it subtle sociopolitical commentary), I can’t deny that the end product is stunning and beautiful to this day. Seeing neon reflections on the drenched asphalt will always be a sight to behold.
But there are graphical problems that prevail. Skin is arguably the biggest issue due to its inconsistency- NPCs, from the ones wandering the streets to the ones in cutscenes (everything is rendered through the in-game engine) can vary significantly. Sometimes you’ll get characters who look fleshy and full-fledged, while other times you’ll see models that would not look out of place from the PS2/early-Xbox 360 era. I’m not sure if this was an engine issue or a consequence of me having to slightly downgrade the graphics, but I feel it was too prevalent to be the latter and it can be distracting, especially when you have a great model interacting with a mediocre one in the same scene! Texturing in general is irregular, with streets and signs often looking great but interiors and paraphernalia inside said interiors often faltering when you look at it for more than 5 seconds.
The final things I didn’t like were 1) how Sleeping Dogs dialogue is often too much compared to the distance you need to drive between points advancing a story and 2) the inconsistent continuity between gameplay and cutscene. Like I said before, Sleeping Dogs doesn’t use prerendered cutscenes, meaning clothing your character has or cars they are driving stay the same when a cutscene occurs...for the most part. There were times where I switched weapons or my car sustained damage, only for the consequent cutscene to act like none of those things occurred, and it was temporarily immersion breaking.
There is also a lot of clipping, particularly whenever objects or people come into contact with curbs, edges, and foliage, but you get used to it pretty quickly. I read that there is a lot of criticism towards the draw distance, however I personally never had an issue with it- given that it’s set in a metropolis with a multitude of buildings and a low-hanging camera, Sleeping Dogs doesn’t benefit from having sights you can gaze at in the horizon. And the haziness you do see can be more believably chalked up to pollution than Dishonored or AC Syndicate due to the lower graphical quality of everything.
If I can end on a fully positive note, it’s the vehicles. There are a lot of automobiles and bikes you can drive and/or purchase, and each has a distinct, handmade craft to it in a way that rivals even GTA. The damage these cars sustain whenever you do some kinetic activity is beautifully conveyed, with scuffs, scratches, shattered glass, to collapsing parts having a tangible causal effect to them over a preprogrammed occurrence, if that makes sense.
Sound is the next category, and it is a giant disappointment. I’ll begin with the SFX because I have a lot to say- it’s so generic. NPC screams/grunts, breakable object sounds, and ESPECIALLY vehicular engines (which constitute most of the soundscape you will experience) have maybe 1-2 dins repeated ad nauseam. And seriously, I could not be more disappointed with the cars: why a sedan sounds the exact bloody same as a sports car or freakin motorcycle is beyond me. Trucks are at least different, but you barely drive those so it’s small praise. Guns have some variety as well if only because there are few models in the game, but they still come off as weak compared to other AAA titles with firearms. The only thing that felt consistently good were the takedowns, though I can’t say whether that came from a genuine auditory cue from them or my general appreciation for their brutality/use in combat.
Voice acting is mostly mediocre. Will Yun Lee does a good job as Shen, and I was a big fan of Byron Mann’s portrayal of Shen’s handler Raymond despite his limited screentime (wish there was more), but a lot of the other Asian actors failed to make their characters standout. I wonder if part of this had to do with the game being English with some Chinese words thrown in Animus-style, but rarely did I feel intimidated or entertained by the mobsters. A ton of celebrities were also hired to do round out the supporting cast, but you’ll be disappointed to know that the majority of them, from Emma Stone to Lucy Liu, are barely in the game, having maybe 2 missions that abruptly end whatever excuse for a sidequest the writers drummed up for them. Of the ones that have a longer haul, they did a good job, with credit to Tom Wilkinson and Kelly Hu in particular for standing out as Shen’s law enforcement coworkers. As far as generic NPCs go, don’t even get me started- there were times where Sleeping Dogs made me miss Oblivion.
The score by Jeff Tymoschuk plays its part. I didn’t find many moments that stood out particularly, but there was also nothing distracting. One of the things that kind of hurts the OST is all the driving you do. Sleeping Dogs managed to license a lot of music, and your car is restricted to only playing music from the radio stations you can switch between. As such, much like with Suicide Squad, the score often takes a backseat to whatever pop music (pop music as in popular music, not the genre) you’re playing. Personally, I would’ve liked to have heard an older-school Chinese influenced soundtrack in the background as those instruments always stood out to me whenever I heard them.
But overall, sound is lackluster. As gorgeous as Hong Kong is, it never feels like a lively city, even when you’re talking through the markets or through crowds of people, which is a huge component of atmosphere-making.
Finally, we get to gameplay, which is where the crux of Sleeping Dogs’s appeal rests. Gameplay is divided into two categories: driving/movement and combat. As you can probably guess from my opening paragraph, I loved the driving. Of all the non-racers with cars that I have played, from GTA to Watch_Dogs to even Arkham Knight, Sleeping Dogs outdoes all of them (with the exception of two flaws). The developers successfully achieved that balance of acceleration and turning, allowing you to successfully maneuver your way through tight-knit streets and corners. There are a lot of races in the game, and I’m generally not a fan of racing minigames since the driving mechanics usually falter. But because Sleeping Dogs successfully created a system of vehicular movement that was truly enjoyable, I eagerly completed all of them.
The exceptions I referred to earlier, though, regard the camera and reverse driving. Unless you are shooting, don’t even bother trying to move the camera, as it will get all janky and give you a headache. Trying to reverse longer than a couple of inches is even worse, as suddenly the car looses cohesion and sends you twisting and turning elsewhere. Now, these didn’t impair my enjoyment because the default camera is solid (and when you have to engage in driving shoot-outs, the manual camera is good) and you never have to reverse for an extended period of time.
Unfortunately, movement on foot is a lot more limited. One of the recurring problems you’ll find with Sleeping Dogs is how it seems to incorporate or build some concept/mechanic, only to falter in seeing it through to its completion, meaning you get a lot of half-designed ideas. The parkour is one of these- Wei is able to initiate animations that climb structures or leap beams or slide across cars, but it isn’t evenly incorporated around the game’s world in the same vein as an Assassin Creed or even Far Cry game. A frustrating thing that can happen is when you are on a highway or overlooking a body of water and you are unable to jump over the former’s guardrail or the latter’s fence because for some reason the devs didn’t think to expand the parkour to them. It really limits the pathfinding to linearity, despite there being a decent system in place. There’s also no jump button, so there’s that.
With combat, look, I’ll be blunt- you’re getting discount Arkham. Sleeping Dogs tries to ape the freeflow system albeit with a different martial arts style and slightly different set-up: instead of attack, counter, stun you got attack, counter, grapple. But the general idea is the same of moving between guys, wailing on each of them whilst avoiding getting interrupted. The problem is the flow just isn’t there- enemy detection is very hit-or-miss, meaning there’s a good chance you don’t move to your next intended target. Making things harder is that all enemy archetypes have access to a block that prevents them from being struck. The idea is obviously that you’re supposed to grapple them, but the issue here is that this stance is indistinguishable from their regular pose, meaning you can’t know for certain whether a thug has their guard up versus just standing there. Sleeping Dogs also has the annoying feature of you being unable to attack guys who are attacking you- you have no choice but to counter. Compare all this to Arkham where the flow was smooth, only certain enemies could block you, and you could uppercut someone instead of countering them (though the catch was that was often slower).
One slight saving grace of Sleeping Dog’s hand-to-hand are the environmental takedowns I alluded to earlier. There are a surprising amount of them, and a lot of missions have you going to areas that include even more unique opportunities like skewering someone on a bunch of swordfish or releasing a car hood on their skull. Absolutely brutal, sadistic, and fun to do.
No matter my complaints, you can have fun with the fighting in a button-mashy kinda way. What you CAN’T have fun with are the gun shootouts. Geez, this entire system felt like it was tacked on late into the development cycle because someone at United Front Games realized that the Chinese Triads probably use guns in addition to h2h. Rather than fleshing out the latter system and dealing with the unrealistic nature of gunless Hong Kong syndicates, you get this cheap cover shooter thrown in that takes all the worst problems of the subgenre and combines them into one category: weak-feeling firearms, bullet sponge enemies that don’t realistically react to getting shot (seriously, they’ll hop around for a bit, then go back to guns ablazing as though a shot to the leg means nothing), mediocre AI, respawning enemies, poor aiming, and downright terrible hit detection if you’re even a little far from a thug (and I’m not just talking from single-shot weapons, which would be understandable; I’m talking spreadable ones like shotguns and assault rifles). It would’ve been so much better if the devs had focused on crafting a unique martial arts combat interface over throwing in this downright poor aspect. The worst part is you don’t even get access to any guns for side content UNTIL you beat the story, not even from stores, making it feel even more tacked on to the world.
All combat-related upgrades (whether new perks/abilities, unlockable skills like finding guns in cop cars, or moves) are gained via three systems: triad points, cop points, and jade statues. Triad points are only earned from story missions (which are replayable) and involve you doing violent/criminal things; cop points can be earned from the story or from doing law enforcement related side missions (cop missions or drug busts)- in story, they’re honestly annoying to get as 3 are given by default and decrease if do anything like break property, hit a civilian, or even fail a parkour hotkey. Thank goodness the game gives you the option to earn them through other means as the story mission ones were annoying to gather, especially in missions that involve you driving; finally, jade statues (as I talked about before) are strewn throughout the game world- returning them to Wei’s sensei allows you to purchase an additional combo move, and these were honestly pretty sweet and downright necessary for the fight club side missions. That being said, there are a couple of limb breaking ones that do admittedly allow you to cheese the combat by virtue of them being OP.
There’s an additional experience system called Face which you get from completing races and other side missions- tbh, there were so many ways to earn face that the level 10 cap was way too short IMO. Regardless, raising your face value gives you benefits in the game world like access to new vehicles and discounts at stores, so it’s worth investing in.
Despite all these experience systems, Sleeping Dogs isn’t an RPG. You won’t have to grind for anything, and I really appreciated how all upgrades were unlockable from side content rather than grinding or purchasing from a store (the only things you can buy are clothes and vehicles). It lent the title a bit of an old-school feel that is lacking in a lot of AAA titles.
I liked being able to switch between side missions and story objectives with a click of the joystick. Wish more games did this over having to go through the map or a menu.
But does that side content make up for the flaws in the narrative? Unfortunately, no. I did love the races, but almost everything else was straight-up repetitive despite some dialogue variation: you’re either engaging in a shootout, driving someone while engaging in a shootout, chasing down someone who robbed you, or fighting a bunch of guys in a mosh pit amongst other small variations. The repetitiveness honestly brought back memories of Spider-Man 2’s side stuff. Now, Sleeping Dogs’s world was visually interesting enough that I had no problem completing things, but I don’t imagine others maintaining this same fortitude for long.
Even the nonrepetitive stuff feels half-baked. You’ll remember I noted that one recurring problem with Sleeping Dogs is it introduces stuff that it doesn’t further develop. The romance side missions are a big example of this, wherein Shen will go on a date with someone, then they break-up with him or (in the case of Stone’s character) don’t even show-up. It felt so unfulfilling. There’s a series dedicated to Shen helping this scientist with his high-tech car that ends with Shen just deciding to take it and the guy saying okay in an anticlimactic way (also opens up a series of new side missions involving using said car, albeit it literally comes down to you just staying in one place and shooting enemy cars that drive-by). There are other missions where Shen will agree to do some parkour moves for a random guy. All dumb.
The sole exception are three case missions wherein you help Inspector Tang solve crimes in Hong Kong. They had their own unique narrative to them, worked alongside the main story, and were very engaging. It’s a dang shame there were only three of them as I wanted a lot more!
There are collectibles in the form of locked briefcases that contain money and articles of clothing (and sometimes guns!), health shrines that increase your health, and security cameras that can be hacked and….do nothing. All of these can be unlocked on your map once you do the romance side missions (why they’re tied to them idk, but I’m grateful for the perk). On the topic of romance missions, there’s also karaoke songs that you can play (the gameplay being a mediocre version of Guitar Hero), and I hope it was Will Yun Lee actually singing!
There are a couple of short story DLC that come with the Definitive Edition on Steam. Because they are set after the main game, I have to mention spoilers about them so I’ll post them at the very end. But if you want a tl;dr, Year of the Snake sucks and Nightmare in Northpoint is awesome.
In the end, I definitely think Sleeping Dogs is fun enough to warrant a playthrough. You’ll fall in love with Hong Kong and the driving is the best I’ve experienced in a AAA title. At a $20.00 asking price, you’re definitely getting your bang for your buck, even if you get tired of the side stuff.
SPOILERS
The first is “Year of the Snake,” which starts off relatively interesting- you have Shen being punished for his chaotic actions in the main narrative via being demoted to traffic cop. As this is happening, a new cult terrorist group emerges wanting to destroy Hong Kong. Sadly, that concept is wasted on a storyline that doesn’t even try to be a storyline- it literally is more like a bunch of side missions that were marked as “story missions” that do not build up or culminate in anything but a lackluster finale. Shen having to deal with the consequences of his behavior is thrown out the window as he basically does whatever he wants with barely any pushback. The worst part is how, despite taking place after the events of the main game, you aren’t given access to any of your extra combat abilities since Shen is forced to wear a cop uniform that restricts him to tasering people he grapples and handcuffing people he charges. There was only one new takedown thrown in and triggering cops is an instant game over since Shen gets kicked off the force. You also get a pointless collectible in the form of evidence bags that don’t even get marked on the map, and to top it all off, no visual change is done to the game world (despite taking place in a separate file) outside of some fireworks. The only thing I did like was the reports section in the phone containing new data. Overall, a disappointment.
The second one, Nightmare in North Point, is a lot like Undead Nightmare in that it features Shen dealing with a supernatural threat -- jiangshi or Chinese vampire-zombies arising from the dead after a tormented mobster named Smiley Cat arises to seek revenge on those who wronged him. The narrative here was deliberately humorous, but the thing I really enjoyed was how there was actual build-up and storytelling going on with each mission. Things felt better designed, and while the structure was repetitive (go to an area and beat up Jiangshi), I did like how there was a drive towards a singular goal and a bit of a mystery regarding Smiley Cat. The decision to have Vincent be Shen’s ghost partner over Jackie was admittedly odd since the two didn’t have a real friendship in the main game, but Osric Chau did an excellent job playing him during his moments. The new Jiang Shi and Yaoguai enemies are beautifully designed, containing that ethereal nightmare quality to them that has come from Chinese Mythology; you get another set of reports that focus on aspects of Chinese traditions/folklore; there is an actual aesthetic change, with mist floating through the streets, a blue twilight filter on camera, and NPC civilians having glowing eyes and disappearing in a fiery animation whenever they are knocked-out/killed. Some new takedowns have been added as well.
Unfortunately, there were flaws, namely Smiley Cat- his voice acting was terrible and I feel the writers could’ve made him more serious than he actually was. The idea of Shen having to face the vengeful spirits of people he’d killed in the main game was solid, but the short nature of the storyline meant that these interactions were limited to just three of the guys and ultimately a bit rushed. Finally, the Jiang Shi are taken out like regular thugs, albeit requiring a grapple takedown (although you can still beat them with environmental takedowns). They pretty much fight like regular thugs (and bleed like them too strangely despite being ghostly), making them reskins in a way despite their sick visage- more could’ve been done here for sure (the Yaoguai are at least unique in their attack patterns and teleportation skills).
Overall though, it’s clear that effort was put into Nightmare in North Point compared to Year of the Snake, and I enjoyed my time with it. Also no pointless collectibles, so that’s a plus (although a LOT of repetitive side missions involving just fighting more and more zombies).
2017
This review contains spoilers
"Emily is Away Too" is the 2017 sequel to the 2015 sleeper hit "Emily is Away". I use the term sleeper hit because, though the game was free, it managed to attract a significant amount of notoriety (and consequently downloads) to warrant it being distinguishable from its crowd of free/low-budget indie titles.
And low-budget it was. "Emily is Away" remains a great example of how to use small development money wisely. Creator Kyle Seeley chose to cash his chips on the nostalgia vibe of old-school AOL chat services that dominated the beginning of the Internet in the late-90s/early-2000s. This hit a stride with a lot of people, prompting it to gain free marketing.
Having played "Emily is Away," I can say that I liked it overall, but had some big reservations. You can read my full review here (https://steamcommunity.com/id/redtotalwar/recommended/417860?snr=1_5_9__402), but, to talk about the good, Seeley successfully created a product that would appeal to anyone who grew up in the targeted demographic: though I personally had not used AIM, I found myself enjoying the visuals and sounds because they were terrific reconstructions of the aesthetic/audio seen in the days of Windows Vista (my parents were ardent computer users, as was myself back then and still now). And the story, while simple, managed to be engaging.
To talk about the bad though, the nostalgia aspect meant that its appeal might not reach those who weren't in said demographic. On top of this, the narrative had issues: I didn't like being forced into a romantic relationship, the timeskips between the chapters were unrealistic for two friends in contact, there was no option for touch typing, it was geared towards male/lesbian gamers only, and there was only one ending (technically 2, but its result was more-or-less the same).
Despite these myriad of issues, I didn't want to criticize the game too heavily. After all, Seeley had chosen to release it for free, and you weren't going to lose more than an hour of your time clicking through it. Combine these aspects with a genuine charm and you had a recommendation.
"Emily is Away Too," comes with a $5.00 asking price, meaning I don’t feel as guilty critiquing it compared to its predecessor. Seeley had every right as a developer and publisher to do this as the two years between the two have provided him an opportunity to completely redesign the systems. “Emily is Away Too” has the same basic premise of using an IM to communicate with friends, but that service itself has been retrofitted with a new layout, more ergonomic features (the ability to swap between chats), and the incorporation of hyperlinks that act as either external URLs or download links to your desktop.
Those external URLs go to two fake websites representing the early onset of YouTube (YouToob) and Facebook (Facenook), but it is here that we get to the biggest issue with “Emily is Away Too” which is spectacle creep.
Spectacle creep is a potential problem with sequelitis wherein a creator decides that the best way to create a better sequel is to go bigger: bigger scope + bigger visuals = bigger rewards. Sometimes this works (Terminator 2, Aliens, The Dark Knight, Assassin’s Creed II), but most of the time it falters because, in conceiving a larger framework, the creators lose sight of what made the original special.
Such is the case with “Emily is Away Too.” Seeley evidently decided that he had to expand upon what he had built, but his reach has exceeded his grasp. The story has been moved from the early-2000s to the mid-2000s; topics have been broadened beyond loss of friendships to matters like abusive romances, losing one’s virginity, drug use, and post-collegiate plans; you interact with two females over one, and you have the option to check out the aforestated sites. The problem is, none of these are developed well to the point where they can either stand on their own or add something to the conversation.
“Emily is Away” worked because it focused on one specific thing: the diminishing of a close relationship through the awkwardness of early-IM chatrooms. Even if you hadn’t personally experienced such an event that way, a lot of people could relate to this because they’ve either lost contact with former friends, had communication issues via social media, or seen others/themselves change for better and for worse. Seeley didn’t use the late-90s era to limit his thematic or storytelling ambit: it was simply a structure for the aesthetic and common problems surrounding said aesthetic.
In “Emily is Away Too,” we’re now in 2006 and what has happened? Characters are constantly bragging and sharing links about relevant music genres (alternative, punk rock) and memes (Numa Numa, Rickrolling); Facenook has opened up the possibility of poking, posting dumb status updates, and taking personality tests, no one seems to care about the future, and everyone feels the need to speak in slang, typos, and pop culture.
I noted above that the timely aspect of the first EiA might hurt its appeal despite its relatable themes. With EiAT, I know for sure the timely aspect will hurt its appeal because of how drenched in the mid-2000s it is. Seeley has gone from simply taking an existing framework to trying desperately to recreate it, and I don’t even know how successful he was. With language, for example, I don’t recall us ever speaking in such blatant slang and having such terrible typos. Seriously, in “Too”, the sheer amount of typos you or your partners post is ridiculous, and even though I learned touch typing at a young age, I don’t remember non-touch typers ever being this bad at it. Likewise with the slang: did we really say “awesomesauce” or “deuce” that often? And did we REALLY make a pop culture or music reference every other sentence?
Experiences and memories will always be subjective, but this feels more like a caricature of what a 90s-born millennial would say than what we actually said back in the day.
With the broadened topics, I did find this more naturalistic because the fact is, with the Internet, we became more curious. And because we were too bashful to talk with our parents about these sensitive topics, we went to our peers. It indulged two feelings: we got a sense of excitement from discussing something taboo behind our folks’ backs, and we got satisfaction from getting “answers” to our questions. What drugs felt like, when we planned to lose our virginity, plans for moving out of our parents’ homes (before the Recession ruined that!). Though the scripting could have been more refined and less like “Superbad” I think it was the best part of the game.
The ability to check out Facenook and YouToob seems great on paper, but it falls apart upon closer examination as none of them are designed well. They look good from an artistic sense, clearly resembling the original set-ups of their real-world counterparts, but that loses its appeal after a few minutes and the realization that you can’t do anything. Facenook only allows you to view the front page of other user profiles, poke them, and send friend requests. You don’t get to create your own profile, post your own status updates, receive pokes, acknowledge friend requests, do anything resembling social media, or even interact with anyone on the medium. I genuinely wonder why Seeley had the game take place on a separate chat service when he could have used the old-school Facebook PMing system: it would’ve allowed him to not divide his time between two different applications, and focus exclusively on recreating the problems that came with early social media.
YouToob isn’t much better. You can watch videos and click on related videos that are displayed on the side (which are all of the era and don’t feel anachronistic). There are two issues though: you can’t create your own account, thus preventing you from commenting or creating a playlist of your own, and two, Seeley did a poor job embedding the videos. They go directly to videos published on YouTube, which ruins the immersion b/c you can clearly see the new YouTube format on the videos (or in some cases, an anachronistic feature like Vevo, which didn’t launch until late 2009) or sometimes not see the video at all! (it having been removed by the channel that Seeley linked to).
There are some meme sites that users post on their AIM page, but these lose their comedic value quickly.
Then there’s the story, which isn’t good at all. Having to deal with two girls seems like a unique spin that would expand upon the nature of the first game, but it doesn’t. The two girls, Emily and Evelyn, are basically carbon copies of one another who both conveniently have relationship issues that you, the White Knight, can step in and solve. Things do get interesting in the second chapter when you have to balance talking with the two: a time meter forces you to rush, mimicking the real-life process of having to balance multiple chats with a potentially impatient person. I really loved this, especially when it caused me to lose one of the girls b/c she was upset I wasn’t responding to her problems fast enough.
ONLY, it turns out this was scripted! You’re SUPPOSED to lose one of the girls, leaving you to focus entirely on the other chick. The forced linearity gets really annoying here, and while EiA also had it, it was much shorter in the dialogue. Here, conversations go on and on, really making it resemble a visual novel. And this would be fine if the scripting was good, but it's clear that Seeley needed to bring on some female writers as the amount of repetitive, desperate dialogue uttered by the girls is borderline disturbing and over-the-border irate. Having to repeat the same thing over and over again got annoying fast.
There is still no option for touch typers, and while you do have a platonic option, it's literally 1 out of 3 choices, the other 2 being heavily insisted upon by the game.
It took me less than 2 hours to beat Emily is Away Too, which makes it fall under my $1: 30 minutes ratio. Yes, there are multiple endings this time around, but they involve two different versions of the same ending (changed for the respective girl) and are initiated by the forced linearity of the aforestated chapter. Combined with the mediocre dialogue, half-baked attempts at replicating mid-2000s culture, and loss of charm from the first and you have a game I can’t recommend.
Emily is Away Too went big and fell short of almost everything it set out to do. I did like the topics it talked about, but even these were handled more like a Hollywood movie and the lack of awkwardness that comes with said watered-down product. Nostalgia cannot be a vanity project, yet that’s exactly what Seeley did here.
And low-budget it was. "Emily is Away" remains a great example of how to use small development money wisely. Creator Kyle Seeley chose to cash his chips on the nostalgia vibe of old-school AOL chat services that dominated the beginning of the Internet in the late-90s/early-2000s. This hit a stride with a lot of people, prompting it to gain free marketing.
Having played "Emily is Away," I can say that I liked it overall, but had some big reservations. You can read my full review here (https://steamcommunity.com/id/redtotalwar/recommended/417860?snr=1_5_9__402), but, to talk about the good, Seeley successfully created a product that would appeal to anyone who grew up in the targeted demographic: though I personally had not used AIM, I found myself enjoying the visuals and sounds because they were terrific reconstructions of the aesthetic/audio seen in the days of Windows Vista (my parents were ardent computer users, as was myself back then and still now). And the story, while simple, managed to be engaging.
To talk about the bad though, the nostalgia aspect meant that its appeal might not reach those who weren't in said demographic. On top of this, the narrative had issues: I didn't like being forced into a romantic relationship, the timeskips between the chapters were unrealistic for two friends in contact, there was no option for touch typing, it was geared towards male/lesbian gamers only, and there was only one ending (technically 2, but its result was more-or-less the same).
Despite these myriad of issues, I didn't want to criticize the game too heavily. After all, Seeley had chosen to release it for free, and you weren't going to lose more than an hour of your time clicking through it. Combine these aspects with a genuine charm and you had a recommendation.
"Emily is Away Too," comes with a $5.00 asking price, meaning I don’t feel as guilty critiquing it compared to its predecessor. Seeley had every right as a developer and publisher to do this as the two years between the two have provided him an opportunity to completely redesign the systems. “Emily is Away Too” has the same basic premise of using an IM to communicate with friends, but that service itself has been retrofitted with a new layout, more ergonomic features (the ability to swap between chats), and the incorporation of hyperlinks that act as either external URLs or download links to your desktop.
Those external URLs go to two fake websites representing the early onset of YouTube (YouToob) and Facebook (Facenook), but it is here that we get to the biggest issue with “Emily is Away Too” which is spectacle creep.
Spectacle creep is a potential problem with sequelitis wherein a creator decides that the best way to create a better sequel is to go bigger: bigger scope + bigger visuals = bigger rewards. Sometimes this works (Terminator 2, Aliens, The Dark Knight, Assassin’s Creed II), but most of the time it falters because, in conceiving a larger framework, the creators lose sight of what made the original special.
Such is the case with “Emily is Away Too.” Seeley evidently decided that he had to expand upon what he had built, but his reach has exceeded his grasp. The story has been moved from the early-2000s to the mid-2000s; topics have been broadened beyond loss of friendships to matters like abusive romances, losing one’s virginity, drug use, and post-collegiate plans; you interact with two females over one, and you have the option to check out the aforestated sites. The problem is, none of these are developed well to the point where they can either stand on their own or add something to the conversation.
“Emily is Away” worked because it focused on one specific thing: the diminishing of a close relationship through the awkwardness of early-IM chatrooms. Even if you hadn’t personally experienced such an event that way, a lot of people could relate to this because they’ve either lost contact with former friends, had communication issues via social media, or seen others/themselves change for better and for worse. Seeley didn’t use the late-90s era to limit his thematic or storytelling ambit: it was simply a structure for the aesthetic and common problems surrounding said aesthetic.
In “Emily is Away Too,” we’re now in 2006 and what has happened? Characters are constantly bragging and sharing links about relevant music genres (alternative, punk rock) and memes (Numa Numa, Rickrolling); Facenook has opened up the possibility of poking, posting dumb status updates, and taking personality tests, no one seems to care about the future, and everyone feels the need to speak in slang, typos, and pop culture.
I noted above that the timely aspect of the first EiA might hurt its appeal despite its relatable themes. With EiAT, I know for sure the timely aspect will hurt its appeal because of how drenched in the mid-2000s it is. Seeley has gone from simply taking an existing framework to trying desperately to recreate it, and I don’t even know how successful he was. With language, for example, I don’t recall us ever speaking in such blatant slang and having such terrible typos. Seriously, in “Too”, the sheer amount of typos you or your partners post is ridiculous, and even though I learned touch typing at a young age, I don’t remember non-touch typers ever being this bad at it. Likewise with the slang: did we really say “awesomesauce” or “deuce” that often? And did we REALLY make a pop culture or music reference every other sentence?
Experiences and memories will always be subjective, but this feels more like a caricature of what a 90s-born millennial would say than what we actually said back in the day.
With the broadened topics, I did find this more naturalistic because the fact is, with the Internet, we became more curious. And because we were too bashful to talk with our parents about these sensitive topics, we went to our peers. It indulged two feelings: we got a sense of excitement from discussing something taboo behind our folks’ backs, and we got satisfaction from getting “answers” to our questions. What drugs felt like, when we planned to lose our virginity, plans for moving out of our parents’ homes (before the Recession ruined that!). Though the scripting could have been more refined and less like “Superbad” I think it was the best part of the game.
The ability to check out Facenook and YouToob seems great on paper, but it falls apart upon closer examination as none of them are designed well. They look good from an artistic sense, clearly resembling the original set-ups of their real-world counterparts, but that loses its appeal after a few minutes and the realization that you can’t do anything. Facenook only allows you to view the front page of other user profiles, poke them, and send friend requests. You don’t get to create your own profile, post your own status updates, receive pokes, acknowledge friend requests, do anything resembling social media, or even interact with anyone on the medium. I genuinely wonder why Seeley had the game take place on a separate chat service when he could have used the old-school Facebook PMing system: it would’ve allowed him to not divide his time between two different applications, and focus exclusively on recreating the problems that came with early social media.
YouToob isn’t much better. You can watch videos and click on related videos that are displayed on the side (which are all of the era and don’t feel anachronistic). There are two issues though: you can’t create your own account, thus preventing you from commenting or creating a playlist of your own, and two, Seeley did a poor job embedding the videos. They go directly to videos published on YouTube, which ruins the immersion b/c you can clearly see the new YouTube format on the videos (or in some cases, an anachronistic feature like Vevo, which didn’t launch until late 2009) or sometimes not see the video at all! (it having been removed by the channel that Seeley linked to).
There are some meme sites that users post on their AIM page, but these lose their comedic value quickly.
Then there’s the story, which isn’t good at all. Having to deal with two girls seems like a unique spin that would expand upon the nature of the first game, but it doesn’t. The two girls, Emily and Evelyn, are basically carbon copies of one another who both conveniently have relationship issues that you, the White Knight, can step in and solve. Things do get interesting in the second chapter when you have to balance talking with the two: a time meter forces you to rush, mimicking the real-life process of having to balance multiple chats with a potentially impatient person. I really loved this, especially when it caused me to lose one of the girls b/c she was upset I wasn’t responding to her problems fast enough.
ONLY, it turns out this was scripted! You’re SUPPOSED to lose one of the girls, leaving you to focus entirely on the other chick. The forced linearity gets really annoying here, and while EiA also had it, it was much shorter in the dialogue. Here, conversations go on and on, really making it resemble a visual novel. And this would be fine if the scripting was good, but it's clear that Seeley needed to bring on some female writers as the amount of repetitive, desperate dialogue uttered by the girls is borderline disturbing and over-the-border irate. Having to repeat the same thing over and over again got annoying fast.
There is still no option for touch typers, and while you do have a platonic option, it's literally 1 out of 3 choices, the other 2 being heavily insisted upon by the game.
It took me less than 2 hours to beat Emily is Away Too, which makes it fall under my $1: 30 minutes ratio. Yes, there are multiple endings this time around, but they involve two different versions of the same ending (changed for the respective girl) and are initiated by the forced linearity of the aforestated chapter. Combined with the mediocre dialogue, half-baked attempts at replicating mid-2000s culture, and loss of charm from the first and you have a game I can’t recommend.
Emily is Away Too went big and fell short of almost everything it set out to do. I did like the topics it talked about, but even these were handled more like a Hollywood movie and the lack of awkwardness that comes with said watered-down product. Nostalgia cannot be a vanity project, yet that’s exactly what Seeley did here.
2015
This review contains spoilers
I admit, when I saw the mock Windows XP boot-up menu, I laughed out loud. It's amazing just how much of a nostalgic entryway sound can be. And that's the type of feeling that Emily is Away coasts on- nostalgia. It hearkens back to that time in the late-90s/early 2000s when AOL and AIM were providing revolutionary IM services to people, allowing long distance friends and family to communicate with one another.
Unfortunately, this framework also works against the game as a lot of people like myself didn't really grow up using AIM. While my childhood was the aforementioned era, I was someone who didn't start chatting extensively online until Gmail and Google Chat came around. So it's worth keeping that aspect in mind as a lot of the visual throwbacks present in the interface of Emily is Away will fall flat on you if you did not grow up experiencing AIM.
The premise itself is interesting as it depicts two close friends who slowly drift apart over the years. This is a topic that has been explored in other media like Ghost World, but its everlasting relevance has allowed it to permeate over continuous generations. Unfortunately, Emily is Away makes two big mistakes in its take on the tale- 1) adding a romantic aspect, and 2) making the timeskips too large.
Your character, no matter the (limited) choices you make in the texting, ends up having feelings for Emily that are acted upon in some way or another. And I feel the writer shouldn't have done this because it not only limits the appeal of the game (only straight males will go for it), but it also prevents us from completely empathizing with the characters. I've always said that the most important aspect of a romantic story is the beginning because that is where we begin our journey on this paramour path. Emily is Away does away with that, throwing all the important details into a gap that we only learn about in retrospect. A straight-up friendship would've been a lot better because you don't have to invest as much time into explaining why two people became pals.
Because I never bought into the romance, the games use of timeskips hurt the narrative even more. It jumps yearly, which makes no sense because, even if people are busy, we still communicate at least once a month. Reducing that skip would've made the inevitable drift between you and Emily more profound IMO, as it makes more sense for close people to fall apart after not talking for close to a year compared to a month.
The ability to type was a mixed bag. Yes, it gave the chat a little more of a realistic factor, but for those of us who are capable of touch typing, I think there should've been an option to allow us to type out the responses, or just click the response line and have the protagonist automatically type it. Random keying was mixed for me. I also found it strange that you would have to click to the left of a button you wanted to click on. I can't tell if this was a bug or an attempt by the developer to replicate an old form of computer interface, but I don't remember this being the case on WIndows XP, and it's inconsistently implemented in the game anyway.
I liked the avatar logos being throwbacks to whatever pop culture instance was popular at the time, and I liked that Emily came off as a real person despite obviously being a series of pre-programmed responses.
However, the ending was definitely meant to be more powerful than I ended up thinking it was. For some, this game will definitely appeal to you at the very heart, but I just couldn't relate myself. I know it seems juvenile to complain about a free game, but an artist put out their work with the intent of people reviewing it, and this is my own critique.
Overall though, I definitely recommend playing and experiencing it for yourself because, at the end of the day, it is free and ultimately interesting enough.
Unfortunately, this framework also works against the game as a lot of people like myself didn't really grow up using AIM. While my childhood was the aforementioned era, I was someone who didn't start chatting extensively online until Gmail and Google Chat came around. So it's worth keeping that aspect in mind as a lot of the visual throwbacks present in the interface of Emily is Away will fall flat on you if you did not grow up experiencing AIM.
The premise itself is interesting as it depicts two close friends who slowly drift apart over the years. This is a topic that has been explored in other media like Ghost World, but its everlasting relevance has allowed it to permeate over continuous generations. Unfortunately, Emily is Away makes two big mistakes in its take on the tale- 1) adding a romantic aspect, and 2) making the timeskips too large.
Your character, no matter the (limited) choices you make in the texting, ends up having feelings for Emily that are acted upon in some way or another. And I feel the writer shouldn't have done this because it not only limits the appeal of the game (only straight males will go for it), but it also prevents us from completely empathizing with the characters. I've always said that the most important aspect of a romantic story is the beginning because that is where we begin our journey on this paramour path. Emily is Away does away with that, throwing all the important details into a gap that we only learn about in retrospect. A straight-up friendship would've been a lot better because you don't have to invest as much time into explaining why two people became pals.
Because I never bought into the romance, the games use of timeskips hurt the narrative even more. It jumps yearly, which makes no sense because, even if people are busy, we still communicate at least once a month. Reducing that skip would've made the inevitable drift between you and Emily more profound IMO, as it makes more sense for close people to fall apart after not talking for close to a year compared to a month.
The ability to type was a mixed bag. Yes, it gave the chat a little more of a realistic factor, but for those of us who are capable of touch typing, I think there should've been an option to allow us to type out the responses, or just click the response line and have the protagonist automatically type it. Random keying was mixed for me. I also found it strange that you would have to click to the left of a button you wanted to click on. I can't tell if this was a bug or an attempt by the developer to replicate an old form of computer interface, but I don't remember this being the case on WIndows XP, and it's inconsistently implemented in the game anyway.
I liked the avatar logos being throwbacks to whatever pop culture instance was popular at the time, and I liked that Emily came off as a real person despite obviously being a series of pre-programmed responses.
However, the ending was definitely meant to be more powerful than I ended up thinking it was. For some, this game will definitely appeal to you at the very heart, but I just couldn't relate myself. I know it seems juvenile to complain about a free game, but an artist put out their work with the intent of people reviewing it, and this is my own critique.
Overall though, I definitely recommend playing and experiencing it for yourself because, at the end of the day, it is free and ultimately interesting enough.
2001
Gothic is an interesting game for me. I don't quite remember how I heard about it, yet at the same time I don't quite know how I didn't hear about it as an avid retro gamer. See, Gothic is considered by many to be one of the most innovative RPGs of all time, and on the outset I definitely agree: aspects like a day/night cycle, NPC routines, dynamic weather, NPC convos, a knockout system, wide-ranging magic, NPC reactions to player actions (like pulling out weapons/entering homes), sword combos, and more may have existed in a title here-or-there, but to be present in a single package was simply unheard of.
So I'm not trying to take anything away from Gothic (and I'll be speaking about those individual components later down the line), but ultimately Gothic falters in too many areas for me to recommend it to newer gamers, particularly in its story and RPG layouts.
The latter, in particular, is especially disappointing because, on the outset, Gothic seems like it has all the right ingredients to call itself an RPG- customizable gear, narrative choice, and a leveling system ripe with skill points. However, examining each of these facets carefully discloses just how many holes they truly have, beginning with the gear. Gear is limited to a singular item in the form of generic body armor, meaning there's no division amongst all the other compartments; no helmets, torsos, legs, plates, or boots. As a result, you never have the opportunity to mix-and-match pieces, and because better armor is progressively made available ala the Ezio Trilogy, you don’t even have a reason to keep old sets around.
Regarding the second, skills are very limited, with only three mattering in the long and short runs: strength, dexterity, and mana. Strength determines how hard you hit, dexterity your damage with a bow, and mana your spellcasting meter. Lockpicking is rendered pointless due to non-RNG combinations allowing save scumming, and pickpocketing & sneak end up being exp black holes courtesy of mandatory combat sections in most story beats.
Even among the aforementioned trio of useful ones, you aren’t granted much variety. Strength is, in a lot of ways, overpowered since it also dictates weapons you can wield, and Ranged is outright discouraged courtesy of enemies having the capacity to either charge you quickly or launch their own deadly projectile.
What angered me the most about Gothic’s gameplay was the lack of a defense skill and the implied lies about player builds. Every time you level up fully, your HP bar increases, but this has nothing to do with your resistance to damage. The only way to affect that is to get some armor, but for the majority of the first chapter, you'll be hardpressed to find any. As a result, you’re all but strong-armed into running away from everything until you gain sufficient experience from sidequests, and even when you do get armor, there's no way, as I stated earlier, to upgrade it, forcing you to wait until the next chapter to obtain the next big set.
In terms of lies, you may think you can go into Gothic with a certain build, yet that isn't the case here as the game soft-requires you to invest points into strength, magic, and 2h weapons. If you don't do that, you'll be screwed at the end due to both the necessity of teleportation for saving time, as well as the majority of those late game enemies (orcs) being immune to one-handed weapons.
It's sad they went this route because there were three easy fixes: expand the skill tree, give multiple ways of taking out late-stage enemies, and make fast travel independent from magic.
The main campaign is the final major negative facet of the game as it just isn't all that engaging. Gothic boasts an interesting backstory involving a group of magicians screwing up the creation of a magic prison, their mistake resulting in hoards of prisoners gaining political power through a resource called Ore. While themes like criminal justice, cruel & unusual punishments, and the balance between security and order aren't explored, I wasn't expecting them to be nor was it necessary -- if you give me a good old-fashioned fantasy yarn, I'm down for the journey.
Except, Gothic's is very barebones. Per the above shift in dynamics, every convict has divided into three factions, providing you with your first choice in terms of who to join: the militarized Old Camp, the mercenary-run New Camp, and the tripping balls Sect Society. To the game’s credit, the first chapter spends a lot of time fleshing out the structures of the three: the writers subtly indicating that picking one over the other will yield consequences down-the-line.
ONLY, that doesn't happen. See, it doesn't matter which you choose because the story will progress in the exact same manner. Minus some dialogic differences, you’ll still manage to develop good relationships with enough major characters to render your chosen allegiance pointless. There are some fans who counter this by claiming that Gothic differentiates from other "Chosen One" narratives in that you're a nobody who gets treated like dirt, but having played the game I can say that that is just nonsense. Yes, some characters brush you aside as a nobody....but they treat everybody who isn't within their inner circle like a nobody; it's not specifically directed at you. And even if it were, the vast vast majority of NPCs out there are kind and offer you advice/help, so I don't know what those fanboys are talking about.
But I'm going off on a tangent - the story is lackluster because there's nothing personally motivating the protagonist to do stuff. Most of the early parts of the game have you playing errand boy, completing objectives solely because someone else wants X from somebody else. It's fleshed out enough that I'll refrain from labeling them fetch quests, but the structure is unfortunately noticeable, and even when the questline does get engaging, it's hampered by drawn-out moments that feel more akin to filler than genuine blocks of storytelling: you can't do A until you do B and C; to complete D, you need to find parts E, and F or talk to G, H, & J. I can't go into specifics without spoiling, but you'll notice it pretty quickly.
Another big issue I had with Gothic is how it goes all-out on explaining its mythological aspects. This is admittedly more of a pet peeve of mine than a legitimate critique, but I've never been a fan of video games that develop a deep mythos, only to then have said mythos play a concrete part in the story down-the-line (during which the mystery is inevitably unveiled in full detail): and unfortunately Gothic falls prey to that, revealing the true nature of its folkloric bits over the course of your journey.
The Sect Brotherhood, for instance, worships a deity called "The Sleeper" whom they believe will lead them to salvation. You could've used this as a springboard for exploring themes like how religion provides ignorance and bliss, or the line between faith and delusion, or even gone more metaphysical via pondering whether the Sect has a strong reason for their dogma. But alas, the Sleeper ends up playing a big part in the story.
Another great example is the New Camp magicians developing a plan to blow-up the barrier with a bunch of magic ore whilst being protected by mercenaries. You could've explored the ethics of a private military force, how hope can be used to exploit a populace, or how desperation can result in people believing in anything that promises them freedom (one of the characters in the game, Lester, outright states that!). But nope, that plan plays a big part in the narrative too.
Those are the two of the larger ones, but there are other revelations like the mysterious disappearance of the master magician Xardas, the backstory behind the barrier's creation, and the culture of other species. I'm not saying it hurts the pacing of the campaign, but what it does do is hurt its existential scope: it no longer has these pieces of lore to fall back on; they're just another standard building block for the player to completely examine.
Sidequests (of which there are surprisingly not many) aren't any better. Outside of some kooky characters, I can't recall any standing out for me personally. They don't explore any themes, don’t tell deep side stories, and just aren’t that fun, making them wasted potential. As a saving grace, I did appreciate the journal entries for them as they could be quite humorous at times.
With regards to the Nameless Hero, he's likable enough, though I wish there were dialogue options that allowed you to dictate his demeanor as the de facto one is that of an overly-optimistic homie who just wants to get home. I'm not quite sure why they stripped him of any personality given that he isn't an RPG avatar -- you don't get to name him, you don't get to dictate his morality, and you don't even get to customize his looks. He's essentially a bare bones template in a fantasy adventure, meaning the writers might as well have done more for him. If they were hoping this blankish slate would help make the guy and his situation more investable (i.e. the same thought process behind Isaac Clarke’s muteness in the original Dead Space), then the presence of voice acting defeated this.
I know I've been ranting nonstop, but Gothic does have a lot of good aspects to it. I pointed out in the introduction how it incorporated numerous revolutionary systems into its interface, and they mostly hold up to this day. NPCs have the same repetitive convos everytime you pass by them, but is this honestly any different from the radiant AIs of Oblivion and Skyrim that have become the thing of memes these days? It's also worth pointing out that big franchises like TES and Zelda haven't even brought in facets that were present in Gothic like NPC reactions to swords being drawn or entering restricted property.
Gothic takes a long time to implement fast travel ala teleportation; however, for most of my playthrough, I actually didn't find this to be burdensome due to how compact the overworld was. Piranha Bytes knew what they were doing when designing their setting as nothing feels out of place or extraneous the way you sometimes get in other free roam titles. Everything is relatively within walking distance, and while I would've liked an upgradable skill for increased speed (the presence of sprint potions showcase it was a possibility), you can do enough long jumps to lunge between the three main locales without much time wasted (and trust me, you will have to do such traveling A LOT). Would it have been better to present teleportation from the get-go? Of course. In fact, you don't get the Old Camp rune until the very last chapter (where it literally serves no narrative purpose), but that aforementioned compactness makes this flaw forgivable for the most part.
That said, exploration doesn't yield much in the way of goodies. Sure you'll find a blatantly copy/pasted cave, grotto or abandoned tower here-and-there, but they don't give any unique items -- just potions, ore, and generic weaponry.
Combat is a mixed bag. I mentioned before the presence of combos: movesets and twirls progressively learned from local trainers. However, I honestly found that simple hacking and blocking were highly sufficient in dispatching most foes, rendering such dances more prototypical than fleshed-out.
Magic is surprisingly wide-ranging -- you got your typical elements (minus Earth) and their associated effects (burning, freezing, shock, etc...), but the devs also took the time to program in several additional spells: illumination, bestial shapeshifting, sleep inducing, shrinking, and others I’m sure I’m missing. Sure, you won't have to use these most of the time (and it's more of a hassle to cast them compared to a straightforward spell), but for those who opt to roleplay as a sorcerer, there is a lot of variety to be had here.
In terms of aesthetics, Gothic did come out in the early-2000s so it's got the same charm/flaws as Deus Ex and RuneScape. I won't pretend it's great, but I do think it holds up relatively well as characters are proportioned well, and creature designs absolutely unique. The only major faults would be some inconsistent texturing on cliff surfaces, and the lack of color variety due to every major location boasting the same dull brown/grey/green template.
Kai Rosenkranz score gets the job done- it doesn't stand out the way Jeremy Soule's Oblivion OST did, but its continuous loop never feels annoying. I would've liked the major story beats to have their own leitmotif, especially since Gothic actually has cutscenes, but it is what it is.
SFX is okay. A number of creature noises are reused for different beasts, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a good diversity overall. Humans, on the other hand, are the same grunts and yelps repeated ad nauseam.
Voice acting is a mixed bag. Gothic suffers from TES problem of having a handful of VAs voice every character, though I did feel the overall quality of the performances was relatively better. Still, it's a shame that they couldn't have gotten unique voices for at least the major NPCs.
The Nameless Hero's VA actually grew on me. I do think he sounds too....Prince Charming-ish considering the grim world around him, and bad ADR does fail him at times, but he really will grow on you, and has some funny deliveries for you to enjoy.
Enemy AI is another thing I want to talk about- I really appreciate how enemy creatures will try and swarm you over attacking one after the other, and how humans do try and parry your attacks and strafe to the side to get a swing in. It's not perfectly done, but it is an improvement compared to a lot of modern enemy AI I've experienced in gaming.
Other things I did like were the knockout system, which makes it semi-possible to play nonlethal against humans (I say semi because, as soon as they recover in the span of half-a-minute, humans will try and attack you again, forcing you to execute them regardless) and the bartering system, which allows you to literally use any item you find and trade it for other items you need with anyone. Now, is it realistic that a weaponsmith will accept bloodfly scales? Not really, but it's a fantasy game so you get what you get. That being said, I didn't like that coins didn't have ANY value whatsoever- I get that currency is going to lose value in a society without a centralized monetary system, but shouldn't the material the coins are made of mean something? Why even include it in the game if they serve no purpose?
Another thing I really liked was how pickable items stood out from the ground. Even if it was darker, the outline coloring makes a strong difference.
Lastly, a lot has been made about the need to hold down "ctrl" in order to do any action. It is a bit strange at first, but you get the hang of it very quickly. Combat is surprisingly responsive all things considered.
But overall, I just didn't enjoy Gothic enough to recommend it. At a $10.00 asking price, it definitely provides enough bang for your buck (though don't take my Steam count seriously- a number of "logged" hours were in-fact my computer being idle while I had to attend to other tasks), but without a compelling story (which ends on a lackluster, sudden, cliffhanger note) or sufficiently developed RPG mechanics, Gothic's revolutionary systems falter in bringing to life a world full of potential.
So I'm not trying to take anything away from Gothic (and I'll be speaking about those individual components later down the line), but ultimately Gothic falters in too many areas for me to recommend it to newer gamers, particularly in its story and RPG layouts.
The latter, in particular, is especially disappointing because, on the outset, Gothic seems like it has all the right ingredients to call itself an RPG- customizable gear, narrative choice, and a leveling system ripe with skill points. However, examining each of these facets carefully discloses just how many holes they truly have, beginning with the gear. Gear is limited to a singular item in the form of generic body armor, meaning there's no division amongst all the other compartments; no helmets, torsos, legs, plates, or boots. As a result, you never have the opportunity to mix-and-match pieces, and because better armor is progressively made available ala the Ezio Trilogy, you don’t even have a reason to keep old sets around.
Regarding the second, skills are very limited, with only three mattering in the long and short runs: strength, dexterity, and mana. Strength determines how hard you hit, dexterity your damage with a bow, and mana your spellcasting meter. Lockpicking is rendered pointless due to non-RNG combinations allowing save scumming, and pickpocketing & sneak end up being exp black holes courtesy of mandatory combat sections in most story beats.
Even among the aforementioned trio of useful ones, you aren’t granted much variety. Strength is, in a lot of ways, overpowered since it also dictates weapons you can wield, and Ranged is outright discouraged courtesy of enemies having the capacity to either charge you quickly or launch their own deadly projectile.
What angered me the most about Gothic’s gameplay was the lack of a defense skill and the implied lies about player builds. Every time you level up fully, your HP bar increases, but this has nothing to do with your resistance to damage. The only way to affect that is to get some armor, but for the majority of the first chapter, you'll be hardpressed to find any. As a result, you’re all but strong-armed into running away from everything until you gain sufficient experience from sidequests, and even when you do get armor, there's no way, as I stated earlier, to upgrade it, forcing you to wait until the next chapter to obtain the next big set.
In terms of lies, you may think you can go into Gothic with a certain build, yet that isn't the case here as the game soft-requires you to invest points into strength, magic, and 2h weapons. If you don't do that, you'll be screwed at the end due to both the necessity of teleportation for saving time, as well as the majority of those late game enemies (orcs) being immune to one-handed weapons.
It's sad they went this route because there were three easy fixes: expand the skill tree, give multiple ways of taking out late-stage enemies, and make fast travel independent from magic.
The main campaign is the final major negative facet of the game as it just isn't all that engaging. Gothic boasts an interesting backstory involving a group of magicians screwing up the creation of a magic prison, their mistake resulting in hoards of prisoners gaining political power through a resource called Ore. While themes like criminal justice, cruel & unusual punishments, and the balance between security and order aren't explored, I wasn't expecting them to be nor was it necessary -- if you give me a good old-fashioned fantasy yarn, I'm down for the journey.
Except, Gothic's is very barebones. Per the above shift in dynamics, every convict has divided into three factions, providing you with your first choice in terms of who to join: the militarized Old Camp, the mercenary-run New Camp, and the tripping balls Sect Society. To the game’s credit, the first chapter spends a lot of time fleshing out the structures of the three: the writers subtly indicating that picking one over the other will yield consequences down-the-line.
ONLY, that doesn't happen. See, it doesn't matter which you choose because the story will progress in the exact same manner. Minus some dialogic differences, you’ll still manage to develop good relationships with enough major characters to render your chosen allegiance pointless. There are some fans who counter this by claiming that Gothic differentiates from other "Chosen One" narratives in that you're a nobody who gets treated like dirt, but having played the game I can say that that is just nonsense. Yes, some characters brush you aside as a nobody....but they treat everybody who isn't within their inner circle like a nobody; it's not specifically directed at you. And even if it were, the vast vast majority of NPCs out there are kind and offer you advice/help, so I don't know what those fanboys are talking about.
But I'm going off on a tangent - the story is lackluster because there's nothing personally motivating the protagonist to do stuff. Most of the early parts of the game have you playing errand boy, completing objectives solely because someone else wants X from somebody else. It's fleshed out enough that I'll refrain from labeling them fetch quests, but the structure is unfortunately noticeable, and even when the questline does get engaging, it's hampered by drawn-out moments that feel more akin to filler than genuine blocks of storytelling: you can't do A until you do B and C; to complete D, you need to find parts E, and F or talk to G, H, & J. I can't go into specifics without spoiling, but you'll notice it pretty quickly.
Another big issue I had with Gothic is how it goes all-out on explaining its mythological aspects. This is admittedly more of a pet peeve of mine than a legitimate critique, but I've never been a fan of video games that develop a deep mythos, only to then have said mythos play a concrete part in the story down-the-line (during which the mystery is inevitably unveiled in full detail): and unfortunately Gothic falls prey to that, revealing the true nature of its folkloric bits over the course of your journey.
The Sect Brotherhood, for instance, worships a deity called "The Sleeper" whom they believe will lead them to salvation. You could've used this as a springboard for exploring themes like how religion provides ignorance and bliss, or the line between faith and delusion, or even gone more metaphysical via pondering whether the Sect has a strong reason for their dogma. But alas, the Sleeper ends up playing a big part in the story.
Another great example is the New Camp magicians developing a plan to blow-up the barrier with a bunch of magic ore whilst being protected by mercenaries. You could've explored the ethics of a private military force, how hope can be used to exploit a populace, or how desperation can result in people believing in anything that promises them freedom (one of the characters in the game, Lester, outright states that!). But nope, that plan plays a big part in the narrative too.
Those are the two of the larger ones, but there are other revelations like the mysterious disappearance of the master magician Xardas, the backstory behind the barrier's creation, and the culture of other species. I'm not saying it hurts the pacing of the campaign, but what it does do is hurt its existential scope: it no longer has these pieces of lore to fall back on; they're just another standard building block for the player to completely examine.
Sidequests (of which there are surprisingly not many) aren't any better. Outside of some kooky characters, I can't recall any standing out for me personally. They don't explore any themes, don’t tell deep side stories, and just aren’t that fun, making them wasted potential. As a saving grace, I did appreciate the journal entries for them as they could be quite humorous at times.
With regards to the Nameless Hero, he's likable enough, though I wish there were dialogue options that allowed you to dictate his demeanor as the de facto one is that of an overly-optimistic homie who just wants to get home. I'm not quite sure why they stripped him of any personality given that he isn't an RPG avatar -- you don't get to name him, you don't get to dictate his morality, and you don't even get to customize his looks. He's essentially a bare bones template in a fantasy adventure, meaning the writers might as well have done more for him. If they were hoping this blankish slate would help make the guy and his situation more investable (i.e. the same thought process behind Isaac Clarke’s muteness in the original Dead Space), then the presence of voice acting defeated this.
I know I've been ranting nonstop, but Gothic does have a lot of good aspects to it. I pointed out in the introduction how it incorporated numerous revolutionary systems into its interface, and they mostly hold up to this day. NPCs have the same repetitive convos everytime you pass by them, but is this honestly any different from the radiant AIs of Oblivion and Skyrim that have become the thing of memes these days? It's also worth pointing out that big franchises like TES and Zelda haven't even brought in facets that were present in Gothic like NPC reactions to swords being drawn or entering restricted property.
Gothic takes a long time to implement fast travel ala teleportation; however, for most of my playthrough, I actually didn't find this to be burdensome due to how compact the overworld was. Piranha Bytes knew what they were doing when designing their setting as nothing feels out of place or extraneous the way you sometimes get in other free roam titles. Everything is relatively within walking distance, and while I would've liked an upgradable skill for increased speed (the presence of sprint potions showcase it was a possibility), you can do enough long jumps to lunge between the three main locales without much time wasted (and trust me, you will have to do such traveling A LOT). Would it have been better to present teleportation from the get-go? Of course. In fact, you don't get the Old Camp rune until the very last chapter (where it literally serves no narrative purpose), but that aforementioned compactness makes this flaw forgivable for the most part.
That said, exploration doesn't yield much in the way of goodies. Sure you'll find a blatantly copy/pasted cave, grotto or abandoned tower here-and-there, but they don't give any unique items -- just potions, ore, and generic weaponry.
Combat is a mixed bag. I mentioned before the presence of combos: movesets and twirls progressively learned from local trainers. However, I honestly found that simple hacking and blocking were highly sufficient in dispatching most foes, rendering such dances more prototypical than fleshed-out.
Magic is surprisingly wide-ranging -- you got your typical elements (minus Earth) and their associated effects (burning, freezing, shock, etc...), but the devs also took the time to program in several additional spells: illumination, bestial shapeshifting, sleep inducing, shrinking, and others I’m sure I’m missing. Sure, you won't have to use these most of the time (and it's more of a hassle to cast them compared to a straightforward spell), but for those who opt to roleplay as a sorcerer, there is a lot of variety to be had here.
In terms of aesthetics, Gothic did come out in the early-2000s so it's got the same charm/flaws as Deus Ex and RuneScape. I won't pretend it's great, but I do think it holds up relatively well as characters are proportioned well, and creature designs absolutely unique. The only major faults would be some inconsistent texturing on cliff surfaces, and the lack of color variety due to every major location boasting the same dull brown/grey/green template.
Kai Rosenkranz score gets the job done- it doesn't stand out the way Jeremy Soule's Oblivion OST did, but its continuous loop never feels annoying. I would've liked the major story beats to have their own leitmotif, especially since Gothic actually has cutscenes, but it is what it is.
SFX is okay. A number of creature noises are reused for different beasts, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a good diversity overall. Humans, on the other hand, are the same grunts and yelps repeated ad nauseam.
Voice acting is a mixed bag. Gothic suffers from TES problem of having a handful of VAs voice every character, though I did feel the overall quality of the performances was relatively better. Still, it's a shame that they couldn't have gotten unique voices for at least the major NPCs.
The Nameless Hero's VA actually grew on me. I do think he sounds too....Prince Charming-ish considering the grim world around him, and bad ADR does fail him at times, but he really will grow on you, and has some funny deliveries for you to enjoy.
Enemy AI is another thing I want to talk about- I really appreciate how enemy creatures will try and swarm you over attacking one after the other, and how humans do try and parry your attacks and strafe to the side to get a swing in. It's not perfectly done, but it is an improvement compared to a lot of modern enemy AI I've experienced in gaming.
Other things I did like were the knockout system, which makes it semi-possible to play nonlethal against humans (I say semi because, as soon as they recover in the span of half-a-minute, humans will try and attack you again, forcing you to execute them regardless) and the bartering system, which allows you to literally use any item you find and trade it for other items you need with anyone. Now, is it realistic that a weaponsmith will accept bloodfly scales? Not really, but it's a fantasy game so you get what you get. That being said, I didn't like that coins didn't have ANY value whatsoever- I get that currency is going to lose value in a society without a centralized monetary system, but shouldn't the material the coins are made of mean something? Why even include it in the game if they serve no purpose?
Another thing I really liked was how pickable items stood out from the ground. Even if it was darker, the outline coloring makes a strong difference.
Lastly, a lot has been made about the need to hold down "ctrl" in order to do any action. It is a bit strange at first, but you get the hang of it very quickly. Combat is surprisingly responsive all things considered.
But overall, I just didn't enjoy Gothic enough to recommend it. At a $10.00 asking price, it definitely provides enough bang for your buck (though don't take my Steam count seriously- a number of "logged" hours were in-fact my computer being idle while I had to attend to other tasks), but without a compelling story (which ends on a lackluster, sudden, cliffhanger note) or sufficiently developed RPG mechanics, Gothic's revolutionary systems falter in bringing to life a world full of potential.
Fantasy stories, especially fables, continue to be popular decade after decade for a reason: they are magical. No, I don’t mean magical in the sense that they contain spells (although they can), but that they are as enchanting as they are idyllic. We get transported to this new world full of talking creatures, new rules, and mesmerizing environments that evoke feelings of pleasantness. Yes, there can be evil in this place, but the overall atmosphere is charming, inviting, and tranquil. You wouldn’t mind living here for a year or two, making it ripe for adventure and discovery.
I never got that level of immersion from The Night of the Rabbit, which was a harbinger of things to come. It has all the right ingredients: an innocent boy thrown into an altered reality, anthropomorphic fauna, and a brand-new setting that conjures up images of iconic fantasy locations like Redwall and Inuyasha’s Japan, but outside of the zing of the first few minutes, I found the culture shock wearing off very quickly, and I have been trying to figure out why that was, and then it hit me- in his review of Shark Tale, the animation critic TheMysteriousMrEnter pointed out that the underwater mise-en-scene was essentially just real-world things given an aquatic coat-of-paint. There was nothing unique about its submerged status: you could have placed it above water and the story would have played out exactly the same. Compare this to Finding Nemo where everything that happened was custom to the genuine plights/fears faced by sea critters.
That’s the case here. The Night of the Rabbit’s characters and setting of Mousewood mostly consist of ideas you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to find…practically anywhere in your local municipal. There’s a coffee shop that sells baked goods hosted by a joyful barista chock-full of customer service; you have a town hall with two idiot politicians who have no business running a household much less a town (one of whom literally cracks dad jokes); a spoiled brat child; a shock jock; a sullen farmer, I could go on. Sure, they’re technically animals, but would you have noticed a difference if they were made human? Even some of the more distinct stuff are just stock fantasy tropes taken from better works (i.e., a greedy leprechaun, a grumpy dwarf).
All that being said, I did say “mostly” for a reason- Night has several aspects that do invoke that feel I was talking about earlier, specifically characters relegated to the magick-side of the world. You have the two magician mentors, the Marquis de Hoto and the Mousewood Sage, as well as a female fox named Kitsune (borrowed from the Japanese folklore, but at least given a distinctive personality compared to the dwarf and leprechaun). These figures were all excellent and spiced up the narrative whenever they were on-screen. Unfortunately, as you can probably imply from my wordage there, they aren’t in the story much compared to the others. Maybe 30 percent to the former’s 70%, which is the primary reason Night faltered.
Honestly, part of me feels that the world just wasn’t well thought-out. A well-made high fantasy novel takes its time to explore small minutias and rules, indicating that the author spent a lot of time fleshing out the laws, mythology, and histories governing their overworld (though on the other end, they could fail the 5 Finger Rule!). In Night, there are so many small flaws that build and build on top of the other, exposing holes in the patchwork. For example, you have a number of residents not believing in the existence of magic despite their being a resident sorcerer; you have several kids running around Mousewood without parental figures; you have the Mousewood military depicted as being on high alert in response to a rise in crow attacks, only to then station a single soldier out in the habitat where the crows are most likely to strike and have a visibly sleepy soldier arming the only cannon in town. Minor things like these indicate to me that there wasn’t much interest from the writers in creating a detailed strata, and that’s just the stuff I remember off the top of my head- I’m sure if I dug deeper/replayed scenes I could come up with more.
All of this is a long way of me saying the story, which is what PNCs rely on for their lasting appeal given their lack of strong gameplay, isn’t good. It starts off with in typical fantasy fashion with a young boy getting pulled from his world into another dimension where magic and mysticism roam free, but quickly takes a huge pacing hit when you’re given your first large task: get supplies for a party.
….seriously, was this seen as a good idea? The developers thought the best way to introduce the players to their new locale was to have them run dumb errands? Think about other games of the fantasy genre and how they set off the player on their grand odyssey- Oblivion had you deliver a king’s amulet to a knight after said king was assassinated; Skyward Sword had you train for a ceremonial flight; even Gothic, a game that I wasn’t a fan of, had you trying to join a camp via raising your reputation in this cold world.
Regardless of my issues here, Night’s set-up does somewhat succeed in getting players accustomed to the geography and cast; however, given my aforementioned complaint about the characters and town lacking magical individualism, it’s not exactly much of a feat. Most of the baseline characters are more annoying than entertaining, though thankfully not to the point of being rage-inducing (minus this one shopkeeper and his mentally-messed up son that no, does not contribute to any plot twist down the line).
There’s not much more to say about the story other than it squanders its potential, has major pacing issues, and, most importantly, is vague to a fault. Characters have you doing things without giving proper explanations as to why other than generic “the fate of the magic world is at stake” and “you need to do this to become a true magician”. Again, it goes back to what I was saying about there being little thought put into the lore- who designated these trials that main protagonist Jeremiah “Jerry” Hazelnut has to go through? How were they constructed, why are they specific to Treewalkers, how were they meant to be solvable to apprentices if I can only resolve them through using items from another dimension? A lot of questions, no answers because the developers needed some generic gameplay sections. And on the note of vagueness, it turns out all this was done because the writers just didn’t know how to incorporate macro narrative developments with player advances- you get a nice big exposition dump at the very end that finally puts things together, lasting a good 5 minutes. At least these guys are Kojima fans. Worst of all is this left-field attempt at fitting in an environmentalist message that is so out of the blue as to be pathetic.
I can be nicer graphically as Daedalic has once again triumphed in conceiving a storybook aesthetic. This was my first game by them, yet their distinct art style of bolded outlines, varied facial expressions, and yellow/brown palettes has entered the computer game consciousness and manifested itself as a signature of the company. The Night of the Rabbit looks like a fable brought to life, with character models occupying this strong humanoid build that gives them bipedalism and human clothing without sacrificing their animalian features. Mousewood and its surrounding woods, swamp, and alternate planes of existence was always a splendid sight to behold, no matter where I went. There were even some minor details thrown in for good measure like blinking and (inconsistent) lip syncing, though some shortcuts are present as well like the lack of outlined shadows.
Sound is good and so-so at the same time. The voice acting is consistently solid, with Jed Kelly doing a particularly great job as Jerry. He manages to combine that childlike wonder with a genuine understanding of what’s going on around him, especially as things take a darker turn. Peter Marinker as the old guru and Wayne Forester as the Marquis also stand out as noteworthy performances, though I couldn’t help but think of Forester as a discount Mark Hamill half the time.
SFX has its moments to be sure, but they aren’t consistent enough to warrant recognition. The snap of the Marquis’s fingers or Jerry’s feet crunching on snow or the cranking of dwarven machinery are good quality, but then you have things like most footsteps not even resounding, the same din for each spell, and weak ambience.
It actually kind of hurts me to critique the music because it could have been amazing if the story hadn’t been carved in such a lukewarm way. There are hints from composer Tilo Alpermann at this sweeping, majestic fantasy orchestra that would have easily matched Jeremy Soule’s and Koji Kondo’s had he been given that opportunity to indulge in it. But unfortunately, this is where bad pacing and mishandled story beats can have a larger impact- the music is tempered, restricted to generic background tunes that only escalate to moments of grandeur momentarily before being cut short prematurely (the exception being this one duet performed by Kitsune and Plato at the end). It is such a dang shame.
Lastly we come to gameplay, and there are some innovations here that deserve recognition. Daedalic has crafted a system that does not require any keyboard inputs whatsoever- through the mouse, mouse wheel, and right button, you can successfully move, interact, use/combine items, pull up inventory, access menus, and all. Now, if you want to utilize a keyboard you still can, but I am surprised that more PNC-focused companies haven’t built up a similar system given that the cursor is the primary drive of gameplay.
Unfortunately, that’s the only strong praise I can give here as Night of the Rabbit got frustrating at times. Unlike Grim Fandango, you aren’t expected to come up with out-of-the-box solutions, but instead what you have are answers tied to small observations about the world that you wouldn’t think twice about and finding items that aren’t distinguishable enough from the backgrounds. Here’s a solid example: you’re briefly told by another individual that Anja is babysitting this spoiled kid, but when you talk to her she doesn’t say anything on the subject and there are no additional dialogue boxes that open up with the new information. Because of this lack of set-up, how am I supposed to know that a poster about violin lessons needs to be given to her so that she can swoop in at the right moment and get the pestering kid away from blockading the way forward?
I can think of other instances like this, such as having to figure out the connection between acquiring a birthday cake and a glowing nut or knowing that a giant beet can have a tap stuck onto it like a keg container. I fully concede that I did not grow up with PNCs and so the genre and its quirks are inherently not for me, but I do think tying the solutions to small things about the world without any type of help was a legitimate flaw. Case in point- the swamp is flooded, and examining a sign nearby says to go to the town hall if you have a problem with the blockage. Guess what, you go to the town hall and there are no dialogue options present at all; the solution instead involves you getting a joke list filled out and then trading it for a nut. It’s like, why not at least allude to some fruit being the only reasonable thing to getting through the swamp rather than have a red herring in the form of a signpost about an unrelated thing? The first two chapters are relatively fine, but with the third it takes a nosedive into this territory and does not stop, particularly when magic spells are involved as part of the solution. This wouldn’t inherently be bad if the spells were straightforward, but two of them (illusion and glimmer of hope) are so vague that you couldn’t possibly know when to use them outside of haphazard guessing. To add more insult to this, a lot of the spells don’t even get utilized much after you learn them- you’re lucky if you get more than 4 usages.
So yeah, it should come as no surprise that I cannot recommend The Night of the Rabbit. I fully concede that these games are not inherently for me (though I do consider myself an adaptable player), but the failures at world building and the poor story prevent it from being recommendable, even if I could get over the gameplay flaws. Daedalic does succeed in the arthouse department, the score exuberates potential, and the all-purpose mouse is innovative, but they can’t overcome the other problems. The worst part is the game ends on a semi-cliffhanger that would have set-up a potentially more interesting sequel, but given that it’s been almost 10 years since TNOTR came out, I doubt it’ll ever happen.
Also, please note, that if you are using a Nvidia Graphics Card, like I was, there WILL be lag in the game, no matter how powerful your rig, as Night is not completely compatible with Nvidia.
I never got that level of immersion from The Night of the Rabbit, which was a harbinger of things to come. It has all the right ingredients: an innocent boy thrown into an altered reality, anthropomorphic fauna, and a brand-new setting that conjures up images of iconic fantasy locations like Redwall and Inuyasha’s Japan, but outside of the zing of the first few minutes, I found the culture shock wearing off very quickly, and I have been trying to figure out why that was, and then it hit me- in his review of Shark Tale, the animation critic TheMysteriousMrEnter pointed out that the underwater mise-en-scene was essentially just real-world things given an aquatic coat-of-paint. There was nothing unique about its submerged status: you could have placed it above water and the story would have played out exactly the same. Compare this to Finding Nemo where everything that happened was custom to the genuine plights/fears faced by sea critters.
That’s the case here. The Night of the Rabbit’s characters and setting of Mousewood mostly consist of ideas you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to find…practically anywhere in your local municipal. There’s a coffee shop that sells baked goods hosted by a joyful barista chock-full of customer service; you have a town hall with two idiot politicians who have no business running a household much less a town (one of whom literally cracks dad jokes); a spoiled brat child; a shock jock; a sullen farmer, I could go on. Sure, they’re technically animals, but would you have noticed a difference if they were made human? Even some of the more distinct stuff are just stock fantasy tropes taken from better works (i.e., a greedy leprechaun, a grumpy dwarf).
All that being said, I did say “mostly” for a reason- Night has several aspects that do invoke that feel I was talking about earlier, specifically characters relegated to the magick-side of the world. You have the two magician mentors, the Marquis de Hoto and the Mousewood Sage, as well as a female fox named Kitsune (borrowed from the Japanese folklore, but at least given a distinctive personality compared to the dwarf and leprechaun). These figures were all excellent and spiced up the narrative whenever they were on-screen. Unfortunately, as you can probably imply from my wordage there, they aren’t in the story much compared to the others. Maybe 30 percent to the former’s 70%, which is the primary reason Night faltered.
Honestly, part of me feels that the world just wasn’t well thought-out. A well-made high fantasy novel takes its time to explore small minutias and rules, indicating that the author spent a lot of time fleshing out the laws, mythology, and histories governing their overworld (though on the other end, they could fail the 5 Finger Rule!). In Night, there are so many small flaws that build and build on top of the other, exposing holes in the patchwork. For example, you have a number of residents not believing in the existence of magic despite their being a resident sorcerer; you have several kids running around Mousewood without parental figures; you have the Mousewood military depicted as being on high alert in response to a rise in crow attacks, only to then station a single soldier out in the habitat where the crows are most likely to strike and have a visibly sleepy soldier arming the only cannon in town. Minor things like these indicate to me that there wasn’t much interest from the writers in creating a detailed strata, and that’s just the stuff I remember off the top of my head- I’m sure if I dug deeper/replayed scenes I could come up with more.
All of this is a long way of me saying the story, which is what PNCs rely on for their lasting appeal given their lack of strong gameplay, isn’t good. It starts off with in typical fantasy fashion with a young boy getting pulled from his world into another dimension where magic and mysticism roam free, but quickly takes a huge pacing hit when you’re given your first large task: get supplies for a party.
….seriously, was this seen as a good idea? The developers thought the best way to introduce the players to their new locale was to have them run dumb errands? Think about other games of the fantasy genre and how they set off the player on their grand odyssey- Oblivion had you deliver a king’s amulet to a knight after said king was assassinated; Skyward Sword had you train for a ceremonial flight; even Gothic, a game that I wasn’t a fan of, had you trying to join a camp via raising your reputation in this cold world.
Regardless of my issues here, Night’s set-up does somewhat succeed in getting players accustomed to the geography and cast; however, given my aforementioned complaint about the characters and town lacking magical individualism, it’s not exactly much of a feat. Most of the baseline characters are more annoying than entertaining, though thankfully not to the point of being rage-inducing (minus this one shopkeeper and his mentally-messed up son that no, does not contribute to any plot twist down the line).
There’s not much more to say about the story other than it squanders its potential, has major pacing issues, and, most importantly, is vague to a fault. Characters have you doing things without giving proper explanations as to why other than generic “the fate of the magic world is at stake” and “you need to do this to become a true magician”. Again, it goes back to what I was saying about there being little thought put into the lore- who designated these trials that main protagonist Jeremiah “Jerry” Hazelnut has to go through? How were they constructed, why are they specific to Treewalkers, how were they meant to be solvable to apprentices if I can only resolve them through using items from another dimension? A lot of questions, no answers because the developers needed some generic gameplay sections. And on the note of vagueness, it turns out all this was done because the writers just didn’t know how to incorporate macro narrative developments with player advances- you get a nice big exposition dump at the very end that finally puts things together, lasting a good 5 minutes. At least these guys are Kojima fans. Worst of all is this left-field attempt at fitting in an environmentalist message that is so out of the blue as to be pathetic.
I can be nicer graphically as Daedalic has once again triumphed in conceiving a storybook aesthetic. This was my first game by them, yet their distinct art style of bolded outlines, varied facial expressions, and yellow/brown palettes has entered the computer game consciousness and manifested itself as a signature of the company. The Night of the Rabbit looks like a fable brought to life, with character models occupying this strong humanoid build that gives them bipedalism and human clothing without sacrificing their animalian features. Mousewood and its surrounding woods, swamp, and alternate planes of existence was always a splendid sight to behold, no matter where I went. There were even some minor details thrown in for good measure like blinking and (inconsistent) lip syncing, though some shortcuts are present as well like the lack of outlined shadows.
Sound is good and so-so at the same time. The voice acting is consistently solid, with Jed Kelly doing a particularly great job as Jerry. He manages to combine that childlike wonder with a genuine understanding of what’s going on around him, especially as things take a darker turn. Peter Marinker as the old guru and Wayne Forester as the Marquis also stand out as noteworthy performances, though I couldn’t help but think of Forester as a discount Mark Hamill half the time.
SFX has its moments to be sure, but they aren’t consistent enough to warrant recognition. The snap of the Marquis’s fingers or Jerry’s feet crunching on snow or the cranking of dwarven machinery are good quality, but then you have things like most footsteps not even resounding, the same din for each spell, and weak ambience.
It actually kind of hurts me to critique the music because it could have been amazing if the story hadn’t been carved in such a lukewarm way. There are hints from composer Tilo Alpermann at this sweeping, majestic fantasy orchestra that would have easily matched Jeremy Soule’s and Koji Kondo’s had he been given that opportunity to indulge in it. But unfortunately, this is where bad pacing and mishandled story beats can have a larger impact- the music is tempered, restricted to generic background tunes that only escalate to moments of grandeur momentarily before being cut short prematurely (the exception being this one duet performed by Kitsune and Plato at the end). It is such a dang shame.
Lastly we come to gameplay, and there are some innovations here that deserve recognition. Daedalic has crafted a system that does not require any keyboard inputs whatsoever- through the mouse, mouse wheel, and right button, you can successfully move, interact, use/combine items, pull up inventory, access menus, and all. Now, if you want to utilize a keyboard you still can, but I am surprised that more PNC-focused companies haven’t built up a similar system given that the cursor is the primary drive of gameplay.
Unfortunately, that’s the only strong praise I can give here as Night of the Rabbit got frustrating at times. Unlike Grim Fandango, you aren’t expected to come up with out-of-the-box solutions, but instead what you have are answers tied to small observations about the world that you wouldn’t think twice about and finding items that aren’t distinguishable enough from the backgrounds. Here’s a solid example: you’re briefly told by another individual that Anja is babysitting this spoiled kid, but when you talk to her she doesn’t say anything on the subject and there are no additional dialogue boxes that open up with the new information. Because of this lack of set-up, how am I supposed to know that a poster about violin lessons needs to be given to her so that she can swoop in at the right moment and get the pestering kid away from blockading the way forward?
I can think of other instances like this, such as having to figure out the connection between acquiring a birthday cake and a glowing nut or knowing that a giant beet can have a tap stuck onto it like a keg container. I fully concede that I did not grow up with PNCs and so the genre and its quirks are inherently not for me, but I do think tying the solutions to small things about the world without any type of help was a legitimate flaw. Case in point- the swamp is flooded, and examining a sign nearby says to go to the town hall if you have a problem with the blockage. Guess what, you go to the town hall and there are no dialogue options present at all; the solution instead involves you getting a joke list filled out and then trading it for a nut. It’s like, why not at least allude to some fruit being the only reasonable thing to getting through the swamp rather than have a red herring in the form of a signpost about an unrelated thing? The first two chapters are relatively fine, but with the third it takes a nosedive into this territory and does not stop, particularly when magic spells are involved as part of the solution. This wouldn’t inherently be bad if the spells were straightforward, but two of them (illusion and glimmer of hope) are so vague that you couldn’t possibly know when to use them outside of haphazard guessing. To add more insult to this, a lot of the spells don’t even get utilized much after you learn them- you’re lucky if you get more than 4 usages.
So yeah, it should come as no surprise that I cannot recommend The Night of the Rabbit. I fully concede that these games are not inherently for me (though I do consider myself an adaptable player), but the failures at world building and the poor story prevent it from being recommendable, even if I could get over the gameplay flaws. Daedalic does succeed in the arthouse department, the score exuberates potential, and the all-purpose mouse is innovative, but they can’t overcome the other problems. The worst part is the game ends on a semi-cliffhanger that would have set-up a potentially more interesting sequel, but given that it’s been almost 10 years since TNOTR came out, I doubt it’ll ever happen.
Also, please note, that if you are using a Nvidia Graphics Card, like I was, there WILL be lag in the game, no matter how powerful your rig, as Night is not completely compatible with Nvidia.
2017
Ah, what a disappointment this was. Observer was a game that I was really looking forward to playing, being a big fan of the cyberpunk genre. And with rainy skies, blue-grey color grading, neon lights, and commercial advertisements everywhere, it seemed to be taking all the right tropes pioneered by Blade Runner and Neuromancer and combining them with an interesting premise- what if a cop was able to hack into the minds of suspects without warrant? This would not only allow the storytellers to tackle conventional cyberpunk themes like corporate hegemony, income inequality, and the unregulated proliferation of technology, but also new ideas like the privacy rights of criminals, body horror, and the line between consciousness and artificial intelligence.
Alas, few of those are on display here, and those that are are restricted to a few optional conversations you will have to go out of your way to find. For the most part, Observer is more interested in telling a standard mystery interrupted by moments of wannabe psychedelic insanity.
You play as Daniel Lazarski, a police officer who possesses a device that allows him to access the minds of everyone. He does this through connecting wires to a microchip that the vast majority of the populace has installed in their brain following a singularity-esque development that allowed humans to comfortably merge with big and small tech. Lazarski is your typical gruff, wise-ass, hardboiled detective with a tortured past. And though Rutger Hauer does a good job bringing out these qualities via a nice delivery, I ultimately felt he was too old for the part (Lazarski seems like someone who would be in their 50s).
Still, it's an interesting premise, especially with Observer's backstory revealing a war that left corporations in control of the state and destitution everywhere. But as I stated before, it's not utilized well, and a large part of that has to do with the setting of the game. Observer takes place almost entirely in a rundown apartment complex. Outside of some hologram projections here and there, it's aesthetically pretty standard- where's the wonder, the pizzazz, the sense of discovery that comes from cyberpunk worlds? Look at Blade Runner with its monolithic skyscrapers and lively populace, Neuromancer with its black markets and arcades, Deus Ex with its visage of Hong Kong and post-pandemic New York. For a game that clearly spent a lot of time conceiving a strong background, it's a shame that it's mostly wasted on a futurized recreation of The Raid.
I say mostly because the moments where Lazarski enters memories briefly gives rise to new places like office buildings where people worked, nature environs where individuals ran through, and luxury areas where more affluent characters lived. The issue is you don't really get a sense of exploration because these moments are intended to be fragmentary (representing the reality of how memory works), so you're frequently experiencing artificating/"glitching" that rapidly changes how things are depicted. As a result, they don't help with Observer's lack of diversity.
From a storytelling perspective, these moments also falter because they just aren't that interesting. I'm under the impression that Bloober Team/Anshar Studios intended for such moments to be trippy psychologically-tense action beats that simultaneously divulge story, but the problem is they drag for sooooooo long. What should've been 5 minutes at best stretches to 10-20, and it not only hurts the pacing but tires out the fragmentary, ghost horror gimmick that they were clearly going for. Outside of some small stealth sections (which are nowhere near as bad as some critics have made them out to be), there are lite puzzles thrown in, but the majority of them are of the tedious nature (and subject to bugs- more on that later) and affect the pacing even more.
My point is this- if you're expecting the open-your-mind scene from Doctor Strange polymorphized with feelings of terror in these mind hacking scenes, you won't get it. What you will get instead is a decent concept of memoria haziness stretched to the point of boredom with 1-2 important pieces of story told over the course of 10-20 minutes. Not well done and a big disappointment.
The main narrative itself (which is where cyberpunk usually excels) isn't anything to write home about. Lazarski travels to this tenement slum because he traces a call from his estranged son, Adam, there. Most of the title is spent attempting to figure out what transpired and where Adam is. Crime scenes are another prominent feature of Observer wherein you will have to investigate a room for clues, but it ultimately comes down to just finding the clues and triggering an internal conversation wherein Lazarki will put two-and-two together, meaning no real detective work is done on your part. And yes, I understand this is is a problem, in general, for games that try to incorporate crime scene investigation into their worlds (the Arkham series, LA Noire, and AC Origins all come to mind), but Observer suffers more because it features two unique tools in your set- Biovision, that allows you to find genetic/biological abnormalities, and Electromagnetic vision, which allows you to find electronic abnormalities. Both are really cool aesthetically, and could've gone a long way towards creating environmental puzzles to solve to acquire clues, but since they're just used as an alternate eyeglass lens, they're essentially a mandatory visceral stepping stone to the aforestated conventional trope of finding clues by looking around for the outwardly placed object (i.e. instead of going from A - C, you're now going from A -> B -> C). What's worse is that using these visions triggers Lazarski's stress meter, which can only be quelled through taking synchrozine pills, which are essentially just a dumber version of the Malaria pills from Far Cry 2. Why punish players for wanting to investigate or analyze things of their own accord? Refusing to take it results in your screen becoming crackly.
Side missions, or rather side stories, are another thing you can do in the game via finding them either through exploration or continuing the main campaign and triggering their events. Because Observer lacks any combat system and reserves its psycho-romps for the main story, most of these missions ultimately culminate in dialogues rather than anything actiony. Which isn't inherently bad, but it's hampered by the slow delivery of all parties involved. Seriously, I couldn't tell if this was a sound mixing error or a deliberate decision by the ADR director, but everyone speaks so slowly that a 2 minute convo gets dragged out to 5. They do talk about interesting things at times, like when Lazarski speaks to a man whose family has rejected any cybernetic implants on principle, but they are also just as many times when the conversation devolves to some dumb form of comedy (a guy who's been stuck in a VR helmet) or cliche crime tropes (drug dealing) over the more interesting philosophical conversations that a cyberpunk world can provide.
Granted, there could be a lot more side content and I just didn't find it because of how terribly designed the apartments are. Seriously, to get to one section of one floor, you have to take a corridor to it- if you want to get to another section of that floor, you have to find an adjacent corridor on one of the floors of that first section and then travel to there, or backtrack to the foyer and find a new hallway to take to that section. And even if you do find the other sections, you'll be hard-pressed to actually locate the specific room you're targeting since so many broken down walls and barriers exist in every section that it makes navigation amongst them a pain in the ass. If this comes-off as confusing to read, you can imagine how baffling it is to actually play it. This might've been alleviated had they provided a mobile map of some kind for Dan to access, but no, maps are restricted to being holographic static ones placed on a single wall of a single floor of a single section that you'll have to memorize to plan your routes (though at least they are kind enough to show the direction Dan is facing).
The music is good, though I admittedly didn't pay too much attention to it given that a lot of it felt ambient. It's excellent in that regard, hyping up the thriller aspects or requisite atmosphere necessitated. There were times where a veer into unconventional music like Jazz would play, and the execution was too sloppy to be good, but for the most part it was solid. Unfortunately, the horror aspects, in general, aren't good enough to boosted by music. Most of the horror in Observer comes down to cheap jump scares, which wear out their welcome very quickly. It's a shame, because the claustrophobic nature of the tenement building could've been fodder for some Shining-level atmospheric dread.
The story itself ends on a decently interesting note, opting for an unconventional darker twist regardless of the path you choose. But because there is no sequel to follow-up on the events, and because the relationship between Lazarki and Adam isn't that well developed in general, it can't help but feel incomplete and unsatisfying.
Lastly, Observer is just poorly optimized. Graphically it looks good with strongly textured environments and the color scheme working artistic wonders for the world ala Alien: Isolation, but it's hampered by janky-looking human models (fixed in Redux) and really bad artifacting that wasn't caused by the game. Seriously, I had to turn off the motion blur in the options section to alleviate this problem (as well as increase the brightness past recommended levels to see anything), but it didn't completely stop the anti-aliasing from being outright bad. I also encountered several glitches that forced me to restart, like Dan getting stuck in one place or an object I had to move disappearing behind a wall, but luckily Observer offers a very forgiving autosave that alleviates most of the latter.
So yeah, overall I can't recommend Observer. A disappointing story combined with disappointing gameplay set in a poorly designed hub that falters in comparison to other cyberpunk worlds culminates in the game being a letdown. System Redux may offer better graphics and more side missions, but it won't fix the major issues present here.
Alas, few of those are on display here, and those that are are restricted to a few optional conversations you will have to go out of your way to find. For the most part, Observer is more interested in telling a standard mystery interrupted by moments of wannabe psychedelic insanity.
You play as Daniel Lazarski, a police officer who possesses a device that allows him to access the minds of everyone. He does this through connecting wires to a microchip that the vast majority of the populace has installed in their brain following a singularity-esque development that allowed humans to comfortably merge with big and small tech. Lazarski is your typical gruff, wise-ass, hardboiled detective with a tortured past. And though Rutger Hauer does a good job bringing out these qualities via a nice delivery, I ultimately felt he was too old for the part (Lazarski seems like someone who would be in their 50s).
Still, it's an interesting premise, especially with Observer's backstory revealing a war that left corporations in control of the state and destitution everywhere. But as I stated before, it's not utilized well, and a large part of that has to do with the setting of the game. Observer takes place almost entirely in a rundown apartment complex. Outside of some hologram projections here and there, it's aesthetically pretty standard- where's the wonder, the pizzazz, the sense of discovery that comes from cyberpunk worlds? Look at Blade Runner with its monolithic skyscrapers and lively populace, Neuromancer with its black markets and arcades, Deus Ex with its visage of Hong Kong and post-pandemic New York. For a game that clearly spent a lot of time conceiving a strong background, it's a shame that it's mostly wasted on a futurized recreation of The Raid.
I say mostly because the moments where Lazarski enters memories briefly gives rise to new places like office buildings where people worked, nature environs where individuals ran through, and luxury areas where more affluent characters lived. The issue is you don't really get a sense of exploration because these moments are intended to be fragmentary (representing the reality of how memory works), so you're frequently experiencing artificating/"glitching" that rapidly changes how things are depicted. As a result, they don't help with Observer's lack of diversity.
From a storytelling perspective, these moments also falter because they just aren't that interesting. I'm under the impression that Bloober Team/Anshar Studios intended for such moments to be trippy psychologically-tense action beats that simultaneously divulge story, but the problem is they drag for sooooooo long. What should've been 5 minutes at best stretches to 10-20, and it not only hurts the pacing but tires out the fragmentary, ghost horror gimmick that they were clearly going for. Outside of some small stealth sections (which are nowhere near as bad as some critics have made them out to be), there are lite puzzles thrown in, but the majority of them are of the tedious nature (and subject to bugs- more on that later) and affect the pacing even more.
My point is this- if you're expecting the open-your-mind scene from Doctor Strange polymorphized with feelings of terror in these mind hacking scenes, you won't get it. What you will get instead is a decent concept of memoria haziness stretched to the point of boredom with 1-2 important pieces of story told over the course of 10-20 minutes. Not well done and a big disappointment.
The main narrative itself (which is where cyberpunk usually excels) isn't anything to write home about. Lazarski travels to this tenement slum because he traces a call from his estranged son, Adam, there. Most of the title is spent attempting to figure out what transpired and where Adam is. Crime scenes are another prominent feature of Observer wherein you will have to investigate a room for clues, but it ultimately comes down to just finding the clues and triggering an internal conversation wherein Lazarki will put two-and-two together, meaning no real detective work is done on your part. And yes, I understand this is is a problem, in general, for games that try to incorporate crime scene investigation into their worlds (the Arkham series, LA Noire, and AC Origins all come to mind), but Observer suffers more because it features two unique tools in your set- Biovision, that allows you to find genetic/biological abnormalities, and Electromagnetic vision, which allows you to find electronic abnormalities. Both are really cool aesthetically, and could've gone a long way towards creating environmental puzzles to solve to acquire clues, but since they're just used as an alternate eyeglass lens, they're essentially a mandatory visceral stepping stone to the aforestated conventional trope of finding clues by looking around for the outwardly placed object (i.e. instead of going from A - C, you're now going from A -> B -> C). What's worse is that using these visions triggers Lazarski's stress meter, which can only be quelled through taking synchrozine pills, which are essentially just a dumber version of the Malaria pills from Far Cry 2. Why punish players for wanting to investigate or analyze things of their own accord? Refusing to take it results in your screen becoming crackly.
Side missions, or rather side stories, are another thing you can do in the game via finding them either through exploration or continuing the main campaign and triggering their events. Because Observer lacks any combat system and reserves its psycho-romps for the main story, most of these missions ultimately culminate in dialogues rather than anything actiony. Which isn't inherently bad, but it's hampered by the slow delivery of all parties involved. Seriously, I couldn't tell if this was a sound mixing error or a deliberate decision by the ADR director, but everyone speaks so slowly that a 2 minute convo gets dragged out to 5. They do talk about interesting things at times, like when Lazarski speaks to a man whose family has rejected any cybernetic implants on principle, but they are also just as many times when the conversation devolves to some dumb form of comedy (a guy who's been stuck in a VR helmet) or cliche crime tropes (drug dealing) over the more interesting philosophical conversations that a cyberpunk world can provide.
Granted, there could be a lot more side content and I just didn't find it because of how terribly designed the apartments are. Seriously, to get to one section of one floor, you have to take a corridor to it- if you want to get to another section of that floor, you have to find an adjacent corridor on one of the floors of that first section and then travel to there, or backtrack to the foyer and find a new hallway to take to that section. And even if you do find the other sections, you'll be hard-pressed to actually locate the specific room you're targeting since so many broken down walls and barriers exist in every section that it makes navigation amongst them a pain in the ass. If this comes-off as confusing to read, you can imagine how baffling it is to actually play it. This might've been alleviated had they provided a mobile map of some kind for Dan to access, but no, maps are restricted to being holographic static ones placed on a single wall of a single floor of a single section that you'll have to memorize to plan your routes (though at least they are kind enough to show the direction Dan is facing).
The music is good, though I admittedly didn't pay too much attention to it given that a lot of it felt ambient. It's excellent in that regard, hyping up the thriller aspects or requisite atmosphere necessitated. There were times where a veer into unconventional music like Jazz would play, and the execution was too sloppy to be good, but for the most part it was solid. Unfortunately, the horror aspects, in general, aren't good enough to boosted by music. Most of the horror in Observer comes down to cheap jump scares, which wear out their welcome very quickly. It's a shame, because the claustrophobic nature of the tenement building could've been fodder for some Shining-level atmospheric dread.
The story itself ends on a decently interesting note, opting for an unconventional darker twist regardless of the path you choose. But because there is no sequel to follow-up on the events, and because the relationship between Lazarki and Adam isn't that well developed in general, it can't help but feel incomplete and unsatisfying.
Lastly, Observer is just poorly optimized. Graphically it looks good with strongly textured environments and the color scheme working artistic wonders for the world ala Alien: Isolation, but it's hampered by janky-looking human models (fixed in Redux) and really bad artifacting that wasn't caused by the game. Seriously, I had to turn off the motion blur in the options section to alleviate this problem (as well as increase the brightness past recommended levels to see anything), but it didn't completely stop the anti-aliasing from being outright bad. I also encountered several glitches that forced me to restart, like Dan getting stuck in one place or an object I had to move disappearing behind a wall, but luckily Observer offers a very forgiving autosave that alleviates most of the latter.
So yeah, overall I can't recommend Observer. A disappointing story combined with disappointing gameplay set in a poorly designed hub that falters in comparison to other cyberpunk worlds culminates in the game being a letdown. System Redux may offer better graphics and more side missions, but it won't fix the major issues present here.
It was only two hours into my playthrough of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine that I realized how much of a slog it was going to be. Within that two-hour timeframe, you will have seen everything you need to know about the game: that is, what you will be doing for the next 8 or so hours should you choose to stay in for the long haul, a venture that I do not endorse in any way.
Where the Water is theoretically premised on the concept of stories- how they evolve, drive mythologies, and convey truths and lies. The narrative involves you losing a game of cards to a Devilish-figure, who gives you a chance to repay him via collecting tales strewn throughout the land.
It’s a fascinating idea, but there’s a reason I used the word “theoretically”- it falters completely. An atrocious open world combined with a lack of presentation makes for a wasted premise.
Let’s talk about that first part- open worlds games have come under scrutiny in recent years over their interiors- once the wonder of being able to walk to the farthest horizon wears off, it appears most gamers care about the quality of the actual content. If you’re just providing copy/pasted vistas and repetitive side stuff ad nauseam, then you are not going to find much love from the gaming community.
And such was the case here. Where the Water has the worst open world I have ever had the privileged misfortune to experience. It’s an example of a concept that should have never even gotten to that stage- a concept that would have worked far better as a purely or near-purely linear video game. You have the entire (scaled) continental United States open at your fingertips, only to find that it is literally the same copy/pasted terrain, mountains, rivers, and cityscapes sprinkled everywhere minus some reskinned hues done in a pathetic attempt to reflect geographical changes.
But that wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing if the actual content was diverse, but no, you find stories the exact same way- walking to a spot on the map and pressing X. Other activities like earning/losing money or seeing a pretold story grow are done the same way: walk over to a spot on the map and press X. It’s a walking simulator with barely any kind of exploration that would have at least made the journey between all the areas all the more exciting.
Compounding THIS part even further is the horrible navigation. While a lot of points are within reach, there are a number of larger character arcs that are spread across multiple states, and the walking mechanic is PAINFULLY slow. Like, slow as in it’ll bring back memories of the beginning of Morrowind. Perhaps realizing this, the developers put in the ability to move quicker via a whistling minigame reminiscent of the QTE system from Fahrenheit, as well as hitchhiking through passing cars. But both of these have their own issues: the former only has one song, meaning it can come at odds with the music playing in the background, and either way doesn’t move you particularly fast, while with the latter, you cannot decree when you will stop, meaning sometimes you will only move a few feet more before getting kicked out, or other times go past your intended destination before departing. Trains are available as a fast travel option, but they’re not universally connected meaning you’ll have to take multiple ones, and because those cost money you most likely won’t have enough to do successive trips- and while train hopping is an option (minus the risk of getting beaten up), these have even MORE limited destinations, making them not helpful for any place not closeby. Oh, and to top it all off, all of these trigger MASSIVE framerate drops that essentially render them not worth doing in the end.
Rivers are an infuriating aspect as well- you are only able to cross them at certain ford junctures, but their placement is haphazard and can often result in you having to walk a considerable distance just to find them- a simple solution would’ve been just to allow the player to walk across waterways- it’s not like it’s imperative to any learning curve or game mechanic.
The only positive thing I can say about Where the Water’s open world is that the music changes depending on what state/region you are in, and the score is so wonderful that these changes feel natural and awesome (more on that below), but that’s about it.
Graphically, Where the Water has a solid art style. I wish I was more educated in art history to give an accurate description of what it was Dim Bulb Games and Serenity Forge were trying to evoke, but it definitely seemed to be some kind of pastoral vibe. Every area has a limited color palette that, combined with simple shapes, goes a long way towards radiating a rural ecosystem, and it works. This is a beautiful overworld that screams Americana. Close-ups of characters, both small-time and large-scale, are done in a colored pencil aesthetic that comes off as hand-drawn, with excellent chiaroscuro conveying shadows and lighting perfectly. In the macro world, a dynamic day/night system has been implemented to showcase hourly changes.
Unfortunately, graphical hitches take away from this beauty. I mentioned the framerate drops above, but other smaller things like constantly clipping through every object you walk through and inconsistent shadowmapping for the clouds above are also prevalent. Finally there’s the fact that, as well-crafted as all the main NPCs are, their blinking eyes feel creepy and out-of-place!
Sound is a massive disappointment if only because it’s practically nonexistent- there’s no effect for walking, driving, collecting, or really anything. I don’t even think riding trains had any discernible audio. It’s like the devs didn’t even bother trying to implement anything, which is a crime for this title in particular for a couple of reasons: one, as a walking sim, sound is necessary in evoking an atmosphere, working in conjunction with music to craft a distinct identity, and two, the individual stories would have benefited TREMENDOUSLY from unique sonority, turning them into radio plays of sorts that would have made up for the lack of presentation (more on that below).
Thankfully, the music is on the opposite end of the spectrum. My gosh, is this one of the best OSTs I have ever had the privilege to listen to. I’ll copy/paste this from Wikipedia: “The soundtrack of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine gained praise as an authentic representation of Americana: The 30-track compilation spans folk, jazz, country, blues, bluegrass, and more.”
Yeah, I really can’t summarize it better than that. As you move from location-to-location, melodic changes happen to reflect the area that you’re in: closer to the Mexican border garners you latino beats while going inner-city produces jazz of sorts. They always fit the mood, but in the event you want to listen to something different, you have the option to change the track much like you could with the sea shanties in Black Flag/Rogue. The one downside though is that you are limited in what you can change it to based on the region: a place may only let you cycle through three different pieces, for example, until you move out of its radius. I suppose this was done to help preserve the vibe of your travels, but it impacts player choice to a fault IMO. All that being said, this is one game that I am grateful has a vinyl release as you can be sure I will be purchasing it (side note, why can’t more video games have vinyl versions of their soundtracks done?).
Because Where the Water is about storytelling, the voice acting can be divided into two distinct categories: your main NPCs (16 in total) and then the side tales. To get the good out of the way, the main NPCs are all solidly performed- each has a distinct vocalist who superbly conveys their persona’s overarching life story and accounts. On the other hand, the (apparently over 200!) side tales you collect are all voiced by a single narrator. He speaks like a character from an old revisionist western: deep voice, southern accent, and a cool delivery conveying a chill demeanor. He sounds badass and his actor’s name is Keythe Farley, who apparently voiced Thane from the Mass Effect series. Unfortunately, as talented as he is, having him do the voices for EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE STORIES has to be one of the dumbest decisions I have ever seen in sound design. As TES series has pointed out, when you have a ton of side characters in a game, you need a round cast of at least 7-10 members to help create the mirage of diversity. One person doing it, even if he’s trying to do a slightly different voice, just doesn’t cut it, particularly when the stories involve a slightly bigger cast, supernatural characters, and, oh I don’t know, FEMALES (seriously, they couldn’t ask one of the seiyū from the group of 16 to play the females at least?). Another issue I had with Farley is that he often speaks too slow, taking unnecessarily long pauses after any kind of punctuation mark (commas, periods, semicolons), which does not befit the presentation-style of the game at all (more on that later). Combining these 2-3 factors led to me often fastforwarding through the conversations since they were inherently immersion-breaking.
Before moving on, I’ll give a brief shoutout to Sting for his performance as the devilish Dire Wolf. While I’m not someone who has listened to his music, I will say he should consider a career in voice acting since he was phenomenal in every scene he was in (no matter how sadly few there were).
Now we finally come to the gameplay, of which there is a lot to speak of. I already briefly talked about the gameplay above as it pertained to the open world and navigation, but there is more to rant about. Where the Water didn’t want to put any kind of effort into collecting stories- no puzzles, no minigames, no narrative riddles, nothing. It is purely a collectathon of running around, finding a button prompt, and hitting it, triggering a pop-up conversation sequence that plays out against a single picture in the back. Occasionally there is some dialogue choice, but this barely makes a difference in the outcome.
I’ve heard Where the Water described as a visual novel or VN of sorts, and I would agree with that. All cards on the table, it is not a genre that I am a particular fan of given the limited gameplay/lack of exploration value, but WTW goes out of its way to make it even worse than it is by giving no presentation value. Whenever you come across one of these stories, as I said, all you have is a single photo in the back while the narration drones on, and it’s just not immersive.
What would have been a lot better would have been to create short, minimalist animation sequences for the stories. There was this dropped animation pilot from I believe MTV called Deadtime Stories that had a simultaneously choppy and smooth animation style that consequently gave it a hypnotic feel. If you were to take that style and craft it in the aesthetic of WTW, I believe you would have had a truly entrancing visage that would have made collecting each story an invigorating mini-adventure. The aforestated slow narration would have also synced better with it since each pause would have allowed the directors to transition to a different part of the story as the voiceover resumed. Would this initiative have cost money? Of course, but you could have easily made up for that by cutting down on the number of NPCs and getting rid of the open world (and all its useless systems).
As it stands, what do you have instead? You have a single middle-aged man giving a sluggish account of a diversity of individuals while players stare at a photograph with no ambient noise going on in the backdrop; just the muted drawl of the OST as it dropped in volume. I hate to say it, but it just feels really cheap, like the devs ran out of funding to put in any substantial production value. The writing for them itself is hit-or-miss. The vast majority of the tales are entertaining on some level- some try to go for a Cormac McCarthy-esque western message, others as the basis for some folklore, and still others for just plain amusement. You do run into plenty of pointless, annoying, or repetitive ones, but I’d be lying if I said that they took away from experience. In terms of the big picture stories of the 16, each manages to be a unique tale telling of a singular human being, but overall they honestly should have trimmed down the number from 16 to 8-10, largely because there is very little thematic range. Almost all of the accounts are about the breakdown of tradition vs modernism, freedom of the open land vs. authority, and how the elites are screwing over the working class. It gets kind of mundane to hear what is ultimately a slightly-different take on a motif that you heard the last four people say.
To be clear, the display of a single picture works out better for the one-on-one NPC convos due to them being talks where you’re both blatantly sitting down and chatting face-to-face compared to those minisodes where you’re often witnessing or participating in some kind of action beat. Unfortunately, these have their very own gameplay flaw. See, all those yarns you walked around collecting? You will get prompts from the NPCs informing you that they want to hear some kind of anecdote: either humorous, hopeful, sad, or scary. Successfully telling them one of these results in you getting their favor and filling up a meter represented by an eye opening- if you manage to fully open it, you unlock the next chapter in their personal spiel. Doing this 3-4 times in a row (depending on the character) completes them, earning you a Tarot card and getting you one-step closer to completing the Wolf’s task.
It sounds simple enough right? Here are the two glaring issues with it: one, from an immersion point-of-view, the way each NPC asks you for your stories is so stupid and out-of-the-blue. They will be telling a strong, passionate chain of events that occurred in their past, only to suddenly stop and ask “hey, i’m in the mood for chills, you got any terrifying tales?”. It’s like wtf? You were just in the middle of telling me something interesting about your life, and now you want to change gears for no reason at all? What it comes down do is a writing problem- the writers for each of these could have EASILY incorporated a quid-pro-quo dialogue/response into their scripts that would have felt natural and smooth. Heck, it would have been nice to have scripted reactions contingent on the specific story you told them (though I acknowledge this would have required LA Noire-levels of writing). But at the very least, they could have very simply done the former, and that isn’t the case. It honestly comes across like an outside writer wrote in these parts and haphazardly inserted them into the pre-written dialogue of the diegesis.
The second glaring issue is that a lot of your stories are frankly hard to categorize. Scary and sad stories tend to be the easiest to figure out, but what constitutes joyful or hopeful is hard and can honestly get frustrating at times, especially when you are only given the title of your tale and not its contents to review. For example, take the apologue of a bull who was pierced with an arrow and bleeding out yet could not die- does that sound sad to you? Well, it’s actually classified as hopeful, although even that’s subject for debate since different characters might interpret stories differently- what one sees as laughable is actually more hopeful. This latter part is thankfully rare, but it does come up and will piss you off when it does.
Making this matter worse are three additional problems: one, your stories can evolve through interacting with certain prompts on the map wherein an NPC will tell you how he heard this variation of the tale you experienced/heard beforehand (how some of these even got out to the point of falling prey to telephone is beyond me)- while these sometimes serve as a good explanation as to the basis for some of our nation’s longest-running myths (Ichabod Crane, Johnny Appleseed, the Jersey Devil, etc….), most of the time they come off as random developments and seemingly change the tone of a story despite it not actually changing from its original genre (for ex. A girl who carries around rocks is turned into a witch who lures strangers using magic stones; it went from kooky to creepy, yet you’re still supposed to treat it as kooky). And because, as I said, you have no way of reviewing a story’s writing, this makes it even harder to pinpoint its classification, meaning you can end up throwing darts at a board and wasting your few chances at upping one of the 16s’ favorable meter before they have to depart. Two, stories are grouped into tarot cards schemas: when you tell one from one of them, it locks off the rest of the yarns in there until you meet the NPC again, meaning you lose access to a lot of potential plot movers. And three, NOT ALL OF YOUR STORIES GET COLLECTED. What was the point in compiling/writing/producing over 200 of these if you can’t even add half of them to your arsenal to use in this game of oral Go-Fish? I can get fleshing out the world, but this was overkill.
Thankfully, the charm system doesn’t work like Oblivion’s persuasion system wherein telling an unappealing chronicle drops their favor- it maintains the same progress each time you successfully reciprocate a request, allowing you to successfully push them over the course of multiple meetings even if you fail here and there.
Finally, there is apparently a survivalist system in place in the form of health and sleep. You can restore them through triggering world events (like helping a family who provides you a meal) or using money (also earned through world or city events) to buy nourishments from cities that successfully rejuvenate them. Listening to one of the 16’s campfires also restores all attributes. However, it’s not like it matters as “dying” simply results in you briefly meeting the Dire Wolf again, wherein you can leave and spawn at your last checkpoint, which usually isn’t too far from where you perished. Worst comes to worse, you can initiate an autowalk and go-off and do something else while your protagonist navigates to the area (assuming there are no obstacles stopping them). To clarify, it is particularly hard to “die”, but even if you do somehow, it’s not like you’re playing a roguelike.
But look, I think I’ve ranted enough. Where the Water Tastes Like Wine had a lot of potential, however it just didn’t have the vision and/or possibly budget to execute on it. The idea of seeing a heterogeneity of stories that expressed the very basis for the current status of the country could have been exciting, but lackluster production value in the graphical and sound departments hampered this completely. The open world is pointless, there are optimization issues, and the only real-gameplay mechanics are chock full of stupid flaws. I would honestly recommend purchasing the soundtrack over the game.
Where the Water is theoretically premised on the concept of stories- how they evolve, drive mythologies, and convey truths and lies. The narrative involves you losing a game of cards to a Devilish-figure, who gives you a chance to repay him via collecting tales strewn throughout the land.
It’s a fascinating idea, but there’s a reason I used the word “theoretically”- it falters completely. An atrocious open world combined with a lack of presentation makes for a wasted premise.
Let’s talk about that first part- open worlds games have come under scrutiny in recent years over their interiors- once the wonder of being able to walk to the farthest horizon wears off, it appears most gamers care about the quality of the actual content. If you’re just providing copy/pasted vistas and repetitive side stuff ad nauseam, then you are not going to find much love from the gaming community.
And such was the case here. Where the Water has the worst open world I have ever had the privileged misfortune to experience. It’s an example of a concept that should have never even gotten to that stage- a concept that would have worked far better as a purely or near-purely linear video game. You have the entire (scaled) continental United States open at your fingertips, only to find that it is literally the same copy/pasted terrain, mountains, rivers, and cityscapes sprinkled everywhere minus some reskinned hues done in a pathetic attempt to reflect geographical changes.
But that wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing if the actual content was diverse, but no, you find stories the exact same way- walking to a spot on the map and pressing X. Other activities like earning/losing money or seeing a pretold story grow are done the same way: walk over to a spot on the map and press X. It’s a walking simulator with barely any kind of exploration that would have at least made the journey between all the areas all the more exciting.
Compounding THIS part even further is the horrible navigation. While a lot of points are within reach, there are a number of larger character arcs that are spread across multiple states, and the walking mechanic is PAINFULLY slow. Like, slow as in it’ll bring back memories of the beginning of Morrowind. Perhaps realizing this, the developers put in the ability to move quicker via a whistling minigame reminiscent of the QTE system from Fahrenheit, as well as hitchhiking through passing cars. But both of these have their own issues: the former only has one song, meaning it can come at odds with the music playing in the background, and either way doesn’t move you particularly fast, while with the latter, you cannot decree when you will stop, meaning sometimes you will only move a few feet more before getting kicked out, or other times go past your intended destination before departing. Trains are available as a fast travel option, but they’re not universally connected meaning you’ll have to take multiple ones, and because those cost money you most likely won’t have enough to do successive trips- and while train hopping is an option (minus the risk of getting beaten up), these have even MORE limited destinations, making them not helpful for any place not closeby. Oh, and to top it all off, all of these trigger MASSIVE framerate drops that essentially render them not worth doing in the end.
Rivers are an infuriating aspect as well- you are only able to cross them at certain ford junctures, but their placement is haphazard and can often result in you having to walk a considerable distance just to find them- a simple solution would’ve been just to allow the player to walk across waterways- it’s not like it’s imperative to any learning curve or game mechanic.
The only positive thing I can say about Where the Water’s open world is that the music changes depending on what state/region you are in, and the score is so wonderful that these changes feel natural and awesome (more on that below), but that’s about it.
Graphically, Where the Water has a solid art style. I wish I was more educated in art history to give an accurate description of what it was Dim Bulb Games and Serenity Forge were trying to evoke, but it definitely seemed to be some kind of pastoral vibe. Every area has a limited color palette that, combined with simple shapes, goes a long way towards radiating a rural ecosystem, and it works. This is a beautiful overworld that screams Americana. Close-ups of characters, both small-time and large-scale, are done in a colored pencil aesthetic that comes off as hand-drawn, with excellent chiaroscuro conveying shadows and lighting perfectly. In the macro world, a dynamic day/night system has been implemented to showcase hourly changes.
Unfortunately, graphical hitches take away from this beauty. I mentioned the framerate drops above, but other smaller things like constantly clipping through every object you walk through and inconsistent shadowmapping for the clouds above are also prevalent. Finally there’s the fact that, as well-crafted as all the main NPCs are, their blinking eyes feel creepy and out-of-place!
Sound is a massive disappointment if only because it’s practically nonexistent- there’s no effect for walking, driving, collecting, or really anything. I don’t even think riding trains had any discernible audio. It’s like the devs didn’t even bother trying to implement anything, which is a crime for this title in particular for a couple of reasons: one, as a walking sim, sound is necessary in evoking an atmosphere, working in conjunction with music to craft a distinct identity, and two, the individual stories would have benefited TREMENDOUSLY from unique sonority, turning them into radio plays of sorts that would have made up for the lack of presentation (more on that below).
Thankfully, the music is on the opposite end of the spectrum. My gosh, is this one of the best OSTs I have ever had the privilege to listen to. I’ll copy/paste this from Wikipedia: “The soundtrack of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine gained praise as an authentic representation of Americana: The 30-track compilation spans folk, jazz, country, blues, bluegrass, and more.”
Yeah, I really can’t summarize it better than that. As you move from location-to-location, melodic changes happen to reflect the area that you’re in: closer to the Mexican border garners you latino beats while going inner-city produces jazz of sorts. They always fit the mood, but in the event you want to listen to something different, you have the option to change the track much like you could with the sea shanties in Black Flag/Rogue. The one downside though is that you are limited in what you can change it to based on the region: a place may only let you cycle through three different pieces, for example, until you move out of its radius. I suppose this was done to help preserve the vibe of your travels, but it impacts player choice to a fault IMO. All that being said, this is one game that I am grateful has a vinyl release as you can be sure I will be purchasing it (side note, why can’t more video games have vinyl versions of their soundtracks done?).
Because Where the Water is about storytelling, the voice acting can be divided into two distinct categories: your main NPCs (16 in total) and then the side tales. To get the good out of the way, the main NPCs are all solidly performed- each has a distinct vocalist who superbly conveys their persona’s overarching life story and accounts. On the other hand, the (apparently over 200!) side tales you collect are all voiced by a single narrator. He speaks like a character from an old revisionist western: deep voice, southern accent, and a cool delivery conveying a chill demeanor. He sounds badass and his actor’s name is Keythe Farley, who apparently voiced Thane from the Mass Effect series. Unfortunately, as talented as he is, having him do the voices for EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE STORIES has to be one of the dumbest decisions I have ever seen in sound design. As TES series has pointed out, when you have a ton of side characters in a game, you need a round cast of at least 7-10 members to help create the mirage of diversity. One person doing it, even if he’s trying to do a slightly different voice, just doesn’t cut it, particularly when the stories involve a slightly bigger cast, supernatural characters, and, oh I don’t know, FEMALES (seriously, they couldn’t ask one of the seiyū from the group of 16 to play the females at least?). Another issue I had with Farley is that he often speaks too slow, taking unnecessarily long pauses after any kind of punctuation mark (commas, periods, semicolons), which does not befit the presentation-style of the game at all (more on that later). Combining these 2-3 factors led to me often fastforwarding through the conversations since they were inherently immersion-breaking.
Before moving on, I’ll give a brief shoutout to Sting for his performance as the devilish Dire Wolf. While I’m not someone who has listened to his music, I will say he should consider a career in voice acting since he was phenomenal in every scene he was in (no matter how sadly few there were).
Now we finally come to the gameplay, of which there is a lot to speak of. I already briefly talked about the gameplay above as it pertained to the open world and navigation, but there is more to rant about. Where the Water didn’t want to put any kind of effort into collecting stories- no puzzles, no minigames, no narrative riddles, nothing. It is purely a collectathon of running around, finding a button prompt, and hitting it, triggering a pop-up conversation sequence that plays out against a single picture in the back. Occasionally there is some dialogue choice, but this barely makes a difference in the outcome.
I’ve heard Where the Water described as a visual novel or VN of sorts, and I would agree with that. All cards on the table, it is not a genre that I am a particular fan of given the limited gameplay/lack of exploration value, but WTW goes out of its way to make it even worse than it is by giving no presentation value. Whenever you come across one of these stories, as I said, all you have is a single photo in the back while the narration drones on, and it’s just not immersive.
What would have been a lot better would have been to create short, minimalist animation sequences for the stories. There was this dropped animation pilot from I believe MTV called Deadtime Stories that had a simultaneously choppy and smooth animation style that consequently gave it a hypnotic feel. If you were to take that style and craft it in the aesthetic of WTW, I believe you would have had a truly entrancing visage that would have made collecting each story an invigorating mini-adventure. The aforestated slow narration would have also synced better with it since each pause would have allowed the directors to transition to a different part of the story as the voiceover resumed. Would this initiative have cost money? Of course, but you could have easily made up for that by cutting down on the number of NPCs and getting rid of the open world (and all its useless systems).
As it stands, what do you have instead? You have a single middle-aged man giving a sluggish account of a diversity of individuals while players stare at a photograph with no ambient noise going on in the backdrop; just the muted drawl of the OST as it dropped in volume. I hate to say it, but it just feels really cheap, like the devs ran out of funding to put in any substantial production value. The writing for them itself is hit-or-miss. The vast majority of the tales are entertaining on some level- some try to go for a Cormac McCarthy-esque western message, others as the basis for some folklore, and still others for just plain amusement. You do run into plenty of pointless, annoying, or repetitive ones, but I’d be lying if I said that they took away from experience. In terms of the big picture stories of the 16, each manages to be a unique tale telling of a singular human being, but overall they honestly should have trimmed down the number from 16 to 8-10, largely because there is very little thematic range. Almost all of the accounts are about the breakdown of tradition vs modernism, freedom of the open land vs. authority, and how the elites are screwing over the working class. It gets kind of mundane to hear what is ultimately a slightly-different take on a motif that you heard the last four people say.
To be clear, the display of a single picture works out better for the one-on-one NPC convos due to them being talks where you’re both blatantly sitting down and chatting face-to-face compared to those minisodes where you’re often witnessing or participating in some kind of action beat. Unfortunately, these have their very own gameplay flaw. See, all those yarns you walked around collecting? You will get prompts from the NPCs informing you that they want to hear some kind of anecdote: either humorous, hopeful, sad, or scary. Successfully telling them one of these results in you getting their favor and filling up a meter represented by an eye opening- if you manage to fully open it, you unlock the next chapter in their personal spiel. Doing this 3-4 times in a row (depending on the character) completes them, earning you a Tarot card and getting you one-step closer to completing the Wolf’s task.
It sounds simple enough right? Here are the two glaring issues with it: one, from an immersion point-of-view, the way each NPC asks you for your stories is so stupid and out-of-the-blue. They will be telling a strong, passionate chain of events that occurred in their past, only to suddenly stop and ask “hey, i’m in the mood for chills, you got any terrifying tales?”. It’s like wtf? You were just in the middle of telling me something interesting about your life, and now you want to change gears for no reason at all? What it comes down do is a writing problem- the writers for each of these could have EASILY incorporated a quid-pro-quo dialogue/response into their scripts that would have felt natural and smooth. Heck, it would have been nice to have scripted reactions contingent on the specific story you told them (though I acknowledge this would have required LA Noire-levels of writing). But at the very least, they could have very simply done the former, and that isn’t the case. It honestly comes across like an outside writer wrote in these parts and haphazardly inserted them into the pre-written dialogue of the diegesis.
The second glaring issue is that a lot of your stories are frankly hard to categorize. Scary and sad stories tend to be the easiest to figure out, but what constitutes joyful or hopeful is hard and can honestly get frustrating at times, especially when you are only given the title of your tale and not its contents to review. For example, take the apologue of a bull who was pierced with an arrow and bleeding out yet could not die- does that sound sad to you? Well, it’s actually classified as hopeful, although even that’s subject for debate since different characters might interpret stories differently- what one sees as laughable is actually more hopeful. This latter part is thankfully rare, but it does come up and will piss you off when it does.
Making this matter worse are three additional problems: one, your stories can evolve through interacting with certain prompts on the map wherein an NPC will tell you how he heard this variation of the tale you experienced/heard beforehand (how some of these even got out to the point of falling prey to telephone is beyond me)- while these sometimes serve as a good explanation as to the basis for some of our nation’s longest-running myths (Ichabod Crane, Johnny Appleseed, the Jersey Devil, etc….), most of the time they come off as random developments and seemingly change the tone of a story despite it not actually changing from its original genre (for ex. A girl who carries around rocks is turned into a witch who lures strangers using magic stones; it went from kooky to creepy, yet you’re still supposed to treat it as kooky). And because, as I said, you have no way of reviewing a story’s writing, this makes it even harder to pinpoint its classification, meaning you can end up throwing darts at a board and wasting your few chances at upping one of the 16s’ favorable meter before they have to depart. Two, stories are grouped into tarot cards schemas: when you tell one from one of them, it locks off the rest of the yarns in there until you meet the NPC again, meaning you lose access to a lot of potential plot movers. And three, NOT ALL OF YOUR STORIES GET COLLECTED. What was the point in compiling/writing/producing over 200 of these if you can’t even add half of them to your arsenal to use in this game of oral Go-Fish? I can get fleshing out the world, but this was overkill.
Thankfully, the charm system doesn’t work like Oblivion’s persuasion system wherein telling an unappealing chronicle drops their favor- it maintains the same progress each time you successfully reciprocate a request, allowing you to successfully push them over the course of multiple meetings even if you fail here and there.
Finally, there is apparently a survivalist system in place in the form of health and sleep. You can restore them through triggering world events (like helping a family who provides you a meal) or using money (also earned through world or city events) to buy nourishments from cities that successfully rejuvenate them. Listening to one of the 16’s campfires also restores all attributes. However, it’s not like it matters as “dying” simply results in you briefly meeting the Dire Wolf again, wherein you can leave and spawn at your last checkpoint, which usually isn’t too far from where you perished. Worst comes to worse, you can initiate an autowalk and go-off and do something else while your protagonist navigates to the area (assuming there are no obstacles stopping them). To clarify, it is particularly hard to “die”, but even if you do somehow, it’s not like you’re playing a roguelike.
But look, I think I’ve ranted enough. Where the Water Tastes Like Wine had a lot of potential, however it just didn’t have the vision and/or possibly budget to execute on it. The idea of seeing a heterogeneity of stories that expressed the very basis for the current status of the country could have been exciting, but lackluster production value in the graphical and sound departments hampered this completely. The open world is pointless, there are optimization issues, and the only real-gameplay mechanics are chock full of stupid flaws. I would honestly recommend purchasing the soundtrack over the game.
2017
Ever since Lifeline came out in 2015 to critical acclaim, I have noticed a major uptick in games of a similar genre, or rather, a revival of an older genre: the text-based adventure. See, those kinds of games, while privy to great storytelling, tended to be the bastion of shovelware: their low development costs ensured that they could be churned out quickly, much like PnCs for PCs. In bringing this style back, Lifeline was interesting because it showcased how small advances in user interfaces, particularly on mobile devices, alongside the implementation of choice (or the illusion of choice) could go a long way towards making such titles memorable experiences for players.
Simulacra is another entry that was no doubt conceived to jump on this hype train the Lifeline series consequently caused, and as you can probably tell from my lack of recommendation, it falters too much for its own good. It’s a shame because Simulacra goes further than Lifeline in the production value, but a poor story and shameful morality decisions by the writers prevent it from being anything more than a beautiful misfire.
To talk about those graphical virtues first, it should be noted beforehand that Simulacra (much like Lifeline) was definitively intended to be played on a cell phone. I opted for the Steam version because it was much cheaper, but I fully acknowledge you lose something by going the PC route. Now, that being said, the porters did a good job of transferring the controls over; minus the occasional speed glitch with the mousewheel, everything works, clicks, and scrolls as it should. But having that smaller screen and more compact tactility is a benefit that the mobile version grants.
This is also because the interface is meant to mimic the look of a phone. To anyone who has ever played Her Story (which happens to be my first Steam game!), do you remember how the display was deliberately crafted to appear like a computer? Imagine that with a smartphone and you’ll get Simulacra. It’s interesting in that a lot of the content on the device contains real-world images, but the actual design is stylized to the point that it’s definitively not photorealistic. Despite the seeming clash, it never distracted me, probably because of how well-organized and genuine things felt. Unlike the Emily is Away sequels, which I felt did horrible recreations, the social media knock-offs in Simulacra successfully come off like a full-fledged applications- it’s not that you can do everything on them that you could do on their counterparts back in the same timeframe, but there is a decent amount of freedom that, coupled with the esthetic mimicry, goes a long way towards making it feel like more than just a cheap attempt at parody.
Unfortunately, this is the only place where you will see me give consistent praise to Simulacra. Sound-wise, it just isn’t good: granted, there was only so much you could do with phone sounds, but even on the apps and websites you are given access to, the bare minimum was done to give them some unique sonority. Even though I didn’t play it much, I think back to Welcome to the Game, where a number of websites came with a distinct theme that made their pages standout. Of course, a lot of that was built on a horror motif, whereas Simulacra is more mystery/thriller (though there are some lame attempts at jump scares that I’ll get into later), but I still would’ve liked something. There’s barely any SFX and music is practically nonexistent minus specific sections that I can’t talk about without getting into spoilers (and it’s a constant, unwavering beat, nothing to heap praise on regardless).
And then there’s the voice acting, which also blends into acting since one of the bigger production things Simulacra does is incorporate actual actors playing the cast in-game. Mixed, mixed bag. The main character of Anna is played by Wendy Van Horen Carneiro, and she actually does a good job displaying the wheel of emotions that Anna goes through as you scan through her archives trying to figure out what happened. I won’t say that she’s at the level of Viva Seifert from Her Story, but she wasn’t bad at all.
Anna’s boyfriend’s actor on the other hand, an apparently dual role shared by Gavin Yap and Reuben Cheow, was absolutely awful. Despite having two people to dedicate to each craft, they failed on both fronts: not only was Cheow’s actual acting trash, but Yap’s voice was unbearable- he could not convey believable intonations required for the emotional outlandishness that Greg goes into. It was a pain listening and watching them.
Denise Chan, who voices Anna’s BFF Ashley, was hit-or-miss. Her biggest issue was that she was clearly trying too hard to embody that bubbly BFF quality that the character necessitated, but at least she didn’t annoy me the way the Greg actors did.
And lastly, there’s Phraveen Arikiah as Taylor, an eccentric third party associate of Anna’s who forces himself into the story. Like Chan, there is a “try hard” quality to Arikiah, but I felt he pulled it off more naturally than Chan, though your mileage will definitely vary on him.
Finally, we can talk about the story. Ohh, what a slog this was. The premise is your character is somehow given the phone of Anna, a chick who went missing a few days ago, leaving some of her loved ones in emotional turmoil. A sketchy video on the phone, in conjunction with berserk glitches, results in you getting pulled into the matter as you talk with people and try to find ways to gather more information on Anna’s final days.
It sounds like the set-up for something really cool, but what if I told you that you spend the first half entangled in a love triangle? No seriously, Greg and Taylor are constantly talking about one another, always interjecting the other whenever you finally are making some initiative forward. While it is fun to play the smartass, it kills pacing and mood that a thriller is supposed to have. It also doesn’t help that they’re both one-trick ponies: Greg is the overprotective boyfriend prone to fits of CAPSLOCK rage, while Taylor is the wannabe romantic purely motivated by wanting to get into Anna’s pants. They have their moments, but most of the time I just wanted to tell them both to stfu. Maybe it’s because I see this on a near-daily basis as a purveyor of the Internet, but I just don’t find this kind of banter and dialogue entertaining.
When things finally pick up in the second half, it becomes obvious what happened to Anna, and let me just say that the twist was terrible. I don’t want to spoil it too much for those of you who still plan on playing this game, but it is not within the realms of reality and feels like a ripoff of one of the worst parts of Fahrenheit.
The building block aspect of a mystery wherein you slowly locate and piece together clues, unraveling the truth, also just wasn’t handled well. A lot of major things are either done by other characters or forced onto you by this elusive hacker- there’s no real character agency: you more often feel like a witness than an active participant, which is the downfall of a detective game. Being directed by Taylor to interact with another Internet user who may have a connection to the disappearance is a far cry from uncovering something and opting to pursue it yourself.
Player agency is further severely lacking in both choice and actions. I’ve played too many of these games at this point to not notice when a dialogue tree is lazy: i.e., when a game gives you three different potential responses, only for the NPC reply to be a singular one meant to be a catch-all because the writers were too lazy to craft more than one text bubble for the conversation. As a writer myself, it’s a genuine pet peeve because it has a simple fix.
The game has multiple endings, however, a quick Google search showed me that it was one of those multi-ending finales that is tied to a handful of SPECIFIC selections throughout your journey, and not the culmination of all you have been doing. While not bad for an indie game, there was an aspect to it that pissed me off, and that was how some of the selections for the best ending involved you having to compromise your morality (more on that in the spoiler section).
Gameplay wise, the lack of player agency extends to the ways you gather information: you either have to play these minigames to unravel corrupted files or engage in a chat with someone who has pertinent info. The former is literally not worth doing: after half-a-minute of failing, the game will prompt you with a skip button with no penalty. And the latter again falls prey to the aforementioned problem of there being barely any significant dialogue variation.
There are times where you do conduct some type of research and investigation into the matter, and the thing I appreciated was how realistic it was. Much like the film Searching, the way you gather intel on others is through believable means that the average person can employ: social engineering/impersonation, looking up cues on social media posts and profiles, and general discussions. It’s a shame that it’s few and far between.
I also couldn’t help but feel that there was a missed opportunity for biting satire. I mean, you get some of that through a few articles on the Internet and chain emails you receive from promoters, like the one about buying kidnapper insurance or globalization being beneficial for online romances to the point that you don’t even need language barriers, but within the convos themselves there isn’t too much, though I admit that a game coasting on a more serious tone shouldn’t invest too much effort on such humorous factors (though the fact that it consistently gives you the option to be a smartass offputs this regardless).
If I can end on a positive note here, it’s that the writing does feel naturalistic within chats. It’s not mumblecore improv, and there are times where it can be expositiony (particularly when a stranger you’ve just met decides to give you the know-all), but it also doesn’t feel like an adult attempting to replicate how they feel younger people talk (maybe helping this is the fact that you’re not encountering high schoolers but people in their early-20s).
Overall though, Simulacra is not worth the time. Its semi-interesting premise is thrown away on a viral trip down mundane lane full of clashing bfs, lack of player initiative, and no major unravelings. The grant twist is a major disappointment as well, making the slog all the more disappointing. Want more info on that? Check out the spoilers way below:
Spoiler talk:
So, as you can infer from my Fahrenheit comparison (I thought about doing a Videodrone one, but felt that would give things away too easily), the truth is Anna was abducted by this entity that lives on the Internet: a “simulacra” of reality that wants to digitize losers and incorporate their consciousness into its own online so that they can live forever with purpose.
I have no idea what the writers were smoking, but this was dumb beyond belief. How is this thing even doing what it’s doing? Absorbing people’s minds into the Internet? And why is it doing it so lethargically? It’s literally taking one person every few weeks: at the rate it’s going, it’s never going to complete a takeover of humanity. And why does it even care about perfection? Where did it even come from? If these were questions intended to be answered by the sequel, then all I can say is sequelbait needs to stop. A cliffhanger can be used effectively, but the first entry of a series should always be mostly self-contained, especially if you’re going to throw in a variable that makes an otherwise grounded game slip into X-Files territory albeit even more incomprehensible and ludicrous. Its motivations are decent, but it lacks the fine-tuned philosophical dialogue that the AIs in Deus Ex had about the human condition and technology.
What’s worse is that there were hints of a cyberpunk aspect to the story that could have made for a much better endgame: Anna works for a surveillance company with a boss who is very nosy about her business and perverted colleagues playing sick games online with her. There was a missed chance to tell a tale about social media companies going to extra lengths to protect their vested control over the public or something, but no, it seems that would have been too “normal” for the psychedelic nonsense the writers wanted to go for instead.
In terms of the morality dilemma I talked about earlier for the good ending, it involves doing two things, the first of which is accepting the story of Taylor (who I keep calling Spencer for some reason and having to backspace). See, Taylor is revealed to be a registered sex offender! Now, he claims that he was caught publicly urinating by a mom and her kid (or was it a grandmom and her grandkid?), but why does the game want me to believe that? He’s a dipshit on the Internet who has become obsessed with this girl whom he only initially interacted with on a Tinder-esque app to get in her pants. He is tiresome at best and creepy at worst, yet the writers want me to support him emotionally despite having no real reason to believe his sob story? Pathetic. At least give me some proof that can be validated in-game.
The second is impersonating Anna and reciprocating Ashley’s lesbian feelings for you. Look, credit where credit is due, the game does raise up the ethical prospect of you impersonating Anna, but it justifies it behind wanting to ensure her safety. This, on the other hand, was just a disgusting thing to mandate players to do if they want the perfect ending, and inexcusable given that Simulacra came out post-Obergefell v. Hodges.
So yeah, if you chose to stick around and read the spoilers, you can fully see why I don’t recommend playing it.
Simulacra is another entry that was no doubt conceived to jump on this hype train the Lifeline series consequently caused, and as you can probably tell from my lack of recommendation, it falters too much for its own good. It’s a shame because Simulacra goes further than Lifeline in the production value, but a poor story and shameful morality decisions by the writers prevent it from being anything more than a beautiful misfire.
To talk about those graphical virtues first, it should be noted beforehand that Simulacra (much like Lifeline) was definitively intended to be played on a cell phone. I opted for the Steam version because it was much cheaper, but I fully acknowledge you lose something by going the PC route. Now, that being said, the porters did a good job of transferring the controls over; minus the occasional speed glitch with the mousewheel, everything works, clicks, and scrolls as it should. But having that smaller screen and more compact tactility is a benefit that the mobile version grants.
This is also because the interface is meant to mimic the look of a phone. To anyone who has ever played Her Story (which happens to be my first Steam game!), do you remember how the display was deliberately crafted to appear like a computer? Imagine that with a smartphone and you’ll get Simulacra. It’s interesting in that a lot of the content on the device contains real-world images, but the actual design is stylized to the point that it’s definitively not photorealistic. Despite the seeming clash, it never distracted me, probably because of how well-organized and genuine things felt. Unlike the Emily is Away sequels, which I felt did horrible recreations, the social media knock-offs in Simulacra successfully come off like a full-fledged applications- it’s not that you can do everything on them that you could do on their counterparts back in the same timeframe, but there is a decent amount of freedom that, coupled with the esthetic mimicry, goes a long way towards making it feel like more than just a cheap attempt at parody.
Unfortunately, this is the only place where you will see me give consistent praise to Simulacra. Sound-wise, it just isn’t good: granted, there was only so much you could do with phone sounds, but even on the apps and websites you are given access to, the bare minimum was done to give them some unique sonority. Even though I didn’t play it much, I think back to Welcome to the Game, where a number of websites came with a distinct theme that made their pages standout. Of course, a lot of that was built on a horror motif, whereas Simulacra is more mystery/thriller (though there are some lame attempts at jump scares that I’ll get into later), but I still would’ve liked something. There’s barely any SFX and music is practically nonexistent minus specific sections that I can’t talk about without getting into spoilers (and it’s a constant, unwavering beat, nothing to heap praise on regardless).
And then there’s the voice acting, which also blends into acting since one of the bigger production things Simulacra does is incorporate actual actors playing the cast in-game. Mixed, mixed bag. The main character of Anna is played by Wendy Van Horen Carneiro, and she actually does a good job displaying the wheel of emotions that Anna goes through as you scan through her archives trying to figure out what happened. I won’t say that she’s at the level of Viva Seifert from Her Story, but she wasn’t bad at all.
Anna’s boyfriend’s actor on the other hand, an apparently dual role shared by Gavin Yap and Reuben Cheow, was absolutely awful. Despite having two people to dedicate to each craft, they failed on both fronts: not only was Cheow’s actual acting trash, but Yap’s voice was unbearable- he could not convey believable intonations required for the emotional outlandishness that Greg goes into. It was a pain listening and watching them.
Denise Chan, who voices Anna’s BFF Ashley, was hit-or-miss. Her biggest issue was that she was clearly trying too hard to embody that bubbly BFF quality that the character necessitated, but at least she didn’t annoy me the way the Greg actors did.
And lastly, there’s Phraveen Arikiah as Taylor, an eccentric third party associate of Anna’s who forces himself into the story. Like Chan, there is a “try hard” quality to Arikiah, but I felt he pulled it off more naturally than Chan, though your mileage will definitely vary on him.
Finally, we can talk about the story. Ohh, what a slog this was. The premise is your character is somehow given the phone of Anna, a chick who went missing a few days ago, leaving some of her loved ones in emotional turmoil. A sketchy video on the phone, in conjunction with berserk glitches, results in you getting pulled into the matter as you talk with people and try to find ways to gather more information on Anna’s final days.
It sounds like the set-up for something really cool, but what if I told you that you spend the first half entangled in a love triangle? No seriously, Greg and Taylor are constantly talking about one another, always interjecting the other whenever you finally are making some initiative forward. While it is fun to play the smartass, it kills pacing and mood that a thriller is supposed to have. It also doesn’t help that they’re both one-trick ponies: Greg is the overprotective boyfriend prone to fits of CAPSLOCK rage, while Taylor is the wannabe romantic purely motivated by wanting to get into Anna’s pants. They have their moments, but most of the time I just wanted to tell them both to stfu. Maybe it’s because I see this on a near-daily basis as a purveyor of the Internet, but I just don’t find this kind of banter and dialogue entertaining.
When things finally pick up in the second half, it becomes obvious what happened to Anna, and let me just say that the twist was terrible. I don’t want to spoil it too much for those of you who still plan on playing this game, but it is not within the realms of reality and feels like a ripoff of one of the worst parts of Fahrenheit.
The building block aspect of a mystery wherein you slowly locate and piece together clues, unraveling the truth, also just wasn’t handled well. A lot of major things are either done by other characters or forced onto you by this elusive hacker- there’s no real character agency: you more often feel like a witness than an active participant, which is the downfall of a detective game. Being directed by Taylor to interact with another Internet user who may have a connection to the disappearance is a far cry from uncovering something and opting to pursue it yourself.
Player agency is further severely lacking in both choice and actions. I’ve played too many of these games at this point to not notice when a dialogue tree is lazy: i.e., when a game gives you three different potential responses, only for the NPC reply to be a singular one meant to be a catch-all because the writers were too lazy to craft more than one text bubble for the conversation. As a writer myself, it’s a genuine pet peeve because it has a simple fix.
The game has multiple endings, however, a quick Google search showed me that it was one of those multi-ending finales that is tied to a handful of SPECIFIC selections throughout your journey, and not the culmination of all you have been doing. While not bad for an indie game, there was an aspect to it that pissed me off, and that was how some of the selections for the best ending involved you having to compromise your morality (more on that in the spoiler section).
Gameplay wise, the lack of player agency extends to the ways you gather information: you either have to play these minigames to unravel corrupted files or engage in a chat with someone who has pertinent info. The former is literally not worth doing: after half-a-minute of failing, the game will prompt you with a skip button with no penalty. And the latter again falls prey to the aforementioned problem of there being barely any significant dialogue variation.
There are times where you do conduct some type of research and investigation into the matter, and the thing I appreciated was how realistic it was. Much like the film Searching, the way you gather intel on others is through believable means that the average person can employ: social engineering/impersonation, looking up cues on social media posts and profiles, and general discussions. It’s a shame that it’s few and far between.
I also couldn’t help but feel that there was a missed opportunity for biting satire. I mean, you get some of that through a few articles on the Internet and chain emails you receive from promoters, like the one about buying kidnapper insurance or globalization being beneficial for online romances to the point that you don’t even need language barriers, but within the convos themselves there isn’t too much, though I admit that a game coasting on a more serious tone shouldn’t invest too much effort on such humorous factors (though the fact that it consistently gives you the option to be a smartass offputs this regardless).
If I can end on a positive note here, it’s that the writing does feel naturalistic within chats. It’s not mumblecore improv, and there are times where it can be expositiony (particularly when a stranger you’ve just met decides to give you the know-all), but it also doesn’t feel like an adult attempting to replicate how they feel younger people talk (maybe helping this is the fact that you’re not encountering high schoolers but people in their early-20s).
Overall though, Simulacra is not worth the time. Its semi-interesting premise is thrown away on a viral trip down mundane lane full of clashing bfs, lack of player initiative, and no major unravelings. The grant twist is a major disappointment as well, making the slog all the more disappointing. Want more info on that? Check out the spoilers way below:
Spoiler talk:
So, as you can infer from my Fahrenheit comparison (I thought about doing a Videodrone one, but felt that would give things away too easily), the truth is Anna was abducted by this entity that lives on the Internet: a “simulacra” of reality that wants to digitize losers and incorporate their consciousness into its own online so that they can live forever with purpose.
I have no idea what the writers were smoking, but this was dumb beyond belief. How is this thing even doing what it’s doing? Absorbing people’s minds into the Internet? And why is it doing it so lethargically? It’s literally taking one person every few weeks: at the rate it’s going, it’s never going to complete a takeover of humanity. And why does it even care about perfection? Where did it even come from? If these were questions intended to be answered by the sequel, then all I can say is sequelbait needs to stop. A cliffhanger can be used effectively, but the first entry of a series should always be mostly self-contained, especially if you’re going to throw in a variable that makes an otherwise grounded game slip into X-Files territory albeit even more incomprehensible and ludicrous. Its motivations are decent, but it lacks the fine-tuned philosophical dialogue that the AIs in Deus Ex had about the human condition and technology.
What’s worse is that there were hints of a cyberpunk aspect to the story that could have made for a much better endgame: Anna works for a surveillance company with a boss who is very nosy about her business and perverted colleagues playing sick games online with her. There was a missed chance to tell a tale about social media companies going to extra lengths to protect their vested control over the public or something, but no, it seems that would have been too “normal” for the psychedelic nonsense the writers wanted to go for instead.
In terms of the morality dilemma I talked about earlier for the good ending, it involves doing two things, the first of which is accepting the story of Taylor (who I keep calling Spencer for some reason and having to backspace). See, Taylor is revealed to be a registered sex offender! Now, he claims that he was caught publicly urinating by a mom and her kid (or was it a grandmom and her grandkid?), but why does the game want me to believe that? He’s a dipshit on the Internet who has become obsessed with this girl whom he only initially interacted with on a Tinder-esque app to get in her pants. He is tiresome at best and creepy at worst, yet the writers want me to support him emotionally despite having no real reason to believe his sob story? Pathetic. At least give me some proof that can be validated in-game.
The second is impersonating Anna and reciprocating Ashley’s lesbian feelings for you. Look, credit where credit is due, the game does raise up the ethical prospect of you impersonating Anna, but it justifies it behind wanting to ensure her safety. This, on the other hand, was just a disgusting thing to mandate players to do if they want the perfect ending, and inexcusable given that Simulacra came out post-Obergefell v. Hodges.
So yeah, if you chose to stick around and read the spoilers, you can fully see why I don’t recommend playing it.
2005
Where oh where do I begin with Psychonauts? This is one of those cult favorites that managed to seep just enough into mainstream news to garner attention to the point where, many years later, a fan-funded sequel awaits release. Unfortunately, just like most cult classics shot into the public consciousness, there is only a niche appeal brought about by a singular facet. The rest of the title remains a slog with too many flaws present: flaws that prevent it from being recommendable.
The first thing that will immediately catch your attention are the character models- they are absolutely hideous. When I first saw Psychonauts, I genuinely thought it was about a group of aliens with psychic powers, but no, these are full-fledged human beings, and they are eyesores to say the least. I’ve always been an advocate for unique art styles, but the end result has to be palatable and aesthetically pleasing. Hey Arnold pushed the boundaries, for example, but at least it managed to fulfill the latter requirement. Take the kids from Hoodwinked and deform them even more and you have Psychonauts. Body/head proportions are messed-up, skin tones range from pale to diseased, and facial organs are downright demented. I don’t know how anyone could have possibly believed this to be a good idea.
To be kind of fair, the backstory of the game states that a new element from a fallen meteor caused the psychic mutations in the first place, and it is possible that these genetic alterations transgressed into physical manifestations; however, that aspect isn’t stated, and even if it was, it doesn’t diminish the fact that at least some of your characters should be okay to gaze at. Not helping things is the color palette choice for the camp hub: a cliché mix of browns and greens that convey discount-boot camp ala military camo at the expense of the visual splendor typically provided by video game worlds (thankfully, the worlds you travel to contrast this well, but more on that later).
Objectively speaking, the game is graphically solid. I was genuinely surprised to learn that this was a PS2/Xbox title as it truly is well-crafted. You have succinct shadow mapping, particle effects for powers, and models that avoid falling into that weird uncanny valley the PS2 era’s polygons were infamous for. Psychonauts’s characters may be ugly, but the art style they occupy is distinct- stylized, yet malleable to the point where it naturally adapts to the numerous unique worlds you venture into. While there are a lot of copy/pasted simulacra, these planes themselves are all well-detailed and showcase that real effort was put into the conceptual phase. Take a look at the Milkman’s dreamscape: roads bend and twist at odd angles against an uneasy suburbia atmosphere of whites and greys. This is completely at odds with Lungfishopolis, whose towering skyscrapers and darkly-lit metropolis evoke images of old-school Kaiju films. The campgrounds may have faltered aesthetically, but Double Fine more than made up for it with the mindtrips.
I wish I could say that the story impetus driving you to enter each of these places was strong or entertaining enough on its own merits, but this is the second area where Psychonauts just misses the mark. The premise is semi-interesting: children born with these cognitive mutations are groomed into soldiers called Psychonauts under the guise of going to summer camp. There were easily themes of child soldiering and deconditioning that could have been addressed here; however, I would have also been fine with a straight forward adventure to maintain the kid-friendly schematic. But one thing you’ll consistently find in Psychonauts is that it veers between the adult and child atmospheres without settling for one or even a balance: it’s this bizarre variation wherein you’ll get instances of child abuse, orphanages burned to the ground, and animal cruelty thrown haphazardly against teenage love, gross-out humor, and fart jokes. Personally, I’ve just never been a fan of this kind of seesawing in tone; it’s not that you can’t incorporate both, but they have to be on the same tonal wavelength. South Park frequently incorporates both, but it’s purely for humorous intentions. Likewise with the Farrelly Brothers’ older movies like Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary- it’s all for the sake of comedy, so it’s consistent.
Psychonauts, on the other hand, is serious when it’s serious and (pathetically) comedic when it’s throwing jokes into the mix. And because the transition between the two is too forced and out-of-place, I personally wasn’t able to get invested into the storyline. Main character Raz has the always appealing motivation of wanting to get out of his parents’ shadow and embrace his own destiny, but you never know when to take it as genuine adolescent drama or some tongue-in-cheek set-up for a joke that will 9 times out of 10 fall flat. It’s not just Raz- it’s every single instance of seriousness: a character may get kidnapped, tortured, or outright beaten, but you won’t ever figure out the intent until well after the fact. It truly is an example of good concept, very bad execution.
To add salt to the injuries, I found most of the cast flat-out annoying. Not enough to be irate, but more than adequate to be little more than shrilly caricatures. Most of the camp attendees have little personality to them beyond a singular trait, which was to be expected from a cast this big, but that didn’t mean it had to go into tiresome territory. They barely play a part in the story minus being victims, and the times where they are more prominent (usually on the side talking to each other) tend to see them at their most archetypal indulgent. This extends tenfold to the minions in each subconscious world, though at least those guys were often entertaining enough. There are some exceptions, like Dogen, Lili, and counselors Milli & Sasha, but they are too few and far between.
For all my negativity, the soundscape is solid. Granted, a lot of your psychic attacks have rehashed dins, and the reskinned enemies ensure that their cries and jeers contain a similar resonance. However, this was pretty atypical of the PS2 era, so it doesn’t feel out of place. And there’s enough visual variety in the worlds to prevent it from feeling like you’re redoing things.
The music isn’t as strong as I wanted it to be. I noted how the subworlds are diverse, with most of them paying clear homage to movies and period pieces, but the score didn’t accentuate things as much as I would have liked. It plays more like the kind of tunes you’d hear during the action beats of a flick- sure, it’s entertaining and fits the scene, but without a powerful leitmotif, it ends up being backgroundy to a fault. I can’t say I recall the tracks from anyplace except the paint world.
Voice acting, as seems to be atypical of Double Fine, is great. Unfortunately, unlike in Grim Fandango where the multi-faceted personalities of the characters gave the voice artists a basis to truly perform, Psychonauts aforementioned grating characterizations prevent the cast from reaching their potential. Let me put it this way- everyone hits the right intonations and volume, but they are ultimately filling in a square when a good script would’ve given them a pyramid, if that makes sense. The limitations imposed on them, combined with the hackneyed arcs, conflicts, and emotional shifts, prevent anyone from truly embracing their character. The one exception to this has to be Nika Futterman as Dogen. Gosh dang, did she do an excellent job hitting that balance between scared innocence and sociopathic insidiousness that could only come from a psychologically-transmogrified child.
Finally, we come to the gameplay. The first thing I need to criticize is the confusopoly in place here. The term confusopoly was coined to describe games whose economic systems relied on multiple forms of currency for the sake of consciously and subconsciously encouraging the purchasing of microtransactions (think Assassin’s Creed Unity with its Creed points, helix points, Livres, etc…). I’m using it slightly differently here in reference to collectables: the amount of collectables and their integral role in the gameplay system in-place. If I was conducting a professional review, I would definitely do extensive research to better explain everything, but as this is an informal critique, I reserve the right be slightly lazy. The reality is Psychonauts has a lot of items for you to find, whether it’s purple Indian leaves that serve as currency for the store, mind glyphs that apparently increase the power of your abilities, spiderwebs that disclose secrets, baggage tags that unlock baggage cases that apparently house more secrets, vaults that have reels with even more secrets, orbs that increase your psi-powers in different ways, and more that I am sure I am missing. These are thrown at you one after the other, and you kind of have to accept that they are worth finding despite their alleged importance being brushed over.
That aside, the actual gameplay is pretty standard. If you ever played games like Mario 64 or old RARE titles for the Nintendo 64, you’ll be familiar with the hub format wherein you’re presented with a main base to then launch off towards other prebuilt areas. Combat primarily involves doing simple strikes, with power boosts added to things like ground pounds and momentum bursts (should you choose to purchase the latter). “Magic” in the form of psychic energy plays a big part, coming in various forms from laser blasts to pyrokinesis to even invisibility amongst many others. While the majority of the non-attack powers are purely used for small puzzles or obstacles here and there, they were well-crafted, making it a shame that more wasn’t done with them. There is a bit of a Metroidvania aspect to the game in the form of being able to revisit worlds you beat, but I honestly can’t say I was motivated to do so due to the extras being little more than collectibles (it also doesn’t help that there’s no way to track collectibles missing from your log, making the whole system as bad as the tokens from DK64 or the flags from the first Assassin’s Creed).
I would also contend that the hub of Whispering Rock was wasted. Many hub centres in other releases tend to feature hidden secrets you can uncover as you gather more abilities (think Isle Delfino from Super Mario Sunshine or the lion's share of LEGO games). That isn’t the case here- outside of buried piles of arrowheads, there isn’t much to uncover: you won’t even need or want half the stuff that is purchasable in the general store. Sure, you can find characters engaging in unique conversations (or, in the case of Dogen, monologues), but, as Psychonauts isn’t a walking sim, that isn’t an incentive to wander around. It’s sad too because this is a big place that was well thought-out by the architects: Whispering Rock borders Batman: Arkham Asylum’s titular madhouse in terms of wide-ranging scope. That they give you a fast travel system and a psychic orb to dash about on indicates Double Fine wanted you to explore the area- it’s too bad they forgot to provide awards for doing so.
Not helping things is this stupid aversion to water that Raz has: it’s technically given a story reason (his family is predicted to drown), but I’m 90% sure it was only created b/c the developers were too lazy to program swimming mechanics, which would be fine if the game didn't have a, you know, GIANT LAKE next to its camp hub.
So yeah, overall, I cannot recommend Psychonauts. Its impressive graphical output is countered by an unappeasing art-style, its OST lacks the oomph factor necessitated by a diverse world, and all the different collectibles and their associated incomes will confuse you over entertain you.
The first thing that will immediately catch your attention are the character models- they are absolutely hideous. When I first saw Psychonauts, I genuinely thought it was about a group of aliens with psychic powers, but no, these are full-fledged human beings, and they are eyesores to say the least. I’ve always been an advocate for unique art styles, but the end result has to be palatable and aesthetically pleasing. Hey Arnold pushed the boundaries, for example, but at least it managed to fulfill the latter requirement. Take the kids from Hoodwinked and deform them even more and you have Psychonauts. Body/head proportions are messed-up, skin tones range from pale to diseased, and facial organs are downright demented. I don’t know how anyone could have possibly believed this to be a good idea.
To be kind of fair, the backstory of the game states that a new element from a fallen meteor caused the psychic mutations in the first place, and it is possible that these genetic alterations transgressed into physical manifestations; however, that aspect isn’t stated, and even if it was, it doesn’t diminish the fact that at least some of your characters should be okay to gaze at. Not helping things is the color palette choice for the camp hub: a cliché mix of browns and greens that convey discount-boot camp ala military camo at the expense of the visual splendor typically provided by video game worlds (thankfully, the worlds you travel to contrast this well, but more on that later).
Objectively speaking, the game is graphically solid. I was genuinely surprised to learn that this was a PS2/Xbox title as it truly is well-crafted. You have succinct shadow mapping, particle effects for powers, and models that avoid falling into that weird uncanny valley the PS2 era’s polygons were infamous for. Psychonauts’s characters may be ugly, but the art style they occupy is distinct- stylized, yet malleable to the point where it naturally adapts to the numerous unique worlds you venture into. While there are a lot of copy/pasted simulacra, these planes themselves are all well-detailed and showcase that real effort was put into the conceptual phase. Take a look at the Milkman’s dreamscape: roads bend and twist at odd angles against an uneasy suburbia atmosphere of whites and greys. This is completely at odds with Lungfishopolis, whose towering skyscrapers and darkly-lit metropolis evoke images of old-school Kaiju films. The campgrounds may have faltered aesthetically, but Double Fine more than made up for it with the mindtrips.
I wish I could say that the story impetus driving you to enter each of these places was strong or entertaining enough on its own merits, but this is the second area where Psychonauts just misses the mark. The premise is semi-interesting: children born with these cognitive mutations are groomed into soldiers called Psychonauts under the guise of going to summer camp. There were easily themes of child soldiering and deconditioning that could have been addressed here; however, I would have also been fine with a straight forward adventure to maintain the kid-friendly schematic. But one thing you’ll consistently find in Psychonauts is that it veers between the adult and child atmospheres without settling for one or even a balance: it’s this bizarre variation wherein you’ll get instances of child abuse, orphanages burned to the ground, and animal cruelty thrown haphazardly against teenage love, gross-out humor, and fart jokes. Personally, I’ve just never been a fan of this kind of seesawing in tone; it’s not that you can’t incorporate both, but they have to be on the same tonal wavelength. South Park frequently incorporates both, but it’s purely for humorous intentions. Likewise with the Farrelly Brothers’ older movies like Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary- it’s all for the sake of comedy, so it’s consistent.
Psychonauts, on the other hand, is serious when it’s serious and (pathetically) comedic when it’s throwing jokes into the mix. And because the transition between the two is too forced and out-of-place, I personally wasn’t able to get invested into the storyline. Main character Raz has the always appealing motivation of wanting to get out of his parents’ shadow and embrace his own destiny, but you never know when to take it as genuine adolescent drama or some tongue-in-cheek set-up for a joke that will 9 times out of 10 fall flat. It’s not just Raz- it’s every single instance of seriousness: a character may get kidnapped, tortured, or outright beaten, but you won’t ever figure out the intent until well after the fact. It truly is an example of good concept, very bad execution.
To add salt to the injuries, I found most of the cast flat-out annoying. Not enough to be irate, but more than adequate to be little more than shrilly caricatures. Most of the camp attendees have little personality to them beyond a singular trait, which was to be expected from a cast this big, but that didn’t mean it had to go into tiresome territory. They barely play a part in the story minus being victims, and the times where they are more prominent (usually on the side talking to each other) tend to see them at their most archetypal indulgent. This extends tenfold to the minions in each subconscious world, though at least those guys were often entertaining enough. There are some exceptions, like Dogen, Lili, and counselors Milli & Sasha, but they are too few and far between.
For all my negativity, the soundscape is solid. Granted, a lot of your psychic attacks have rehashed dins, and the reskinned enemies ensure that their cries and jeers contain a similar resonance. However, this was pretty atypical of the PS2 era, so it doesn’t feel out of place. And there’s enough visual variety in the worlds to prevent it from feeling like you’re redoing things.
The music isn’t as strong as I wanted it to be. I noted how the subworlds are diverse, with most of them paying clear homage to movies and period pieces, but the score didn’t accentuate things as much as I would have liked. It plays more like the kind of tunes you’d hear during the action beats of a flick- sure, it’s entertaining and fits the scene, but without a powerful leitmotif, it ends up being backgroundy to a fault. I can’t say I recall the tracks from anyplace except the paint world.
Voice acting, as seems to be atypical of Double Fine, is great. Unfortunately, unlike in Grim Fandango where the multi-faceted personalities of the characters gave the voice artists a basis to truly perform, Psychonauts aforementioned grating characterizations prevent the cast from reaching their potential. Let me put it this way- everyone hits the right intonations and volume, but they are ultimately filling in a square when a good script would’ve given them a pyramid, if that makes sense. The limitations imposed on them, combined with the hackneyed arcs, conflicts, and emotional shifts, prevent anyone from truly embracing their character. The one exception to this has to be Nika Futterman as Dogen. Gosh dang, did she do an excellent job hitting that balance between scared innocence and sociopathic insidiousness that could only come from a psychologically-transmogrified child.
Finally, we come to the gameplay. The first thing I need to criticize is the confusopoly in place here. The term confusopoly was coined to describe games whose economic systems relied on multiple forms of currency for the sake of consciously and subconsciously encouraging the purchasing of microtransactions (think Assassin’s Creed Unity with its Creed points, helix points, Livres, etc…). I’m using it slightly differently here in reference to collectables: the amount of collectables and their integral role in the gameplay system in-place. If I was conducting a professional review, I would definitely do extensive research to better explain everything, but as this is an informal critique, I reserve the right be slightly lazy. The reality is Psychonauts has a lot of items for you to find, whether it’s purple Indian leaves that serve as currency for the store, mind glyphs that apparently increase the power of your abilities, spiderwebs that disclose secrets, baggage tags that unlock baggage cases that apparently house more secrets, vaults that have reels with even more secrets, orbs that increase your psi-powers in different ways, and more that I am sure I am missing. These are thrown at you one after the other, and you kind of have to accept that they are worth finding despite their alleged importance being brushed over.
That aside, the actual gameplay is pretty standard. If you ever played games like Mario 64 or old RARE titles for the Nintendo 64, you’ll be familiar with the hub format wherein you’re presented with a main base to then launch off towards other prebuilt areas. Combat primarily involves doing simple strikes, with power boosts added to things like ground pounds and momentum bursts (should you choose to purchase the latter). “Magic” in the form of psychic energy plays a big part, coming in various forms from laser blasts to pyrokinesis to even invisibility amongst many others. While the majority of the non-attack powers are purely used for small puzzles or obstacles here and there, they were well-crafted, making it a shame that more wasn’t done with them. There is a bit of a Metroidvania aspect to the game in the form of being able to revisit worlds you beat, but I honestly can’t say I was motivated to do so due to the extras being little more than collectibles (it also doesn’t help that there’s no way to track collectibles missing from your log, making the whole system as bad as the tokens from DK64 or the flags from the first Assassin’s Creed).
I would also contend that the hub of Whispering Rock was wasted. Many hub centres in other releases tend to feature hidden secrets you can uncover as you gather more abilities (think Isle Delfino from Super Mario Sunshine or the lion's share of LEGO games). That isn’t the case here- outside of buried piles of arrowheads, there isn’t much to uncover: you won’t even need or want half the stuff that is purchasable in the general store. Sure, you can find characters engaging in unique conversations (or, in the case of Dogen, monologues), but, as Psychonauts isn’t a walking sim, that isn’t an incentive to wander around. It’s sad too because this is a big place that was well thought-out by the architects: Whispering Rock borders Batman: Arkham Asylum’s titular madhouse in terms of wide-ranging scope. That they give you a fast travel system and a psychic orb to dash about on indicates Double Fine wanted you to explore the area- it’s too bad they forgot to provide awards for doing so.
Not helping things is this stupid aversion to water that Raz has: it’s technically given a story reason (his family is predicted to drown), but I’m 90% sure it was only created b/c the developers were too lazy to program swimming mechanics, which would be fine if the game didn't have a, you know, GIANT LAKE next to its camp hub.
So yeah, overall, I cannot recommend Psychonauts. Its impressive graphical output is countered by an unappeasing art-style, its OST lacks the oomph factor necessitated by a diverse world, and all the different collectibles and their associated incomes will confuse you over entertain you.
2010
I’ve been wondering for a long time just how far charm can carry a product. No seriously, think about it- we've all seen movies or played video games that rode on a series of archetypes and cliches implemented in other superior products, and yet we give the rehashes a pass because they held a significant amount of an unquantifiable emotion called charm.
With Costume Quest, I think I’ve finally gotten the answer to my question, at least as far as video games are concerned: the charm has to add onto a solid foundation, not substitute for it. If the latter happens, you get a product that will make you smile occasionally but ultimately be seen as not worth your time, and that was the case with this release from Double Fine (who, ironically, did the Grim Fandango remaster, which I completed prior to CQ).
Like Fandango, you have an interesting premise in monsters taking advantage of Halloween to steal a bunch of candy from unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. Twins Reynold and Wren are out celebrating (and arguing) when these creatures kidnap one of the siblings (the opposite of whoever you choose to play as- however, given that I played as Reynold, I’m going to be using him as my frame of reference from this point on). It’s up to Reynold to save her, who teams up with two others, Everett and Lucy, to get her.
Paranormal beings causing shenanigans during holidays might not be the most original setting, but Costume Quest does a couple of things that play to the aforementioned allure. One is the focus on Wren and Reynold’s relationship: the writers actually succeed in creating that love-hate sibling dynamic in the dialogue, laying the groundwork for a decent mini character arc in which Reynold learns to publicly love his sister. And two, the whole situation is played very tongue-in-cheek. Sure, stealing kids and wanting to turn them into candy is inherently dark, but the goblin-like entities are depicted as blue collarish in personality, seeing their work as more of a duty than a genuine goal. There is the atypical incompetency, but it never takes over the majority of the grunts (a wise choice, as that would render them more annoying than entertaining). I’m also, admittedly, a sucker for stories involving kids who aren’t conventional superheroes taking it upon themselves to save the world; growing up, I liked Starkid and Teamo Supremo to give you an idea of this dumb guilty pleasure.
That being said, I did have one pet peeve, which is the running gag of adults not discovering the presence of monsters. I say running gag, but it’s only addressed once wherein a mall cop remarks that the ghouls are simply kids dressed up as gremlins. Every other time you have an adult(s) near one, they don’t even react to their presence (or the battles you get into). It honestly kind of bugged me, especially considering a lot of the houses you trick-or-treat at have Grubbins in them- like, what happened to the original occupants and how do the neighbors NOT realize that something is amiss right next door to them?!
Like I said, the story isn’t terrific or overly-entertaining, but it’s enjoyable enough, with a script that’ll get the occasional chuckle out of you.
Unfortunately, the biggest flaw is the lack of voice acting: this is one of those RPGs that would’ve benefitted significantly from a series of voice artists giving life to the cast before you, and a big reason for that is that most of the dialogue bubbles are on a timer, meaning you cannot read things at your own pace lest you miss out on some characters’ contributions to a scene. I didn’t see the reason for this. If it was done for cinematic pacing, then the direction sucks because often the snaps during convos lacked cohesion or reason, either hurting the drama by dragging things out or hurting the comedy by shortening situational jokes.
The soundscape, in general, is paltry. None of the music stands out due to the OST being ambient to a fault - there are at least 4-5 main areas in the game, and I can’t recall the track for any of them. There are people who may prefer that, seeing Halloween as an inherently horror-based premise that should focus on ambience over direct beats, but my counter is there is a balance that has been achieved by other games indulging in horror-esque motifs. In the end, only the battle theme is distinct, and I feel that’s primarily because it’s the only fight music in the entire game and, as such, repeats.
Sound effects are decent. Every suit has its own unique noises for attack and defense, but limiting everything to just three moves total inherently makes it all get repetitive over the course of hours (i.e., hearing the same missile noise from the mech suit is tiresome). Outside of brawls, you get other sources of monotony: footsteps are synced well-enough but don’t change based on surface (save liquid in Grubbins on Ice), breakable objects, hittable items, and people all have the same specific din tied to them when hit by the pail, no matter the type of object or size of the person (i.e., pumpkins give the same sound as rubble piles, trash cans the same as gumball machines, fat guys the same as little boys, etc...).
Graphically, Costume Quest is good. The artists capture the feel of Hallow’s Eve, with every area being covered with an orange or purple/black tint. Your atypical jack-o'-lanterns, hay bales, scarecrows, skeletons, and autumnal leaves are strewn throughout, and NPCs are surprisingly distinct in costume wearing (the exception being if they’re a part of a clique that requires the same suit). Child character models, while suffering from the Powerpuff Girl problem of having big heads with giant eyes, are stylized enough and fit the aesthetic of the world perfectly. That being said, there is some laziness in the form of the houses/buildings: they aren’t individualized at all, and trick-or-treating at any of them gives the same rehashed dialogues and animation. Also, I experienced an inconsistent/low framerate.
Unfortunately, the real flaws come with the gameplay. Costume Quest is a very barebones RPG. You have your three criteria: an experience/leveling system, customization, and turn-based combat, but it’s all so minimal as to be insulting. With the first, there are only 10 levels total and no skill points- due to there being no skills: the only thing that increases is your HP and attack power, which is pointless because you rarely have to revisit previous areas and your leveling correlates with the minions in new ones, essentially making the whole thing a form of level scaling.
Customization comes down to giving every partner a fully-assembled costume: you can’t mix-or-match parts and a select few costumes contain abilities vital for bypassing exploration obstacles, forcing you to have to switch constantly when you want to prep for a fight versus use one for movement (i.e., having to switch to the spaceman suit for the light-up sword, then switch back to something else). Transmog would’ve gone a long way here, or having it so that, if one of your partners is wearing a suit, you have access to its capabilities.
And finally, combat is downright bad due to a couple of reasons, the first being the dearth of diversity in powers. Each suit has a single attack as well a special power that is available after 3 turns, and that latter ability is always one of four things: a more powerful attack, a strong defense, a fright scare, or a heal. That is it. And it’s not like you’ll be using it much considering you’ll defeat 90% of grunts before it’s charged-up.
The system is pathetic. Forget fancy variations, where are the standard block/defend, evade, use item, or heck charge-up? This is common stuff that has been in place for years now (even relative to when Costume Quest came out in 2010). The availability of battle stamps (which seem to have been ripped off the badges from Paper Mario 2) do give some variation such as stuns, poisons, and counterstrikes, but some of these should’ve just been associated with suits or suit parts. And you can only equip one per a person, though I assume that was done to prevent the already easy combat from becoming even easier, which brings up my second complaint, which is the lack of strategy- literally all you have to do to win any fight is concentrate your attacks on a single enemy and conquer each one individually. Taking out the mages/healers is the only thing I can say that resembles a tactic, but at level 5 you’re at a point where even this is technically unnecessary (you’ll still want to do it to avoid dragging out battles, so there is subtle forced gameplay there). The very few bosses offer some strategy, but it’s too little too late.
You will have to fight a lot as the whole schema of Costume Quest is going around defeating roaming bugaboos, or trick-or-treating at houses that secretly have Grubbins inside. And because the combat is repetitive it’s not fun, and because you have to do it multiple times, it makes the game not fun.
And that’s what ultimately prevents me from recommending Costume Quest. It has nice visuals and a charming enough story, but sound and especially gameplay are in wanting, and exploration, despite being free roam, is very limited in scope/details/secrets. On top of all this, most of the sidequests are repetitive (ex., find this trading card or bob for apples or locate these missing kids), and the ones that aren’t honestly shouldn’t even be called sidequests since they’re mandatory for story progression.
As for Grubbins on Ice, it’s just more of the same. The story starts off on an interesting note with three of the characters traveling to the monster dimension and getting involved in a rebellion against the oppressive regime there, but that latter part is LITERALLY dropped and you get your standard beat the final boss (one of whom is taken from the main game). The gameplay and even mission structure is reskinned from the previous games (i.e., trick-or-treating = door-to-door knocking/recruitment, hide-and-seek = find runaways, bobbing for apples = bobbing for candied eyes), and the aesthetic aspects are also reskinned (pumpkins become snowmen). There is a hookline, but it doesn’t add much variety to the game world.
For the record, compared to other games, Double Fine’s rehashes aren’t bad, and it was nice getting to see a more “human” side to the monsters. I also found the shy romance between Lucy and Everett to be Peanuts-esque in its heartwarmingness. But the end product still feels lazy, and given that this sets-up the sequel, it is required to be played, meaning more effort should’ve been put into it.
Costume Quest has the right amount of hours per gameplay (about 5 hours to beat the main game, 2.5-3 for the DLC), but it’s not enjoyable enough to be recommended.
With Costume Quest, I think I’ve finally gotten the answer to my question, at least as far as video games are concerned: the charm has to add onto a solid foundation, not substitute for it. If the latter happens, you get a product that will make you smile occasionally but ultimately be seen as not worth your time, and that was the case with this release from Double Fine (who, ironically, did the Grim Fandango remaster, which I completed prior to CQ).
Like Fandango, you have an interesting premise in monsters taking advantage of Halloween to steal a bunch of candy from unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. Twins Reynold and Wren are out celebrating (and arguing) when these creatures kidnap one of the siblings (the opposite of whoever you choose to play as- however, given that I played as Reynold, I’m going to be using him as my frame of reference from this point on). It’s up to Reynold to save her, who teams up with two others, Everett and Lucy, to get her.
Paranormal beings causing shenanigans during holidays might not be the most original setting, but Costume Quest does a couple of things that play to the aforementioned allure. One is the focus on Wren and Reynold’s relationship: the writers actually succeed in creating that love-hate sibling dynamic in the dialogue, laying the groundwork for a decent mini character arc in which Reynold learns to publicly love his sister. And two, the whole situation is played very tongue-in-cheek. Sure, stealing kids and wanting to turn them into candy is inherently dark, but the goblin-like entities are depicted as blue collarish in personality, seeing their work as more of a duty than a genuine goal. There is the atypical incompetency, but it never takes over the majority of the grunts (a wise choice, as that would render them more annoying than entertaining). I’m also, admittedly, a sucker for stories involving kids who aren’t conventional superheroes taking it upon themselves to save the world; growing up, I liked Starkid and Teamo Supremo to give you an idea of this dumb guilty pleasure.
That being said, I did have one pet peeve, which is the running gag of adults not discovering the presence of monsters. I say running gag, but it’s only addressed once wherein a mall cop remarks that the ghouls are simply kids dressed up as gremlins. Every other time you have an adult(s) near one, they don’t even react to their presence (or the battles you get into). It honestly kind of bugged me, especially considering a lot of the houses you trick-or-treat at have Grubbins in them- like, what happened to the original occupants and how do the neighbors NOT realize that something is amiss right next door to them?!
Like I said, the story isn’t terrific or overly-entertaining, but it’s enjoyable enough, with a script that’ll get the occasional chuckle out of you.
Unfortunately, the biggest flaw is the lack of voice acting: this is one of those RPGs that would’ve benefitted significantly from a series of voice artists giving life to the cast before you, and a big reason for that is that most of the dialogue bubbles are on a timer, meaning you cannot read things at your own pace lest you miss out on some characters’ contributions to a scene. I didn’t see the reason for this. If it was done for cinematic pacing, then the direction sucks because often the snaps during convos lacked cohesion or reason, either hurting the drama by dragging things out or hurting the comedy by shortening situational jokes.
The soundscape, in general, is paltry. None of the music stands out due to the OST being ambient to a fault - there are at least 4-5 main areas in the game, and I can’t recall the track for any of them. There are people who may prefer that, seeing Halloween as an inherently horror-based premise that should focus on ambience over direct beats, but my counter is there is a balance that has been achieved by other games indulging in horror-esque motifs. In the end, only the battle theme is distinct, and I feel that’s primarily because it’s the only fight music in the entire game and, as such, repeats.
Sound effects are decent. Every suit has its own unique noises for attack and defense, but limiting everything to just three moves total inherently makes it all get repetitive over the course of hours (i.e., hearing the same missile noise from the mech suit is tiresome). Outside of brawls, you get other sources of monotony: footsteps are synced well-enough but don’t change based on surface (save liquid in Grubbins on Ice), breakable objects, hittable items, and people all have the same specific din tied to them when hit by the pail, no matter the type of object or size of the person (i.e., pumpkins give the same sound as rubble piles, trash cans the same as gumball machines, fat guys the same as little boys, etc...).
Graphically, Costume Quest is good. The artists capture the feel of Hallow’s Eve, with every area being covered with an orange or purple/black tint. Your atypical jack-o'-lanterns, hay bales, scarecrows, skeletons, and autumnal leaves are strewn throughout, and NPCs are surprisingly distinct in costume wearing (the exception being if they’re a part of a clique that requires the same suit). Child character models, while suffering from the Powerpuff Girl problem of having big heads with giant eyes, are stylized enough and fit the aesthetic of the world perfectly. That being said, there is some laziness in the form of the houses/buildings: they aren’t individualized at all, and trick-or-treating at any of them gives the same rehashed dialogues and animation. Also, I experienced an inconsistent/low framerate.
Unfortunately, the real flaws come with the gameplay. Costume Quest is a very barebones RPG. You have your three criteria: an experience/leveling system, customization, and turn-based combat, but it’s all so minimal as to be insulting. With the first, there are only 10 levels total and no skill points- due to there being no skills: the only thing that increases is your HP and attack power, which is pointless because you rarely have to revisit previous areas and your leveling correlates with the minions in new ones, essentially making the whole thing a form of level scaling.
Customization comes down to giving every partner a fully-assembled costume: you can’t mix-or-match parts and a select few costumes contain abilities vital for bypassing exploration obstacles, forcing you to have to switch constantly when you want to prep for a fight versus use one for movement (i.e., having to switch to the spaceman suit for the light-up sword, then switch back to something else). Transmog would’ve gone a long way here, or having it so that, if one of your partners is wearing a suit, you have access to its capabilities.
And finally, combat is downright bad due to a couple of reasons, the first being the dearth of diversity in powers. Each suit has a single attack as well a special power that is available after 3 turns, and that latter ability is always one of four things: a more powerful attack, a strong defense, a fright scare, or a heal. That is it. And it’s not like you’ll be using it much considering you’ll defeat 90% of grunts before it’s charged-up.
The system is pathetic. Forget fancy variations, where are the standard block/defend, evade, use item, or heck charge-up? This is common stuff that has been in place for years now (even relative to when Costume Quest came out in 2010). The availability of battle stamps (which seem to have been ripped off the badges from Paper Mario 2) do give some variation such as stuns, poisons, and counterstrikes, but some of these should’ve just been associated with suits or suit parts. And you can only equip one per a person, though I assume that was done to prevent the already easy combat from becoming even easier, which brings up my second complaint, which is the lack of strategy- literally all you have to do to win any fight is concentrate your attacks on a single enemy and conquer each one individually. Taking out the mages/healers is the only thing I can say that resembles a tactic, but at level 5 you’re at a point where even this is technically unnecessary (you’ll still want to do it to avoid dragging out battles, so there is subtle forced gameplay there). The very few bosses offer some strategy, but it’s too little too late.
You will have to fight a lot as the whole schema of Costume Quest is going around defeating roaming bugaboos, or trick-or-treating at houses that secretly have Grubbins inside. And because the combat is repetitive it’s not fun, and because you have to do it multiple times, it makes the game not fun.
And that’s what ultimately prevents me from recommending Costume Quest. It has nice visuals and a charming enough story, but sound and especially gameplay are in wanting, and exploration, despite being free roam, is very limited in scope/details/secrets. On top of all this, most of the sidequests are repetitive (ex., find this trading card or bob for apples or locate these missing kids), and the ones that aren’t honestly shouldn’t even be called sidequests since they’re mandatory for story progression.
As for Grubbins on Ice, it’s just more of the same. The story starts off on an interesting note with three of the characters traveling to the monster dimension and getting involved in a rebellion against the oppressive regime there, but that latter part is LITERALLY dropped and you get your standard beat the final boss (one of whom is taken from the main game). The gameplay and even mission structure is reskinned from the previous games (i.e., trick-or-treating = door-to-door knocking/recruitment, hide-and-seek = find runaways, bobbing for apples = bobbing for candied eyes), and the aesthetic aspects are also reskinned (pumpkins become snowmen). There is a hookline, but it doesn’t add much variety to the game world.
For the record, compared to other games, Double Fine’s rehashes aren’t bad, and it was nice getting to see a more “human” side to the monsters. I also found the shy romance between Lucy and Everett to be Peanuts-esque in its heartwarmingness. But the end product still feels lazy, and given that this sets-up the sequel, it is required to be played, meaning more effort should’ve been put into it.
Costume Quest has the right amount of hours per gameplay (about 5 hours to beat the main game, 2.5-3 for the DLC), but it’s not enjoyable enough to be recommended.
Oh, I wish I could say that I enjoyed my time with Grim Fandango. After all, it has a lot going for it, starting with the intriguing premise of a group of skeletons in the afterlife selling Heavenly travel packages to recently deceased. But unfortunately, no matter the graphical enhancements done by the remaster, it cannot escape the fact that it is a point-and-click adventure of the 90s, and from my research, what this means is that it is inherently full of puzzle contrivances.
Nowadays everyone complains about the $60-70 price tag for a video game, but back in the day, not only were they much more expensive, but they were shorter as well. Outside of RPGs, you never got your bang for your buck and so, to try and work around this, artificial longevity measures were implemented to give games the appearance that they had a lot more content than they actually contained- secret endings, new game pluses, and collectibles (cough cough Rare) were the most common of these tactics. But for PNCs, contrived puzzles were an additional one. What I mean is solutions to in-game riddles or obstacles often entailed something so ridiculous or out there that there was no guarantee that you would ever come to it logically. You would either find it accidentally, go through every motion in the book, or happen to purchase a guide.
I’m not saying that every answer in Grim Fandango is nonsensical, but for every genuinely good puzzle-answer combo, I honestly felt there were at least two that made no sense. It’s particularly prevalent in the first and second chapters, though the other two contain these as well (to a lesser degree to be fair). For example, knowing where to put the sign in the petrified forest; accessing the secret floor of the casino via clipping a forklift in the elevator. It’s honestly frustrating, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consult a walkthrough frequently.
Now, I know there'll be ardent defenders of Grim Fandango who will claim that this simply isn’t for me and that I would be better off playing something intellectually easier. I’ll concede that I didn’t grow-up with PNCs, so it is true that it isn’t a genre that holds a particular sway over me. And I also openly admit that I am not that smart when it comes to puzzles. But my counterargument is that I shouldn’t have to think outside the box for a video game engima: the principal formula is clue, cause, and effect, and all too often the game fails to deliver on the first, making the latter two appear out-of-the-blue. Grim Fandango also often suffers from the Water Temple Key problem of interactable objects not being distinguishable enough from the background, meaning you can miss obtaining a vital item simply because you happened to move your cursor over the wrong part of the room.
That being said, I could’ve overlooked most of this had the story been solid, but that isn’t the case. I noted GF’s fascinating premise, and you would think from reading it that this would make for a solid satirical adventure in the vein of Futurama (that is, using an outlandish setting to comment on real-world issues in a humorous vein). The idea of grim reapers being working-class travel agents vending tickets to Heaven fits that bill, lending itself to commentary on society’s overvaluing of money, existentialism, death & taxes, morality, etc….
And yet, not only is none of that there (or if it is, it’s barely touched upon), but Grim Fandango’s writers make the oddball decision to NOT render the story a comedy. It has humorous moments for sure, but is otherwise portrayed as a straightforward drama. It’s not that it’s self-serious, it’s that it walks this strange line in the vein of a comedy-drama (though much more the latter than the former), and I couldn’t help but see that as a real missed opportunity. Why even have this comical foundation if you weren’t going to do anything witty with it? In his review of Shark Tale, TheMysteriousMrEnter’s pointed out how the movie could have been set in the real world and you wouldn’t have had a huge difference in the quality of the story due to its poor use of its aquatic setting, and that's kind of the same feeling I get with Grim Fandango. Instead of skeletons in the Afterlife selling travel packages to Heaven, why not priests working at some anonymous religious institution in an unnamed country doing the same, trying to get people to sign up for a travel suite in the event of an untimely demise? Seriously, the characters here rarely do anything extraordinary, labor just like regular humans, and, get this, can die! Yes, Grim Fandango, despite taking place in Limbo or a realm of the Underworld, features death (called “sprouting”), something that makes no sense and isn’t explained in-game.
But okay, putting aside my expectations, at face value is the narrative good? The answer is no, not really. You play as Manny Calavera, one of these insurers who steals a client named Mercedes from his salesman rival, only to fail to qualify her for a proper package, causing her to leave. Threatened with jailtime for his actions and feeling guilty over letting Mercedes/Meche get away, Manny embarks on a journey with his demon compatriot Glottis to rescue her and find out what is going on at the company he toils at.
It sounds like a decent yarn for a PNC adventure, but the writers consistently fail to make me invested in the journey. If Manny was trying to find Meche because he simply wanted a get-out-of-jail free card, then I would be all for it as that is not only relatable but plays to the fact that they didn’t develop anything between the two characters. Unfortunately, his main drive is regret- other NPCs and Manny himself consistently guilt trip him over Meche getting lost, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. It was like they were trying to pull an Edward Kenway, but failed to put any of the groundwork in place. Manny didn’t tell Meche to depart the building, he simply had her stay in his office whilst he went away to figure things out- she, OF HER OWN ACCORD, ran away, and I’m supposed to buy that it’s Manuel’s fault? There’s also this subplot involving a covert underground group called the LSA, but it again doesn’t stand out as entertaining enough on its own merits.
The four chapters are also divided by year-long time skips, a pet peeve of mine from my anime days. I hate time skips because they take away vital character development, and while there technically is no character development to speak of in Grim Fandango, it’s ridiculous to think that Manny maintained this guilt over the years whilst he did all these other activities. It also takes away from the urgency that the narrative rests on about finding her before she ends up dying (sorry, sprouting).
I wish I could say that the individual B plots in each chapter are fun or the NPCs kooky, but no, not really. You get some of the latter, but because everything is treated seriously, you’re robbed of a lot of humorous potential, and the low drama isn’t engaging or thematically-deep enough that you’ll be sucked into the side stories. Seeing a bunch of worker bees start chanting Marx seems comedic enough, but it’s played straight. I suppose that’s what I mean by Grim Fandango hitting this weird in-between: it gives farcical concepts, only to interpret them solemnly.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s that the friendship between Manny and Glottis is well-developed, making their interactions all the more enjoyable/emotional to watch.
Graphically, Grim Fandango has aged wonderfully. I did play the remaster, but the remaster gives the option to switch back to the old version with the click of a button (backspace) ala the Master Chief Collection, and what’s amazing is how the backgrounds and backdrops didn’t get a face lift. Only the character models did, and Double Fine Productions deserves absolute credit for modernizing these models while simultaneously maintaining their original artistic style and lip-synching. However, the backgrounds, despite being the same ones from 1998, look fantastic: they fit each setting and don’t pop out like some of the 2D cities from 3D Legend of Zelda games.
The art style has been talked about a lot by other reviewers, combining noir, neo-noir, Aztec religions, and Dia de las Muertas, so I won’t go into too much detail here (also because I’m just not good at talking about aesthetics) outside of saying that it’s beautiful. A lot of time went into conceptualizing it and it shows in the final product, with there being a genuine Latino vibe to the world no matter the location (insurance company to underwater to Heaven). That being said, some shortcuts were taken, like the lack of shadow-mapping and soft baked lighting, and some of the full-fledged computer animated cutscenes contain too much grain at times, but these are minor. Even the overly smooth 3D animations, whilst lacking in-depth touches like climbing or gripping stairs/ladders, have a charm that I liked a lot.
SFX is surprisingly lacking, with there being no footsteps and a lot of items having only a single noise programmed to it no matter your action (i.e., swiping at an object with Manny’s scythe produces the same sound). However, this is made up for by the two other categories: voice acting and music.
Grim Fandango has one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) voice acting I have ever seen in a video game, and by voice acting I mean for EVERY CHARACTER. This is a title that did not skimp on direction or performers, which is something you frequently see with conventional titles (ex. awful sounding NPCs in Bethesda and Ubisoft games). The main characters are perfect, with Tony Plana as Manny and Alan Blumenfeld as Glottis deserving particular praise for their chemistry and work, successfully conveying emotions without ever losing their core essence or sounding phoned-in. Even things as simple as item descriptions in your inventory are delivered excellently by Plana. And Maria Canals-Barrera knows how to throw on the seductive tone!
The OST by Peter McConnell is something I had high expectations for after Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory told me how it was one of his three most influential scores, and I have to say that it lived up to that hype. One of the inherent musical issues faced by PNCs is that, because you’re frequently moving between areas, you don’t have time to listen to a particular track for an extended period of time. To counter this, music editors either play a single track for one area without stopping or have a distinct track that restarts every time you reenter. With the first, you risk getting tired of the music, with the latter you risk getting annoyed by all the changes!
Grim Fandango opted for the latter, meaning there was a good chance I’d get sick of the constant alterations, but what McConnell did is dig into a soft distinct melody that starts off on a pleasant yet definite note, and all tracks stay within the folk and jazz genres. This means it never gets upsetting to relisten to it from the start, and the music is all relatively similar sounding that you’re not suffering from jarring transitions. The fact that he chose to reorchestrate the score with a symphony orchestra for the remaster is outstanding, and gives even more credit to him as a musician.
Gameplay is standard for this type of game. You can play with a controller or keyboard, but it obviously works a lot better if you go with a mouse. Interactions are solid and you’ll never get into a hassle doing what you want to do with the cursor. One issue I have is that sometimes the animations for climbing can last a noticeable amount of time and the inventory doesn’t go back to the last item you had- also, sometimes an item won’t be directly useable on an object you need to use it with, meaning you need to instead use the generic use prompt that comes up on the screen when you pull out an object. But these are all small in the grand scheme of things.
Overall, though, I can’t recommend Grim Fandango. The story isn’t particularly great, fails to live up to the jocular potential of its premise, and features some dumbstruck-inducing puzzles that I guarantee you, you won’t be able to solve without consulting a guide. However, with its lush visuals and top notch score/voice acting, it’s more of a cinematic experience that is worth witnessing via one of those video game movies you see compiled on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. In that regard, I recommend you “play” Grim Fandango (as in, hit the play button on a YouTube video xD).
Nowadays everyone complains about the $60-70 price tag for a video game, but back in the day, not only were they much more expensive, but they were shorter as well. Outside of RPGs, you never got your bang for your buck and so, to try and work around this, artificial longevity measures were implemented to give games the appearance that they had a lot more content than they actually contained- secret endings, new game pluses, and collectibles (cough cough Rare) were the most common of these tactics. But for PNCs, contrived puzzles were an additional one. What I mean is solutions to in-game riddles or obstacles often entailed something so ridiculous or out there that there was no guarantee that you would ever come to it logically. You would either find it accidentally, go through every motion in the book, or happen to purchase a guide.
I’m not saying that every answer in Grim Fandango is nonsensical, but for every genuinely good puzzle-answer combo, I honestly felt there were at least two that made no sense. It’s particularly prevalent in the first and second chapters, though the other two contain these as well (to a lesser degree to be fair). For example, knowing where to put the sign in the petrified forest; accessing the secret floor of the casino via clipping a forklift in the elevator. It’s honestly frustrating, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consult a walkthrough frequently.
Now, I know there'll be ardent defenders of Grim Fandango who will claim that this simply isn’t for me and that I would be better off playing something intellectually easier. I’ll concede that I didn’t grow-up with PNCs, so it is true that it isn’t a genre that holds a particular sway over me. And I also openly admit that I am not that smart when it comes to puzzles. But my counterargument is that I shouldn’t have to think outside the box for a video game engima: the principal formula is clue, cause, and effect, and all too often the game fails to deliver on the first, making the latter two appear out-of-the-blue. Grim Fandango also often suffers from the Water Temple Key problem of interactable objects not being distinguishable enough from the background, meaning you can miss obtaining a vital item simply because you happened to move your cursor over the wrong part of the room.
That being said, I could’ve overlooked most of this had the story been solid, but that isn’t the case. I noted GF’s fascinating premise, and you would think from reading it that this would make for a solid satirical adventure in the vein of Futurama (that is, using an outlandish setting to comment on real-world issues in a humorous vein). The idea of grim reapers being working-class travel agents vending tickets to Heaven fits that bill, lending itself to commentary on society’s overvaluing of money, existentialism, death & taxes, morality, etc….
And yet, not only is none of that there (or if it is, it’s barely touched upon), but Grim Fandango’s writers make the oddball decision to NOT render the story a comedy. It has humorous moments for sure, but is otherwise portrayed as a straightforward drama. It’s not that it’s self-serious, it’s that it walks this strange line in the vein of a comedy-drama (though much more the latter than the former), and I couldn’t help but see that as a real missed opportunity. Why even have this comical foundation if you weren’t going to do anything witty with it? In his review of Shark Tale, TheMysteriousMrEnter’s pointed out how the movie could have been set in the real world and you wouldn’t have had a huge difference in the quality of the story due to its poor use of its aquatic setting, and that's kind of the same feeling I get with Grim Fandango. Instead of skeletons in the Afterlife selling travel packages to Heaven, why not priests working at some anonymous religious institution in an unnamed country doing the same, trying to get people to sign up for a travel suite in the event of an untimely demise? Seriously, the characters here rarely do anything extraordinary, labor just like regular humans, and, get this, can die! Yes, Grim Fandango, despite taking place in Limbo or a realm of the Underworld, features death (called “sprouting”), something that makes no sense and isn’t explained in-game.
But okay, putting aside my expectations, at face value is the narrative good? The answer is no, not really. You play as Manny Calavera, one of these insurers who steals a client named Mercedes from his salesman rival, only to fail to qualify her for a proper package, causing her to leave. Threatened with jailtime for his actions and feeling guilty over letting Mercedes/Meche get away, Manny embarks on a journey with his demon compatriot Glottis to rescue her and find out what is going on at the company he toils at.
It sounds like a decent yarn for a PNC adventure, but the writers consistently fail to make me invested in the journey. If Manny was trying to find Meche because he simply wanted a get-out-of-jail free card, then I would be all for it as that is not only relatable but plays to the fact that they didn’t develop anything between the two characters. Unfortunately, his main drive is regret- other NPCs and Manny himself consistently guilt trip him over Meche getting lost, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. It was like they were trying to pull an Edward Kenway, but failed to put any of the groundwork in place. Manny didn’t tell Meche to depart the building, he simply had her stay in his office whilst he went away to figure things out- she, OF HER OWN ACCORD, ran away, and I’m supposed to buy that it’s Manuel’s fault? There’s also this subplot involving a covert underground group called the LSA, but it again doesn’t stand out as entertaining enough on its own merits.
The four chapters are also divided by year-long time skips, a pet peeve of mine from my anime days. I hate time skips because they take away vital character development, and while there technically is no character development to speak of in Grim Fandango, it’s ridiculous to think that Manny maintained this guilt over the years whilst he did all these other activities. It also takes away from the urgency that the narrative rests on about finding her before she ends up dying (sorry, sprouting).
I wish I could say that the individual B plots in each chapter are fun or the NPCs kooky, but no, not really. You get some of the latter, but because everything is treated seriously, you’re robbed of a lot of humorous potential, and the low drama isn’t engaging or thematically-deep enough that you’ll be sucked into the side stories. Seeing a bunch of worker bees start chanting Marx seems comedic enough, but it’s played straight. I suppose that’s what I mean by Grim Fandango hitting this weird in-between: it gives farcical concepts, only to interpret them solemnly.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s that the friendship between Manny and Glottis is well-developed, making their interactions all the more enjoyable/emotional to watch.
Graphically, Grim Fandango has aged wonderfully. I did play the remaster, but the remaster gives the option to switch back to the old version with the click of a button (backspace) ala the Master Chief Collection, and what’s amazing is how the backgrounds and backdrops didn’t get a face lift. Only the character models did, and Double Fine Productions deserves absolute credit for modernizing these models while simultaneously maintaining their original artistic style and lip-synching. However, the backgrounds, despite being the same ones from 1998, look fantastic: they fit each setting and don’t pop out like some of the 2D cities from 3D Legend of Zelda games.
The art style has been talked about a lot by other reviewers, combining noir, neo-noir, Aztec religions, and Dia de las Muertas, so I won’t go into too much detail here (also because I’m just not good at talking about aesthetics) outside of saying that it’s beautiful. A lot of time went into conceptualizing it and it shows in the final product, with there being a genuine Latino vibe to the world no matter the location (insurance company to underwater to Heaven). That being said, some shortcuts were taken, like the lack of shadow-mapping and soft baked lighting, and some of the full-fledged computer animated cutscenes contain too much grain at times, but these are minor. Even the overly smooth 3D animations, whilst lacking in-depth touches like climbing or gripping stairs/ladders, have a charm that I liked a lot.
SFX is surprisingly lacking, with there being no footsteps and a lot of items having only a single noise programmed to it no matter your action (i.e., swiping at an object with Manny’s scythe produces the same sound). However, this is made up for by the two other categories: voice acting and music.
Grim Fandango has one of the greatest (if not THE greatest) voice acting I have ever seen in a video game, and by voice acting I mean for EVERY CHARACTER. This is a title that did not skimp on direction or performers, which is something you frequently see with conventional titles (ex. awful sounding NPCs in Bethesda and Ubisoft games). The main characters are perfect, with Tony Plana as Manny and Alan Blumenfeld as Glottis deserving particular praise for their chemistry and work, successfully conveying emotions without ever losing their core essence or sounding phoned-in. Even things as simple as item descriptions in your inventory are delivered excellently by Plana. And Maria Canals-Barrera knows how to throw on the seductive tone!
The OST by Peter McConnell is something I had high expectations for after Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory told me how it was one of his three most influential scores, and I have to say that it lived up to that hype. One of the inherent musical issues faced by PNCs is that, because you’re frequently moving between areas, you don’t have time to listen to a particular track for an extended period of time. To counter this, music editors either play a single track for one area without stopping or have a distinct track that restarts every time you reenter. With the first, you risk getting tired of the music, with the latter you risk getting annoyed by all the changes!
Grim Fandango opted for the latter, meaning there was a good chance I’d get sick of the constant alterations, but what McConnell did is dig into a soft distinct melody that starts off on a pleasant yet definite note, and all tracks stay within the folk and jazz genres. This means it never gets upsetting to relisten to it from the start, and the music is all relatively similar sounding that you’re not suffering from jarring transitions. The fact that he chose to reorchestrate the score with a symphony orchestra for the remaster is outstanding, and gives even more credit to him as a musician.
Gameplay is standard for this type of game. You can play with a controller or keyboard, but it obviously works a lot better if you go with a mouse. Interactions are solid and you’ll never get into a hassle doing what you want to do with the cursor. One issue I have is that sometimes the animations for climbing can last a noticeable amount of time and the inventory doesn’t go back to the last item you had- also, sometimes an item won’t be directly useable on an object you need to use it with, meaning you need to instead use the generic use prompt that comes up on the screen when you pull out an object. But these are all small in the grand scheme of things.
Overall, though, I can’t recommend Grim Fandango. The story isn’t particularly great, fails to live up to the jocular potential of its premise, and features some dumbstruck-inducing puzzles that I guarantee you, you won’t be able to solve without consulting a guide. However, with its lush visuals and top notch score/voice acting, it’s more of a cinematic experience that is worth witnessing via one of those video game movies you see compiled on YouTube or other video sharing platforms. In that regard, I recommend you “play” Grim Fandango (as in, hit the play button on a YouTube video xD).
It always feels bad to rag on games that the public majority considers underrated, especially members of that category that underperformed financially. But unfortunately, I did not like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and so I have to criticize it in order to justify my opinion.
The idea of taking Journey to the West (or its abridged English translation Monkey) and adapting it into a video game format was an inspired idea. While I have not read Wu Cheng'en’s novel, I am aware of its epic scope, which naturally fits the parameters that a AAA video game can provide.
But alas, somewhere along the way, it was decided to loosely incorporate the plot of the classic, with the team instead opting to create their own lore and world. I think this was a missed opportunity to show how video games can be the artistic equivalent of great literature, but on the other hand I completely understand that adapting another person’s work is inherently restrictive on one’s creative expression. And so, Journey to the West was turned into Odyssey to the West: 7th Century Asia to post-apocalyptic America. By going this route, the team had the ability to conceive their own setting, one potentially rife with mythologies, commentary, or even satire.
And yet, this is the probably the biggest ball that Enslaved drops. Co-writer Alex Garland revealed that there was a deliberate attempt to be “reductive” with the game’s storytelling, and I have no problem with this approach. Showing instead of telling often yields greater world building rewards whilst avoiding the pacing issues that expository dialogue risks creating. The problem is, Enslaved is too quiet for its own good. Outside of vague references to a “war,” there’s no information on how exactly this place came to be. Robotic monstrosities called mechs roam the planescape, their AI acting like biological fauna; you get a notion that smuggling and slave trafficking are prominent enough, and perhaps tribes of like minded people still exist. But you will have to make so many assumptions because the game DOES NOT tell you anything. Why are the mechs still operational if no one is maintaining them? Why are there no other humans, neither friendly nor hostile? On that note, how is Monkey superhuman? Are any other clans trying to rebuild society? What caused this war and what ended it? Most video games would at least compensate for the lack of direct information by having external data available by way of collectibles (BioShock’s audio diaries, Arkham City’s Arkham stories). Enslaved doesn’t give you any of that. It’s vague to a fault, and this deliberate tactic on Garland’s part hurts the world because you have a very unique setting with its own mythos that I end up caring about as much as a level in Mario.
No seriously, think about that- you don’t care about how a particular area in a Mario game came to be because the point of it is to simply serve as a backdrop for the platforming action that’s about to take place. Enslaved falls into that same generalization- since its depiction of the United States doesn’t have anything narratively tangible to it outside of aesthetics, it’s essentially just a backdrop for the action of Monkey and Trip’s story. And again, it’s sad because this is a beautiful construct that is definitely brimming with a rich mythology, yet you don’t end up having any investment in it since Garland and co. don’t give you anything to chew on beyond obscure drops of knowledge that could be interpreted a bunch of different ways.
Is the adventure at least fun on its own merits? The answer is no. Enslaved is a title that starts off with a lot of potential- you have two prisoners who have escaped this floating prison and now one of them is forcing the other to help her get home in exchange for freedom. It’s a unique take on the “road movie” format, and instantly played to themes of freedom vs. security, as well as the effects of the judicial system on youths. Most importantly, it set the game on a serious note, which is what you want to do with a post-apocalyptic setting (assuming you’re not conceiving a tongue-in-cheek tale).
And yet, it falters because it doesn’t develop the relationship between the two characters well. Monkey and Trip are very interesting individuals, each with their own personality and view of this disturbing era they’ve grown up in. It’s a classic pinning of the grizzled veteran with the naïve rookie, albeit tuned to fit Enslaved’s persona. But that aforementioned complaint about things being too understated applies to the background of the protagonist Monkey. We don’t learn a damn thing about him! I mentioned his unexplained superhuman attributes, but practically everything else remains unclear- what was his childhood like, how did he become a proficient fighter, what are his views on morality in this dystopia, how did he end up on the ship, heck why is he shirtless all the time? You don’t get anything outside of a couple of small drops like his parents being killed by mechs, and it’s a little frustrating because you spend all this time with a guy you don’t end up knowing much about it. Ironically, it once again plays to the Mario schema of this man being more of a placeholder for action beats over a fleshed out individual.
This wouldn’t have necessarily been a glaring problem (for me anyway) if there was frequent conversations between him and Trip ala the way there was between Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, but no, you don’t get much in the way of quiet moments. Most of their dialogues are focused on getting through sections of the world, whether that’s through procuring new equipment, scanning areas, or discussing the best plan of action. You need to either use those scenes to build up mutually-beneficial success stories or implement dramatic-laced parts when all the fighting is done. The former fails because, more often than not, Trip is merely a means to an end and Monkey does all the heavy lifting. And when she does get endangered, the reason I’m saving her is because her death means Monkey’s insta-termination, not because I care about her well-being. The two’s relationship just isn’t fleshed out enough to the point that I care about their future prospects together.
The biggest killer to the story, though, comes in the form of the second half of the game: the introduction of Pigsy. This guy (who is apparently another loose homage to a character from Journey to the West) is the epitome of lazy writing: a stereotypical comic relief slob. Credit where credit is due- I didn’t end up hating him since he actually serves a purpose, but the biggest downside is that he absolutely kills the serious tone that was established in the first half. Enslaved goes from a hard T to a flat-out E10 rating because of him: the tonal shift is THAT bad. If the whole narrative had been tongue-in-cheek, it’d be one thing, but because it wants to be a serious tale, the decision by Garland to change it up makes no sense. And considering the humor is often juvenile, it honestly took me out of the immersive nature (am I seriously hearing love triangle jokes in a dystopia)?
Another overhead issue with the narrative design is that it’s tied to a game design that’s too cinematic for its own good. This was always going to be a risk given the involvement of filmic artists like Garland and Andy Serkis. Movies are, of course, a very different medium from video games- they are purely linear, wherein everything about the story is out of your hands. Video games (yes, even walking simulators) are different because the player controls the pacing of the plot. And because they have that control, they need a sufficient number of activities to do: activities that simultaneously advance the story, keep them entertained, don’t hurt pacing, and develop the characters.
You already know Enslaved significantly falters on the latter front, but all the others are failures too. With the first, it’s quite clear that Garland and co-writer Tameem Antoniades were thinking of the plot purely in macro terms: escape the prison, get to Trip’s home, find Pigsy, etc…In AAA video games, you HAVE to think about the micro picture since that is what will be taking up most of the player’s time (i.e., what is the player doing in-between A and B).
Because that was the primary focus of the writers, that in-between is chockful of the most repetitive gameplay loop I have experienced since Epic Mickey- Monkey and Trip arrive in a plane, find it to be occupied with mechs, Trip sends a drone to scan, and then Monkey proceeds to clear a path forward. Repeat ad nauseum. It gets old fast and stops being fun. There was a pathetic attempt at introducing some non-linearity into this by way of having some stealth options to approaching areas or malfunctioning enemies with different ways of getting to them, but it’s very half-assed: you don’t want to avoid fighting because defeated enemies yield the game’s currency for upgrades, and finding the quickest path to get to the malfunctioned bot is usually far more cumbersome than just going in guns a-blazing.
The only time this pattern is broken up is via boss fights (all of which are lame, boring slogs) or surfing with Monkey’s cloud disc device (reference to Goku’s Flying Nimbus from Dragon Ball?), which is very very very underutilized considering how fun its mechanics are.
For all my ranting, there is one redeemable part of the whole narrative aspect and that’s the performances. Much has been made about Andy Serkis’s role as Monkey, and he is indeed amazing, donning his best Steven Blum impersonation whilst also pioneering the amazingness of motion capture. However, a lot of people have been sleeping on Lindsey Shaw’s performance as Trip: in my opinion, she more than equaled Serkis, an amazing feat considering this was her first mocap role. She does a great job conveying the innocent nature of Trip, making the tragic scenes all the more affecting. There was chemistry between the two, and while it’s a shame that it’s not capitalized on more than it should have been, I’d be lying if I said they didn’t make the most of their limited convos. And, though I was not big fan of the character, credit to Richard Ridings for also giving a solid portrayal of Pigsy.
Graphically, Enslaved came out during the Autumnal years of the Xbox 360/PS3’s life, and it looks gorgeous. There is a genuinely-realized vision of a post-apocalyptic USA: humanity has abandoned all pretext of metropolitan civilizations, leaving urban structures overwrought with vegetation. While there’s a surprising lack of pollution, the remnants of consumer culture lay prevalent in the cityscapes with furniture, TVs, papers, and other simulacra everywhere. Industrial components are strewn everywhere (serving as the footholds for most of the game’s platforming), and yet all their appearance (alongside the mechanical factories of the second half) avoid falling into steampunk territory, crafting their own visage. Indeed, Enslaved looks like a stereotypical Xbox 360 game: photorealistic models and environs that are stylized enough to prevent them from aging badly. Though the texturing isn’t as consistent as I would have liked it to be, nothing stands out (outside of the occasional rendering zigzag on Monkey during the cutscenes): there’re no hitches, no misplaced hues, and the only bug I experienced was caused upon trying to do any set-up change in the options menu (my screen would either get really small upon implementing the change or massively drop in graphical quality, forcing me to relaunch the game as a whole).
That being said, one reason I didn’t get immersed into the visual beauty of Enslaved’s America is that everything feels too bright. And no, I don’t mean from a lighting perspective (the lighting, for the record, is primarily static, with every luminescence being perfectly suited to whatever area you are in)- the sun is out for 99% of the game. No, what I mean is that the schemes rely too much on warm colours, making everything feel unintentionally cheery. Obviously, in a real-world scenario, you wouldn’t be seeing depressing tones in a humanless world, but this is where artistic license comes into play with fictional depictions. Enslaved’s dystopia is so oversaturated at times, that it can’t help but feel like a paradisical place. And maybe that was partly the intention of the designers, but for me personally, I couldn’t help but not think of this as an apocalyptic wasteland rife with kidnappings, murdering robots, and no life.
Other notable feats- shadow mapping is terrific and game runs better without motion blur (IMO) and Monkey blinks!
Sound design is another area where the game drops the ball hard. The editing, in general, is terrible: you don’t get a good balance between SFX and score- even when I turned down the music volume I couldn’t make out the noises half the time. Not that it would’ve mattered because there’s a significant lack of impact with the sound. Footsteps feel light, and combat noises like enemies getting hit don’t have any weight to them minus the finishers. The exact same “chink” is repeated no matter the kind of mech that you’re whacking away at, and nothing else stands out. Sound really feels like an afterthought here- even ambient noises like birds squawking are blatantly stock in nature. It’s all so generic.
I wasn’t a fan of Nitin Sawhney’s score either. Outside of the beautiful main theme, nothing particularly caught my ear and stayed in my head. He does the quiet moments well enough, but because there are so few of them, the bulk of his compositions are focused on actiony tunes that either aren’t engaging or too background-like for my liking.
Finally, there’s the gameplay, and it’s decent enough. You have your standard light and heavy attacks, however there’s a lack of a combo system, meaning nothing flows together as well as it should. You won’t be able to jump between enemies, meaning your only tactic is to wail on a mech until it’s destroyed or another guy tries to attack, in which case you either block or dodge. The lack of good sound makes kills unsatisfying (save the finishers, which were badass), the lack of flow means battles are inherently 1v1 in nature, and the lack of multilateral moves means you’re going to be repeating the same pattern for most of your encounters. And yet, for all my issues, it gets the job done. The ability to charge up your staff for a stun, purchase counter strikes from the store, or pull out your plasma rifle for a quick shot gives just enough diversity to your actions. I also liked how enemies were quick on their feet, meaning even a mech that’s been hit won’t be out long enough for you charge attack, meaning will have to block, evade, or get a quick weak strike in. Should there have been more combat moves to purchase in the store? Yes, but I’m not going to bother fretting about something that isn’t there when I didn’t get frustrated by what was there.
I did dig the parkour- the animators did a good job replicating the feel of a humanoid monkey with the climbing and jumping animations. However, the design was purely linear- I would’ve liked to have seen this approach to parkour applied on a grander scale (i.e., give more avenues to begin ascending up as opposed to a single pipe to climb- be more like Assassin’s Creed!). Also, animation transitions between static and motion poses are non-existent: it’s a hard cut.
The movement for Enslaved in general is lackluster courtesy of one missing element- jumping. Seriously, you cannot jump at all, which seems deliberately done to gridlock players from accidentally causing a break since the world is deliberately designed to be nothing but linear paths. This means simple things like descending down or climbing up are turned into “find the correct entrance,” when a slightly more open-minded approach to game design would’ve yielded greater fruit. And I know it was possible considering the damn Cloud allows you to jump (probably why it’s barely in the game).
So yeah, overall Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was a disappointment for me. I was hoping it’d be an underrated gem in the vein of Alpha Protocol, but it’s something that seems to have garnered a following more-so due to its celebrity status than anything in it. The uniqueness of the world is hampered by frustratingly vague storytelling, repetitive gameplay sections, and lack of dialogue. It also suffers from The Last of Us problem of exploration being at odds with story progression (though to a far lesser degree since character interactions aren’t as well-developed as in TLOU). Gameplay is decent, sound design abysmal, and graphics are very good (though your milage will vary on the color scheme). Despite terrific performances, I wasn’t able to get immersed into the setting, and with tonal inconsistencies it seems that the writers weren’t either. None of this is even getting into the ending, which is a sudden hodgepodge of unearned philosophical depth that Spectre and Ready Player One ripped off of.
With regards to the story DLC, Pigsy’s Perfect 10, I obviously had low expectations going into it given my mixed-to-negative overview of Pigsy. Credit to Ninja Theory because they actually do a good job here of creating an entirely different genre within the same world- this shows their apt for making decent cover shooters. You also get a variety of tools that create different gameplay scenarios in a way that was never realized in Enslaved. The story is obviously humorous in nature, but because it is this way from the get-go the atmosphere doesn’t get tanked. It does try to get serious by way of emphasizing the relationship between Pigsy and an AI robot of his called Truffles, but I found the latter more annoying than cute (maybe that was the intention behind Ninja theory: create a more annoying character to make your protagonist more likeable by comparison). The level design is a little more diverse than what we saw in the main campaign, music more consistent, and sound design (particularly mixing) stronger.
The shortness of the narrative also benefits things tremendously. It does create some continuity errors though (Pigsy is shown living in a junkyard here and finds the Pigsyland area later, whereas in Enslaved it’s depicted as being his defacto home), but I think it was overall a good initiative on Ninja Theory’s part. If I had liked the main game more I think I would’ve liked this, but as it stands it’s an okay DLC on its own merits. Richard Ridings definitely deserves props for his consistent delivery here. Another small thing I appreciated was how, every time you collected a new collectable (sexy magazine, food item), there was a unique reaction from Pigsy for each one.
The idea of taking Journey to the West (or its abridged English translation Monkey) and adapting it into a video game format was an inspired idea. While I have not read Wu Cheng'en’s novel, I am aware of its epic scope, which naturally fits the parameters that a AAA video game can provide.
But alas, somewhere along the way, it was decided to loosely incorporate the plot of the classic, with the team instead opting to create their own lore and world. I think this was a missed opportunity to show how video games can be the artistic equivalent of great literature, but on the other hand I completely understand that adapting another person’s work is inherently restrictive on one’s creative expression. And so, Journey to the West was turned into Odyssey to the West: 7th Century Asia to post-apocalyptic America. By going this route, the team had the ability to conceive their own setting, one potentially rife with mythologies, commentary, or even satire.
And yet, this is the probably the biggest ball that Enslaved drops. Co-writer Alex Garland revealed that there was a deliberate attempt to be “reductive” with the game’s storytelling, and I have no problem with this approach. Showing instead of telling often yields greater world building rewards whilst avoiding the pacing issues that expository dialogue risks creating. The problem is, Enslaved is too quiet for its own good. Outside of vague references to a “war,” there’s no information on how exactly this place came to be. Robotic monstrosities called mechs roam the planescape, their AI acting like biological fauna; you get a notion that smuggling and slave trafficking are prominent enough, and perhaps tribes of like minded people still exist. But you will have to make so many assumptions because the game DOES NOT tell you anything. Why are the mechs still operational if no one is maintaining them? Why are there no other humans, neither friendly nor hostile? On that note, how is Monkey superhuman? Are any other clans trying to rebuild society? What caused this war and what ended it? Most video games would at least compensate for the lack of direct information by having external data available by way of collectibles (BioShock’s audio diaries, Arkham City’s Arkham stories). Enslaved doesn’t give you any of that. It’s vague to a fault, and this deliberate tactic on Garland’s part hurts the world because you have a very unique setting with its own mythos that I end up caring about as much as a level in Mario.
No seriously, think about that- you don’t care about how a particular area in a Mario game came to be because the point of it is to simply serve as a backdrop for the platforming action that’s about to take place. Enslaved falls into that same generalization- since its depiction of the United States doesn’t have anything narratively tangible to it outside of aesthetics, it’s essentially just a backdrop for the action of Monkey and Trip’s story. And again, it’s sad because this is a beautiful construct that is definitely brimming with a rich mythology, yet you don’t end up having any investment in it since Garland and co. don’t give you anything to chew on beyond obscure drops of knowledge that could be interpreted a bunch of different ways.
Is the adventure at least fun on its own merits? The answer is no. Enslaved is a title that starts off with a lot of potential- you have two prisoners who have escaped this floating prison and now one of them is forcing the other to help her get home in exchange for freedom. It’s a unique take on the “road movie” format, and instantly played to themes of freedom vs. security, as well as the effects of the judicial system on youths. Most importantly, it set the game on a serious note, which is what you want to do with a post-apocalyptic setting (assuming you’re not conceiving a tongue-in-cheek tale).
And yet, it falters because it doesn’t develop the relationship between the two characters well. Monkey and Trip are very interesting individuals, each with their own personality and view of this disturbing era they’ve grown up in. It’s a classic pinning of the grizzled veteran with the naïve rookie, albeit tuned to fit Enslaved’s persona. But that aforementioned complaint about things being too understated applies to the background of the protagonist Monkey. We don’t learn a damn thing about him! I mentioned his unexplained superhuman attributes, but practically everything else remains unclear- what was his childhood like, how did he become a proficient fighter, what are his views on morality in this dystopia, how did he end up on the ship, heck why is he shirtless all the time? You don’t get anything outside of a couple of small drops like his parents being killed by mechs, and it’s a little frustrating because you spend all this time with a guy you don’t end up knowing much about it. Ironically, it once again plays to the Mario schema of this man being more of a placeholder for action beats over a fleshed out individual.
This wouldn’t have necessarily been a glaring problem (for me anyway) if there was frequent conversations between him and Trip ala the way there was between Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us, but no, you don’t get much in the way of quiet moments. Most of their dialogues are focused on getting through sections of the world, whether that’s through procuring new equipment, scanning areas, or discussing the best plan of action. You need to either use those scenes to build up mutually-beneficial success stories or implement dramatic-laced parts when all the fighting is done. The former fails because, more often than not, Trip is merely a means to an end and Monkey does all the heavy lifting. And when she does get endangered, the reason I’m saving her is because her death means Monkey’s insta-termination, not because I care about her well-being. The two’s relationship just isn’t fleshed out enough to the point that I care about their future prospects together.
The biggest killer to the story, though, comes in the form of the second half of the game: the introduction of Pigsy. This guy (who is apparently another loose homage to a character from Journey to the West) is the epitome of lazy writing: a stereotypical comic relief slob. Credit where credit is due- I didn’t end up hating him since he actually serves a purpose, but the biggest downside is that he absolutely kills the serious tone that was established in the first half. Enslaved goes from a hard T to a flat-out E10 rating because of him: the tonal shift is THAT bad. If the whole narrative had been tongue-in-cheek, it’d be one thing, but because it wants to be a serious tale, the decision by Garland to change it up makes no sense. And considering the humor is often juvenile, it honestly took me out of the immersive nature (am I seriously hearing love triangle jokes in a dystopia)?
Another overhead issue with the narrative design is that it’s tied to a game design that’s too cinematic for its own good. This was always going to be a risk given the involvement of filmic artists like Garland and Andy Serkis. Movies are, of course, a very different medium from video games- they are purely linear, wherein everything about the story is out of your hands. Video games (yes, even walking simulators) are different because the player controls the pacing of the plot. And because they have that control, they need a sufficient number of activities to do: activities that simultaneously advance the story, keep them entertained, don’t hurt pacing, and develop the characters.
You already know Enslaved significantly falters on the latter front, but all the others are failures too. With the first, it’s quite clear that Garland and co-writer Tameem Antoniades were thinking of the plot purely in macro terms: escape the prison, get to Trip’s home, find Pigsy, etc…In AAA video games, you HAVE to think about the micro picture since that is what will be taking up most of the player’s time (i.e., what is the player doing in-between A and B).
Because that was the primary focus of the writers, that in-between is chockful of the most repetitive gameplay loop I have experienced since Epic Mickey- Monkey and Trip arrive in a plane, find it to be occupied with mechs, Trip sends a drone to scan, and then Monkey proceeds to clear a path forward. Repeat ad nauseum. It gets old fast and stops being fun. There was a pathetic attempt at introducing some non-linearity into this by way of having some stealth options to approaching areas or malfunctioning enemies with different ways of getting to them, but it’s very half-assed: you don’t want to avoid fighting because defeated enemies yield the game’s currency for upgrades, and finding the quickest path to get to the malfunctioned bot is usually far more cumbersome than just going in guns a-blazing.
The only time this pattern is broken up is via boss fights (all of which are lame, boring slogs) or surfing with Monkey’s cloud disc device (reference to Goku’s Flying Nimbus from Dragon Ball?), which is very very very underutilized considering how fun its mechanics are.
For all my ranting, there is one redeemable part of the whole narrative aspect and that’s the performances. Much has been made about Andy Serkis’s role as Monkey, and he is indeed amazing, donning his best Steven Blum impersonation whilst also pioneering the amazingness of motion capture. However, a lot of people have been sleeping on Lindsey Shaw’s performance as Trip: in my opinion, she more than equaled Serkis, an amazing feat considering this was her first mocap role. She does a great job conveying the innocent nature of Trip, making the tragic scenes all the more affecting. There was chemistry between the two, and while it’s a shame that it’s not capitalized on more than it should have been, I’d be lying if I said they didn’t make the most of their limited convos. And, though I was not big fan of the character, credit to Richard Ridings for also giving a solid portrayal of Pigsy.
Graphically, Enslaved came out during the Autumnal years of the Xbox 360/PS3’s life, and it looks gorgeous. There is a genuinely-realized vision of a post-apocalyptic USA: humanity has abandoned all pretext of metropolitan civilizations, leaving urban structures overwrought with vegetation. While there’s a surprising lack of pollution, the remnants of consumer culture lay prevalent in the cityscapes with furniture, TVs, papers, and other simulacra everywhere. Industrial components are strewn everywhere (serving as the footholds for most of the game’s platforming), and yet all their appearance (alongside the mechanical factories of the second half) avoid falling into steampunk territory, crafting their own visage. Indeed, Enslaved looks like a stereotypical Xbox 360 game: photorealistic models and environs that are stylized enough to prevent them from aging badly. Though the texturing isn’t as consistent as I would have liked it to be, nothing stands out (outside of the occasional rendering zigzag on Monkey during the cutscenes): there’re no hitches, no misplaced hues, and the only bug I experienced was caused upon trying to do any set-up change in the options menu (my screen would either get really small upon implementing the change or massively drop in graphical quality, forcing me to relaunch the game as a whole).
That being said, one reason I didn’t get immersed into the visual beauty of Enslaved’s America is that everything feels too bright. And no, I don’t mean from a lighting perspective (the lighting, for the record, is primarily static, with every luminescence being perfectly suited to whatever area you are in)- the sun is out for 99% of the game. No, what I mean is that the schemes rely too much on warm colours, making everything feel unintentionally cheery. Obviously, in a real-world scenario, you wouldn’t be seeing depressing tones in a humanless world, but this is where artistic license comes into play with fictional depictions. Enslaved’s dystopia is so oversaturated at times, that it can’t help but feel like a paradisical place. And maybe that was partly the intention of the designers, but for me personally, I couldn’t help but not think of this as an apocalyptic wasteland rife with kidnappings, murdering robots, and no life.
Other notable feats- shadow mapping is terrific and game runs better without motion blur (IMO) and Monkey blinks!
Sound design is another area where the game drops the ball hard. The editing, in general, is terrible: you don’t get a good balance between SFX and score- even when I turned down the music volume I couldn’t make out the noises half the time. Not that it would’ve mattered because there’s a significant lack of impact with the sound. Footsteps feel light, and combat noises like enemies getting hit don’t have any weight to them minus the finishers. The exact same “chink” is repeated no matter the kind of mech that you’re whacking away at, and nothing else stands out. Sound really feels like an afterthought here- even ambient noises like birds squawking are blatantly stock in nature. It’s all so generic.
I wasn’t a fan of Nitin Sawhney’s score either. Outside of the beautiful main theme, nothing particularly caught my ear and stayed in my head. He does the quiet moments well enough, but because there are so few of them, the bulk of his compositions are focused on actiony tunes that either aren’t engaging or too background-like for my liking.
Finally, there’s the gameplay, and it’s decent enough. You have your standard light and heavy attacks, however there’s a lack of a combo system, meaning nothing flows together as well as it should. You won’t be able to jump between enemies, meaning your only tactic is to wail on a mech until it’s destroyed or another guy tries to attack, in which case you either block or dodge. The lack of good sound makes kills unsatisfying (save the finishers, which were badass), the lack of flow means battles are inherently 1v1 in nature, and the lack of multilateral moves means you’re going to be repeating the same pattern for most of your encounters. And yet, for all my issues, it gets the job done. The ability to charge up your staff for a stun, purchase counter strikes from the store, or pull out your plasma rifle for a quick shot gives just enough diversity to your actions. I also liked how enemies were quick on their feet, meaning even a mech that’s been hit won’t be out long enough for you charge attack, meaning will have to block, evade, or get a quick weak strike in. Should there have been more combat moves to purchase in the store? Yes, but I’m not going to bother fretting about something that isn’t there when I didn’t get frustrated by what was there.
I did dig the parkour- the animators did a good job replicating the feel of a humanoid monkey with the climbing and jumping animations. However, the design was purely linear- I would’ve liked to have seen this approach to parkour applied on a grander scale (i.e., give more avenues to begin ascending up as opposed to a single pipe to climb- be more like Assassin’s Creed!). Also, animation transitions between static and motion poses are non-existent: it’s a hard cut.
The movement for Enslaved in general is lackluster courtesy of one missing element- jumping. Seriously, you cannot jump at all, which seems deliberately done to gridlock players from accidentally causing a break since the world is deliberately designed to be nothing but linear paths. This means simple things like descending down or climbing up are turned into “find the correct entrance,” when a slightly more open-minded approach to game design would’ve yielded greater fruit. And I know it was possible considering the damn Cloud allows you to jump (probably why it’s barely in the game).
So yeah, overall Enslaved: Odyssey to the West was a disappointment for me. I was hoping it’d be an underrated gem in the vein of Alpha Protocol, but it’s something that seems to have garnered a following more-so due to its celebrity status than anything in it. The uniqueness of the world is hampered by frustratingly vague storytelling, repetitive gameplay sections, and lack of dialogue. It also suffers from The Last of Us problem of exploration being at odds with story progression (though to a far lesser degree since character interactions aren’t as well-developed as in TLOU). Gameplay is decent, sound design abysmal, and graphics are very good (though your milage will vary on the color scheme). Despite terrific performances, I wasn’t able to get immersed into the setting, and with tonal inconsistencies it seems that the writers weren’t either. None of this is even getting into the ending, which is a sudden hodgepodge of unearned philosophical depth that Spectre and Ready Player One ripped off of.
With regards to the story DLC, Pigsy’s Perfect 10, I obviously had low expectations going into it given my mixed-to-negative overview of Pigsy. Credit to Ninja Theory because they actually do a good job here of creating an entirely different genre within the same world- this shows their apt for making decent cover shooters. You also get a variety of tools that create different gameplay scenarios in a way that was never realized in Enslaved. The story is obviously humorous in nature, but because it is this way from the get-go the atmosphere doesn’t get tanked. It does try to get serious by way of emphasizing the relationship between Pigsy and an AI robot of his called Truffles, but I found the latter more annoying than cute (maybe that was the intention behind Ninja theory: create a more annoying character to make your protagonist more likeable by comparison). The level design is a little more diverse than what we saw in the main campaign, music more consistent, and sound design (particularly mixing) stronger.
The shortness of the narrative also benefits things tremendously. It does create some continuity errors though (Pigsy is shown living in a junkyard here and finds the Pigsyland area later, whereas in Enslaved it’s depicted as being his defacto home), but I think it was overall a good initiative on Ninja Theory’s part. If I had liked the main game more I think I would’ve liked this, but as it stands it’s an okay DLC on its own merits. Richard Ridings definitely deserves props for his consistent delivery here. Another small thing I appreciated was how, every time you collected a new collectable (sexy magazine, food item), there was a unique reaction from Pigsy for each one.
2016
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom
I had high expectations going into Oxenfree. I don’t know how many people recall this, but back in 2016, this indie darling was making the rounds on major and minor reviewing sites, being widely regarded as one of the best titles to come out that year (which is saying something considering the quality of its contemporary releases!) As such, I added it to my Steam wishlist, knowing one day I would eventually play it.
Well, five years later, here I am; anything I had heard about the storyline or gameplay long since forgotten. Unfortunately, that tabula rasa did little to quell my disappointment. See, Oxenfree is an urban fantasy: a real-world tale that just so happens to incorporate mystical elements. Characters encounter ridiculous phenomena, but said phenomena rarely leaves a lasting impression on the world at large. The premise is very much akin to Twin Peaks or Stranger Things- shows that threw audiences onto a similar line between the bizarre and natural.
I fully concede upfront that this balancing act is inherently not for me. I much prefer mystery stories to be either flat-out phantasmagorical bonanzas or hardboiled tales set in a seedy underbelly. And while good narratives can of course always overcome any biases, I believe there to be too many flaws in this polymorphed concept to make it worthwhile, the most prominent being the establishment of rules. When you decide to include something unnatural like magic(k), you have to set forth guidelines preventing it from becoming a lazy plot device (i.e., granting leeway for story beats to sporadically happen without a satisfactory build-up, explanation, or resolution), and unfortunately, rarely do you see creators of such genre hybrids take the time to do just that- they're ultimately more interested in weaving together a tale, in turn creating problems down the line which, surprise surprise, are resolved via sporadic @sspulls or frustrating advancements more confusing than enjoyable.
To be fair on Oxenfree, it technically is more along the lines of science fantasy or science fiction since it deals with grounded concepts like time travel, ghosts, and techno-spiritual interfacing, but in a way that’s even worse since sci-fi, by way of its “more realistic” nature, calls for something resembling an explanation. I say all this to establish that I went into Oxenfree thinking it’d be an adventure thriller, and instead was unpleasantly surprised with something more akin to a supernatural escapade. That said, I would’ve been capable of bypassing my disgruntlements had the story and mythos been superbly crafted, but that unfortunately wasn’t to be. See, Oxenfree wants to have two cakes and eat them too. One dessert is about the psychological and familial struggles of older adolescent youths as they experience that “one last summer” with friends where all their frustrations and emotional turmoil come out; the other, to put it bluntly, about a haunted island. If the latter was simply a backdrop or metaphor for the events of the former, then you could successfully do both. But as the two have nothing to do with each other (outside of an artificially imposed connection+), what you’ve got instead are two threads that inherently detract from the other. When two characters are having an introspective conversation about their struggles over the past year, that’s interesting – when you have these character trying to uncover the tortured history behind the isle, that’s interesting – when you forcibly transition from one of these sections to the next or vice-versa, not only is that not interesting, it kills the magic circle of immersion that was being built-up in one or the other.
That’s really what my problems simmer down to. Oxenfree’s writers really should’ve focused on a single facet because the two do not complement each other in the slightest. And it’s a shame, because I am a sucker for such tales of summer teenage angst: they accurately reflect a time every first world adolescent experiences wherein you painfully hope things won’t change, yet at the same partly welcome those changes because it means getting away from your regrets of the past. It’s this phase of mental anguish in which you’re concurrently nostalgic, scared, and angry about everything.
The writers definitely had a grasp on these emotes, and the game begins well-enough when a weekend trip to an abandoned island turns into an opportunity for beer, truth-or-slap, and two step-siblings interacting for the first time. And yet, all of that falters the second the supernatural element is thrown into the mix- a major beat happens and now we are kicked into the world of the metaphysical where these same characters are now experiencing frightening and surreal things, yet for some reason still want to talk about dating and family drama. It just feels so off. And again, I want to emphasize that it’s a dang shame because the writers are talented. Conversations for each sector of the story rarely feels hackneyed or like an older generation trying hard to replicate a younger generation’s lingo. Much has been particularly made about the dialogue options, and I can definitively add my voice to that praise -- these wordages are well-scribed and generally give you the full range of discourse you would expect any teen in that respective situation to possibly respond with. While they fall into the “nice, rude, neutral” dialogue tree, they don’t come off as tonally forced.
That being said, there were major issues here that I have to bring up. The first is the fact that your window of opportunity to respond is put on an unseen time limit. This isn’t inherently bad, but it often means you won’t be able to hear the full-scope of a convo going on near you because your protagonist (Alex) will interrupt them. It’s strange because this won’t always happen- sometimes the dialogue selection will hold out until the background discourse is finished before being issued. I don’t know if this was a programming inconsistency or if the former was meant to be a “realistic” take on actual conversations by forcing the player to interject in the midst of another party’s diatribe, but regardless it came off as more rude than genuine, and hurt the work of the writers who put effort into crafting these apparently-interruptible dialogues.
The second qualm is that sometimes the intent behind a statement was hard to tell- what should’ve been straightforward may have actually been sarcastic. On the one hand, this is appreciative in the sense that it showcases how every response is plausible and naturalistic without going the Mass Effect-route of being out-of-character for the sake of providing “options” for the gamer, but on the other it made it a little confusing when I was trying to give my personal answer to an NPC’s statements. And considering the game has multiple variables in its singular ending that are impacted by your responses, this could potentially affect someone’s playthrough.
Finally, there seems to have been a lack of communication between the writers and the ADR directors. One of the things I appreciated about Oxenfree’s script is that it often gives Alex and co. realistic reactions to the craziness going on, on Edward’s Island, but the problem is the delivery of said reaction by the voice artists usually lacks frenziness. More often than not, they say the lines sarcastically or softly, when the intent (based on the circumstances and choice of grammar) indicate something more passionate or hotheaded. So, that ended up being a dock on multiple departments.
But yeah, overall the story feels like two halves that lack cohesiveness due to being at odds with each other. I’ll talk about the loose connections at the bottom and why I feel it to be lame. The characters are likable and rarely come off as annoying, however, they aren’t given a chance to shine due to this non-unity.
Graphically, I wasn’t a fan either. Oxenfree is a 2.5D game, yet Night School Studio made the odd decision to compose their cast from a separate art style than their backgrounds. It’s an example of superimposition faltering on top of artistic inconsistencies, and it really is inexcusable considering titles like Donkey Kong Country from the 90s did similar 3D transposing onto 2D backsets, albeit with the smart decision to have them carved from THE SAME STYLE. If this was an attempt by the developers to unsubtly explain how these individuals don’t fit on the island, then they ultimately failed to realize the negative aesthetic consequences that would come about from such a fusion.
In terms of viewing the duo on their own merits, first up are the horizons; a smeary blend of grim watercolors. They don’t quite bring to mind summerfests with friends you know you’ll grow apart from, but they do conjure up an atmosphere that befits a haunted locale (so it definitely benefits one aspect of the story). There isn’t too much detailing, which was probably a smart decision since you don’t spend an extended period of time in any one place (meaning it would’ve been a waste of assets/resources to conceive something that 99% of the player base would be oblivious to), and what is there is more than adequate for those that do give an extra discerning eye. A lot of the buildings and places feel like remnants of an abandoned town, with important items taken and the rest left to distill aimlessly in their original abodes- papers, shabby furniture, unpainted wood, dirty floors, etc...The haziness also gives an intentional/unintentional dreamlike quality to the whole area that makes the transitions into mystic craziness smooth and non-haphazard.
The characters, though, are not good looking. They’re colored well-enough that each holds a distinct wardrobe, but are ultimately 3D models that appear as though they were sculpted from hard clay. Not only do they appear like they don’t belong here, they also move and turn with an uncanny smoothness typical of early-3D animation (there were times where I swear their feet weren’t even touching the ground while walking!).
Illumination, though used sporadically, is surprisingly well done. Unfortunately, it’s hampered by poor shadowmapping, which consists of a single dark circle around everyone’s feet. One thing that I was genuinely shocked to see so beautifully executed were reflections. Like lighting, there are only a few places where it’s implemented (lakes, mirrors), but it’s a perfect 1-1 image. Even when you pull out your radio to discharge signals, the lights reflect on a surface!
Moving onto the music, I genuinely wasn’t a big fan. Some of the tracks are fine, but the vast majority feel so out of place: it’s like the composer was trying to create a synthesizer carnival under a gloomy motif, and the end result is so borderline grating, it partly took away from the emotional pull of the dialogues. The worst part is (and this is a criticism of the game in general) you can’t adjust any of the sound settings to lower the music/up the SFX, meaning you’re stuck with the default settings- same applies to other facets like brightness and contrasting, basic functions that I thought were standardized at this point in time.
On that note, SFX is slightly below adequate. Because of the aforementioned poor sound editing, a lot of the SFX, like footsteps, can barely be heard, but what I did discern was good enough (keep in mind there are a lot of reused auditoral assets like doors being opened and paranormal reactions to your radio).
The voice acting, as I said before, is solid for the most part. The VAs are all talented, but lackluster ADR direction hurt the delivery of their more frantic lines.
Gameplay-wise, Oxenfree is essentially a walking sim (what is masked these days as a “graphic adventure”). To be clear, I am a fan of this genre, but it means you don’t have much in the way of gameplay, which actually hurts Oxenfree as there were opportunities to implement puzzles. Most of the progression, for example, consists of tuning a hand radio to a specific broadcast to trigger an event- why not make a minigame or minigames out of it, similar to the Security Access Tuner in Alien: Isolation or the Cryptographic Sequencer from the Arkham Series? Turning it into a pure radio was lost potential.
One thing that is kinda appreciable is that characters move realistically- when you’re going up a slope, they’ll walk slower, whilst going down will cause them to angle themselves so that they don’t trip over. And considering games like AC Origins haven’t done something as elementary as this, it is impressive. However, movement speed can get lethargic as a result, with stairs in particular bringing back painful memories of me playing Syberia.
Outside of the story, there are two forms of collectibles that serve as side content. The first are secret frequencies that can only be found by literally holding out your radio constantly and walking around till the signal gets red. The second are hidden letters from the island’s late sole resident that detail her and her friend’s own investigations into the supernatural going on here. The latter were interesting to read, but I chose not to bother finding them because the only way to discover them is through looking on the screen for small moments of flash ala the original Pokemon games, which is not fun. Also, their content should’ve been incorporated into the story since they provide valuable information for the protagonists.
So yeah, overall I was not a fan of Oxenfree. Great voice acting and conversations are hurt by a story that bounces between two extremes which don’t naturally fit together, a distracting music score, and mismatched ADR direction. There is a New Game Plus, but I don’t see myself replaying this in the future.
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+So the way the two narratives “technically” connect is by way of a sporadic time travel thing that sends Alex back to her childhood where she gets to relive her last days with her brother before he drowned. The temporal concept was NOT fleshed out at all. In general, the antagonists, a band of ghost sailormen who died when a nuclear submarine went under, quickly go from being sympathetic to utterly annoying. Conversations with them reveal they have a deep philosophical understanding of the universe, as well as control over spacetime, yet they literally don’t do anything with all this power except throw dumb gimmicks at you or place Alex in a loop that can easily be broken. And before you retort that this is simply another example of the all-powerful deity choosing to just mess with humanity, the spirits repeatedly make clear that they want to be free from this eternal torment and can only break loose via stopping Alex. Yet at the same time, there are instances where they blatantly state they can do whatever they want, don’t need Alex’s compliance, and are just toying with her.
So, what the hell is going on exactly? Did none of the writers actually take the time to see how stupid they made their grand villain? If you want them to be this incomprehensible magical entity, then you have to give a logical reason for them not being able to go through with their evil plan. Acknowledging that there are no limitations on them and then choosing to HAVE THEM abide by said limitations with no explanation is ridiculous. Giving them incredible powers that they only use to play I Spy is beyond silly.
And I didn’t even understand why Alex was being sent back in time. If there was an explanation, I apologize for missing it, but even then, the fact that Oxenfree gives you the option to save your brother honestly irked me.While I hate the Flashpoint trope of a deceased character needing to stay dead for the sake of preserving the sanctity of today, the ethics of altering time and creating a butterfly effect are just as potent on the other end of the spectrum (i.e. saving someone). The fact that Oxenfree treats it as a willy-nilly thing that causes pure a black/white reaction in the present-day bothered me: there’s no exploration of the morality of doing so. It would’ve been better if they’d just avoided it in general.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s that I liked how Oxenfree put your Steam profile picture on the title menu and your Steam username during the endgame when you take over the reflection.
I had high expectations going into Oxenfree. I don’t know how many people recall this, but back in 2016, this indie darling was making the rounds on major and minor reviewing sites, being widely regarded as one of the best titles to come out that year (which is saying something considering the quality of its contemporary releases!) As such, I added it to my Steam wishlist, knowing one day I would eventually play it.
Well, five years later, here I am; anything I had heard about the storyline or gameplay long since forgotten. Unfortunately, that tabula rasa did little to quell my disappointment. See, Oxenfree is an urban fantasy: a real-world tale that just so happens to incorporate mystical elements. Characters encounter ridiculous phenomena, but said phenomena rarely leaves a lasting impression on the world at large. The premise is very much akin to Twin Peaks or Stranger Things- shows that threw audiences onto a similar line between the bizarre and natural.
I fully concede upfront that this balancing act is inherently not for me. I much prefer mystery stories to be either flat-out phantasmagorical bonanzas or hardboiled tales set in a seedy underbelly. And while good narratives can of course always overcome any biases, I believe there to be too many flaws in this polymorphed concept to make it worthwhile, the most prominent being the establishment of rules. When you decide to include something unnatural like magic(k), you have to set forth guidelines preventing it from becoming a lazy plot device (i.e., granting leeway for story beats to sporadically happen without a satisfactory build-up, explanation, or resolution), and unfortunately, rarely do you see creators of such genre hybrids take the time to do just that- they're ultimately more interested in weaving together a tale, in turn creating problems down the line which, surprise surprise, are resolved via sporadic @sspulls or frustrating advancements more confusing than enjoyable.
To be fair on Oxenfree, it technically is more along the lines of science fantasy or science fiction since it deals with grounded concepts like time travel, ghosts, and techno-spiritual interfacing, but in a way that’s even worse since sci-fi, by way of its “more realistic” nature, calls for something resembling an explanation. I say all this to establish that I went into Oxenfree thinking it’d be an adventure thriller, and instead was unpleasantly surprised with something more akin to a supernatural escapade. That said, I would’ve been capable of bypassing my disgruntlements had the story and mythos been superbly crafted, but that unfortunately wasn’t to be. See, Oxenfree wants to have two cakes and eat them too. One dessert is about the psychological and familial struggles of older adolescent youths as they experience that “one last summer” with friends where all their frustrations and emotional turmoil come out; the other, to put it bluntly, about a haunted island. If the latter was simply a backdrop or metaphor for the events of the former, then you could successfully do both. But as the two have nothing to do with each other (outside of an artificially imposed connection+), what you’ve got instead are two threads that inherently detract from the other. When two characters are having an introspective conversation about their struggles over the past year, that’s interesting – when you have these character trying to uncover the tortured history behind the isle, that’s interesting – when you forcibly transition from one of these sections to the next or vice-versa, not only is that not interesting, it kills the magic circle of immersion that was being built-up in one or the other.
That’s really what my problems simmer down to. Oxenfree’s writers really should’ve focused on a single facet because the two do not complement each other in the slightest. And it’s a shame, because I am a sucker for such tales of summer teenage angst: they accurately reflect a time every first world adolescent experiences wherein you painfully hope things won’t change, yet at the same partly welcome those changes because it means getting away from your regrets of the past. It’s this phase of mental anguish in which you’re concurrently nostalgic, scared, and angry about everything.
The writers definitely had a grasp on these emotes, and the game begins well-enough when a weekend trip to an abandoned island turns into an opportunity for beer, truth-or-slap, and two step-siblings interacting for the first time. And yet, all of that falters the second the supernatural element is thrown into the mix- a major beat happens and now we are kicked into the world of the metaphysical where these same characters are now experiencing frightening and surreal things, yet for some reason still want to talk about dating and family drama. It just feels so off. And again, I want to emphasize that it’s a dang shame because the writers are talented. Conversations for each sector of the story rarely feels hackneyed or like an older generation trying hard to replicate a younger generation’s lingo. Much has been particularly made about the dialogue options, and I can definitively add my voice to that praise -- these wordages are well-scribed and generally give you the full range of discourse you would expect any teen in that respective situation to possibly respond with. While they fall into the “nice, rude, neutral” dialogue tree, they don’t come off as tonally forced.
That being said, there were major issues here that I have to bring up. The first is the fact that your window of opportunity to respond is put on an unseen time limit. This isn’t inherently bad, but it often means you won’t be able to hear the full-scope of a convo going on near you because your protagonist (Alex) will interrupt them. It’s strange because this won’t always happen- sometimes the dialogue selection will hold out until the background discourse is finished before being issued. I don’t know if this was a programming inconsistency or if the former was meant to be a “realistic” take on actual conversations by forcing the player to interject in the midst of another party’s diatribe, but regardless it came off as more rude than genuine, and hurt the work of the writers who put effort into crafting these apparently-interruptible dialogues.
The second qualm is that sometimes the intent behind a statement was hard to tell- what should’ve been straightforward may have actually been sarcastic. On the one hand, this is appreciative in the sense that it showcases how every response is plausible and naturalistic without going the Mass Effect-route of being out-of-character for the sake of providing “options” for the gamer, but on the other it made it a little confusing when I was trying to give my personal answer to an NPC’s statements. And considering the game has multiple variables in its singular ending that are impacted by your responses, this could potentially affect someone’s playthrough.
Finally, there seems to have been a lack of communication between the writers and the ADR directors. One of the things I appreciated about Oxenfree’s script is that it often gives Alex and co. realistic reactions to the craziness going on, on Edward’s Island, but the problem is the delivery of said reaction by the voice artists usually lacks frenziness. More often than not, they say the lines sarcastically or softly, when the intent (based on the circumstances and choice of grammar) indicate something more passionate or hotheaded. So, that ended up being a dock on multiple departments.
But yeah, overall the story feels like two halves that lack cohesiveness due to being at odds with each other. I’ll talk about the loose connections at the bottom and why I feel it to be lame. The characters are likable and rarely come off as annoying, however, they aren’t given a chance to shine due to this non-unity.
Graphically, I wasn’t a fan either. Oxenfree is a 2.5D game, yet Night School Studio made the odd decision to compose their cast from a separate art style than their backgrounds. It’s an example of superimposition faltering on top of artistic inconsistencies, and it really is inexcusable considering titles like Donkey Kong Country from the 90s did similar 3D transposing onto 2D backsets, albeit with the smart decision to have them carved from THE SAME STYLE. If this was an attempt by the developers to unsubtly explain how these individuals don’t fit on the island, then they ultimately failed to realize the negative aesthetic consequences that would come about from such a fusion.
In terms of viewing the duo on their own merits, first up are the horizons; a smeary blend of grim watercolors. They don’t quite bring to mind summerfests with friends you know you’ll grow apart from, but they do conjure up an atmosphere that befits a haunted locale (so it definitely benefits one aspect of the story). There isn’t too much detailing, which was probably a smart decision since you don’t spend an extended period of time in any one place (meaning it would’ve been a waste of assets/resources to conceive something that 99% of the player base would be oblivious to), and what is there is more than adequate for those that do give an extra discerning eye. A lot of the buildings and places feel like remnants of an abandoned town, with important items taken and the rest left to distill aimlessly in their original abodes- papers, shabby furniture, unpainted wood, dirty floors, etc...The haziness also gives an intentional/unintentional dreamlike quality to the whole area that makes the transitions into mystic craziness smooth and non-haphazard.
The characters, though, are not good looking. They’re colored well-enough that each holds a distinct wardrobe, but are ultimately 3D models that appear as though they were sculpted from hard clay. Not only do they appear like they don’t belong here, they also move and turn with an uncanny smoothness typical of early-3D animation (there were times where I swear their feet weren’t even touching the ground while walking!).
Illumination, though used sporadically, is surprisingly well done. Unfortunately, it’s hampered by poor shadowmapping, which consists of a single dark circle around everyone’s feet. One thing that I was genuinely shocked to see so beautifully executed were reflections. Like lighting, there are only a few places where it’s implemented (lakes, mirrors), but it’s a perfect 1-1 image. Even when you pull out your radio to discharge signals, the lights reflect on a surface!
Moving onto the music, I genuinely wasn’t a big fan. Some of the tracks are fine, but the vast majority feel so out of place: it’s like the composer was trying to create a synthesizer carnival under a gloomy motif, and the end result is so borderline grating, it partly took away from the emotional pull of the dialogues. The worst part is (and this is a criticism of the game in general) you can’t adjust any of the sound settings to lower the music/up the SFX, meaning you’re stuck with the default settings- same applies to other facets like brightness and contrasting, basic functions that I thought were standardized at this point in time.
On that note, SFX is slightly below adequate. Because of the aforementioned poor sound editing, a lot of the SFX, like footsteps, can barely be heard, but what I did discern was good enough (keep in mind there are a lot of reused auditoral assets like doors being opened and paranormal reactions to your radio).
The voice acting, as I said before, is solid for the most part. The VAs are all talented, but lackluster ADR direction hurt the delivery of their more frantic lines.
Gameplay-wise, Oxenfree is essentially a walking sim (what is masked these days as a “graphic adventure”). To be clear, I am a fan of this genre, but it means you don’t have much in the way of gameplay, which actually hurts Oxenfree as there were opportunities to implement puzzles. Most of the progression, for example, consists of tuning a hand radio to a specific broadcast to trigger an event- why not make a minigame or minigames out of it, similar to the Security Access Tuner in Alien: Isolation or the Cryptographic Sequencer from the Arkham Series? Turning it into a pure radio was lost potential.
One thing that is kinda appreciable is that characters move realistically- when you’re going up a slope, they’ll walk slower, whilst going down will cause them to angle themselves so that they don’t trip over. And considering games like AC Origins haven’t done something as elementary as this, it is impressive. However, movement speed can get lethargic as a result, with stairs in particular bringing back painful memories of me playing Syberia.
Outside of the story, there are two forms of collectibles that serve as side content. The first are secret frequencies that can only be found by literally holding out your radio constantly and walking around till the signal gets red. The second are hidden letters from the island’s late sole resident that detail her and her friend’s own investigations into the supernatural going on here. The latter were interesting to read, but I chose not to bother finding them because the only way to discover them is through looking on the screen for small moments of flash ala the original Pokemon games, which is not fun. Also, their content should’ve been incorporated into the story since they provide valuable information for the protagonists.
So yeah, overall I was not a fan of Oxenfree. Great voice acting and conversations are hurt by a story that bounces between two extremes which don’t naturally fit together, a distracting music score, and mismatched ADR direction. There is a New Game Plus, but I don’t see myself replaying this in the future.
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+So the way the two narratives “technically” connect is by way of a sporadic time travel thing that sends Alex back to her childhood where she gets to relive her last days with her brother before he drowned. The temporal concept was NOT fleshed out at all. In general, the antagonists, a band of ghost sailormen who died when a nuclear submarine went under, quickly go from being sympathetic to utterly annoying. Conversations with them reveal they have a deep philosophical understanding of the universe, as well as control over spacetime, yet they literally don’t do anything with all this power except throw dumb gimmicks at you or place Alex in a loop that can easily be broken. And before you retort that this is simply another example of the all-powerful deity choosing to just mess with humanity, the spirits repeatedly make clear that they want to be free from this eternal torment and can only break loose via stopping Alex. Yet at the same time, there are instances where they blatantly state they can do whatever they want, don’t need Alex’s compliance, and are just toying with her.
So, what the hell is going on exactly? Did none of the writers actually take the time to see how stupid they made their grand villain? If you want them to be this incomprehensible magical entity, then you have to give a logical reason for them not being able to go through with their evil plan. Acknowledging that there are no limitations on them and then choosing to HAVE THEM abide by said limitations with no explanation is ridiculous. Giving them incredible powers that they only use to play I Spy is beyond silly.
And I didn’t even understand why Alex was being sent back in time. If there was an explanation, I apologize for missing it, but even then, the fact that Oxenfree gives you the option to save your brother honestly irked me.While I hate the Flashpoint trope of a deceased character needing to stay dead for the sake of preserving the sanctity of today, the ethics of altering time and creating a butterfly effect are just as potent on the other end of the spectrum (i.e. saving someone). The fact that Oxenfree treats it as a willy-nilly thing that causes pure a black/white reaction in the present-day bothered me: there’s no exploration of the morality of doing so. It would’ve been better if they’d just avoided it in general.
If I can end on a positive note, it’s that I liked how Oxenfree put your Steam profile picture on the title menu and your Steam username during the endgame when you take over the reflection.
Ah, what a disappointment Fahrenheit was. Actually, disappointment is too strong a word since the opening scene more than lowered my standards for what was to come.
To give some backstory, I loved Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain. It was a terrific neo-noir thriller with beautiful graphics, memorable characters, and satisfying controls. As such, I was keen on playing David Cage's debut into the interactive drama genre with Fahrenheit. Having been warned in advance that the first 2/3s were great, last 1/3 terrible, I kind of went in with reserved expectations- rarely are the heights as praiseworthy as they are and the lows as terrible as they are.
And so this philosophy turned out to be true. Fahrenheit starts off mediocre, grows a little better, before falling off a cliff (in some ways literally). Before delving into my critique, I fully concede that this game was not going to be for me as I've never been a big fan of supernatural mysteries. The problem is, whenever you incorporate a metaphysical or unnatural aspect into your game world, it makes it hard to establish a good grounding for the mystery. If magic exists, for example, why should there be any evidence left of the crime? Fantasy introduces rules and figures outside our realm of understanding, and because they are unpredictable they inherently force writers to do one of two things: one, have an asspull wherein a plot development occurs out of thin air or a character becomes a master of these unsaid rules, or two, have their be no resolution and the ending a grimdark eternal slumber.
Note that I am only referring to works with a heavy fantasy slant. Obviously lighter ones like Death Note pulled off the occult detective trope well enough without seeming contrived. But for any other tale told under a Gothically enchanting purview, the results are rarely good and never logical.
Such happened with Fahrenheit, and I'll start with the beginning. Everyone praises this as one of the best opener in a video game, but I don't understand why. Main character Lucas Kane is shown to be possessed, walk out of a bathroom stall, and stab a fellow occupant multiple times to death.
All the problems with the rest of the game can be extrapolated from this scene, starting with the janky animations. Animations are VERY inconsistent, and yes, I understand this was from the PS2 era, but Cage was well-aware of that when he decided the limited technology could somehow depict the specific movements he wanted. Walking/running, using objects, and body language all look fine, but many important actions like fighting, dodging, intimacy, holding, and Lucas's possession here are silly to gaze it. Whenever you run into one of the latter, they take you out of the game by way of how uncanny they look, which is a shame considering around 70% of them are solid.
Second are the graphics. Art design has never been an issue in Quantic Dream games, and here a lot of effort was put into creating each explorable hub, and this bathroom is a great sample of things to come. You have cracking on the walls, mildew stains, dampness, dryness, a black/grey/white color scheme, and clothes that don't look out of place. The many locales you will have to traverse, from a bookstore to a laundromat to even the inside of an orphanage are all splendidly done.
And yet, all that design is for naught when you see how hugely inconsistent the texturing is. It's not like with The Witcher 2 where I could pinpoint which materials were shortcutted and which weren't- here, you could have a stone road that looks great in one scene only to suddenly become blurry when you look have to cross it again hours later. Sometimes environs appear well-realized, only to falter upon closer inspection, and those that are well-realized are hampered by the hazy work around them. It made me wonder if this was more of a rendering issue than a design one as it made no sense why things varied this much.
Skin (and really human models in general) is another great example of this wavering quality. Some characters like Carla, Markus, Agatha, and Lucas in the first half have all aged decently- effort was put into making their faces fleshy, hair natural looking, and body types humanoid. But others, like Tyler, the kids, Sam, and Lucas in the second half look awful. Their skin molds weirdly around their eyes, giving them a zombie-like visage, their bodies have geometrical oddities that give them that ugly PS1-polygon look, and their hair feels very sparsely developed.
Even if we ignore the graphics, the worst offender from that opening is the incorporation of the supernatural facets. There's no easing into it- right from the beginning you're spoiled that Lucas has been possessed or brainwashed. What if Indigo Prophecy had instead opened with Lucas's awakening from the stall and seeing the dead body and its trail of blood leading to him? Not only would it have been tense, but it would've cast doubt from both the player and Lucas on Lucas's innocence.
No, instead you get a silly looking Exorcist-ripoff that instantly makes you realize that there is something otherworldy going on here.
That's not to say that it's all downhill from here. Once you accept that Fahrenheit is not going to be grounded like Heavy Rain, it becomes an enjoyable ride. Lucas's quest to uncover the dark arts that brought him to this point in his life has an old-school charm to it, one that is helped by the fact that he's a very likable character. In fact, that's something I can say about everyone- all the main characters start off being very likable, despite their differing archetypes.
But the story does falter at a specific part. I can't talk about it without going into spoilers, but what I will say is that it involves Lucas trying to save someone and ends with him descending back to the ground. It is after here that most people bring up the abysmal third act: the third of the game that felt rushed, sloppy, and ridiculous even by the previous standards.
Listen, as someone who didn't think the first half+ was that great, I didn't find the final third to be drastically different, largely because the issues in it exist beforehand: the superpowered fights, replacement of drama with fantasy mumbo-jumbo, and character interactions becoming less and less integral. Don't get me wrong, that last third has serious problems, from a laughably bad romance to a fight that's ripped straight from The Matrix sequels, but it's not this massive balldrop that others have made it out to be.
But overall, the story just isn't good. Whatever moments of genuine tension, drama, and comedy there are are outweighed by bland, silly, or poorly-thought out ones. There are many choices you can make in the game, but none of them have any significant impact on the story as the multiple endings are only dictated by things that happen in the final chapter (I will say that, unlike Mass Effect and Life is Strange, Fahrenheit doesn't go out of its way to claim that your choices will matter). And none of this is taking into account the gameplay flaws that hurt the story even more.
See, Fahrenheit came up with this idea to make action beats purely conducted through one of two methods: either doing a DDR-style button (keyboard/mouse) or joystick (controller) Simon Says response wherein you have to mimic the on-screen prompts within a set time frame. This would be boring enough on its own, but some genius at QD decided that these prompts should be in the middle of the screen, meaning you can't even enjoy the action on screen or see what you are successfully making your character do. Why waste time and money into choreographing these scenes if the player can't even view them? If I'm getting more enjoyment from watching an LP than I am from PLAYING your game, you've done something wrong.
The second minigame involves rapidly hitting the bumpers back and forth repeatedly. On the plus side, this interface is positioned at the bottom of the screen, meaning you can actually see what you're doing. On the downside, it will hurt your fingers after just a couple of times since you have to do it for up to a 20 seconds at a time. Also, it's not fun and gets tiresome quickly.
The rest of the gameplay is alright. I liked that cinematic camera angles you could cycle your camera through, showcasing that Cage does at least have an eye for filmmaking. However, this had the effect of sometimes affecting my character's movement since the directional keys change depending on the angle of the camera, and it wouldn't fully process to the next one in time to make the readjustment. But this wasn't as frequent as some critics have made it out to be. Likewise, the dreaded "stealth" sections in the game are few and not as bad as you would believe.
The soundscape exists and is unique enough to not feel repetitious, but it lacks gravitas. They could've made the SFX louder as I don't recall hearing anything particularly memorable. The OST is terrific all around, conveying the somber quality of the decaying world around you without jumping into a full-scale Fantasia-esque orchestra. That being said, I didn't like that tracks for action, the happy-go-lucky beats (boxing, ice skating, b-ball), and romance were repeated instead of unique ones being composed for each new scene.
Some minor graphical things I have to praise- characters breathing frost breath and leaving footprints in the snow.
Some minor graphical things I have to criticize- no bullets when a gun fires them.
The last major point of contention I have is the amount of self-pretentiousness present in the game. The opening tutorial has Cage voice a fictionalized version of himself as a "director" giving the player guidance. You remember the sarcastic tutorials provided by Bruce Campbell in the Spider-Man trilogy game adaptations? Yeah, remove the wit and self-aware sardonicism from those and you have Cage's version here.
Not only that, but he inserts himself into news stories present in the game as yet another filmmaker who offers insight into what's going on in the world. And then there's Quantic Dream being a basketball team (or high school basketball team) in the game, as though we needed that.
But yeah, overall Fahrenheit was not a good game. Inconsistent visuals, a lackluster story, and distracting QTEs that detract from what's happening on screen make up the bulk of why this isn't a title worth playing.
To give some backstory, I loved Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain. It was a terrific neo-noir thriller with beautiful graphics, memorable characters, and satisfying controls. As such, I was keen on playing David Cage's debut into the interactive drama genre with Fahrenheit. Having been warned in advance that the first 2/3s were great, last 1/3 terrible, I kind of went in with reserved expectations- rarely are the heights as praiseworthy as they are and the lows as terrible as they are.
And so this philosophy turned out to be true. Fahrenheit starts off mediocre, grows a little better, before falling off a cliff (in some ways literally). Before delving into my critique, I fully concede that this game was not going to be for me as I've never been a big fan of supernatural mysteries. The problem is, whenever you incorporate a metaphysical or unnatural aspect into your game world, it makes it hard to establish a good grounding for the mystery. If magic exists, for example, why should there be any evidence left of the crime? Fantasy introduces rules and figures outside our realm of understanding, and because they are unpredictable they inherently force writers to do one of two things: one, have an asspull wherein a plot development occurs out of thin air or a character becomes a master of these unsaid rules, or two, have their be no resolution and the ending a grimdark eternal slumber.
Note that I am only referring to works with a heavy fantasy slant. Obviously lighter ones like Death Note pulled off the occult detective trope well enough without seeming contrived. But for any other tale told under a Gothically enchanting purview, the results are rarely good and never logical.
Such happened with Fahrenheit, and I'll start with the beginning. Everyone praises this as one of the best opener in a video game, but I don't understand why. Main character Lucas Kane is shown to be possessed, walk out of a bathroom stall, and stab a fellow occupant multiple times to death.
All the problems with the rest of the game can be extrapolated from this scene, starting with the janky animations. Animations are VERY inconsistent, and yes, I understand this was from the PS2 era, but Cage was well-aware of that when he decided the limited technology could somehow depict the specific movements he wanted. Walking/running, using objects, and body language all look fine, but many important actions like fighting, dodging, intimacy, holding, and Lucas's possession here are silly to gaze it. Whenever you run into one of the latter, they take you out of the game by way of how uncanny they look, which is a shame considering around 70% of them are solid.
Second are the graphics. Art design has never been an issue in Quantic Dream games, and here a lot of effort was put into creating each explorable hub, and this bathroom is a great sample of things to come. You have cracking on the walls, mildew stains, dampness, dryness, a black/grey/white color scheme, and clothes that don't look out of place. The many locales you will have to traverse, from a bookstore to a laundromat to even the inside of an orphanage are all splendidly done.
And yet, all that design is for naught when you see how hugely inconsistent the texturing is. It's not like with The Witcher 2 where I could pinpoint which materials were shortcutted and which weren't- here, you could have a stone road that looks great in one scene only to suddenly become blurry when you look have to cross it again hours later. Sometimes environs appear well-realized, only to falter upon closer inspection, and those that are well-realized are hampered by the hazy work around them. It made me wonder if this was more of a rendering issue than a design one as it made no sense why things varied this much.
Skin (and really human models in general) is another great example of this wavering quality. Some characters like Carla, Markus, Agatha, and Lucas in the first half have all aged decently- effort was put into making their faces fleshy, hair natural looking, and body types humanoid. But others, like Tyler, the kids, Sam, and Lucas in the second half look awful. Their skin molds weirdly around their eyes, giving them a zombie-like visage, their bodies have geometrical oddities that give them that ugly PS1-polygon look, and their hair feels very sparsely developed.
Even if we ignore the graphics, the worst offender from that opening is the incorporation of the supernatural facets. There's no easing into it- right from the beginning you're spoiled that Lucas has been possessed or brainwashed. What if Indigo Prophecy had instead opened with Lucas's awakening from the stall and seeing the dead body and its trail of blood leading to him? Not only would it have been tense, but it would've cast doubt from both the player and Lucas on Lucas's innocence.
No, instead you get a silly looking Exorcist-ripoff that instantly makes you realize that there is something otherworldy going on here.
That's not to say that it's all downhill from here. Once you accept that Fahrenheit is not going to be grounded like Heavy Rain, it becomes an enjoyable ride. Lucas's quest to uncover the dark arts that brought him to this point in his life has an old-school charm to it, one that is helped by the fact that he's a very likable character. In fact, that's something I can say about everyone- all the main characters start off being very likable, despite their differing archetypes.
But the story does falter at a specific part. I can't talk about it without going into spoilers, but what I will say is that it involves Lucas trying to save someone and ends with him descending back to the ground. It is after here that most people bring up the abysmal third act: the third of the game that felt rushed, sloppy, and ridiculous even by the previous standards.
Listen, as someone who didn't think the first half+ was that great, I didn't find the final third to be drastically different, largely because the issues in it exist beforehand: the superpowered fights, replacement of drama with fantasy mumbo-jumbo, and character interactions becoming less and less integral. Don't get me wrong, that last third has serious problems, from a laughably bad romance to a fight that's ripped straight from The Matrix sequels, but it's not this massive balldrop that others have made it out to be.
But overall, the story just isn't good. Whatever moments of genuine tension, drama, and comedy there are are outweighed by bland, silly, or poorly-thought out ones. There are many choices you can make in the game, but none of them have any significant impact on the story as the multiple endings are only dictated by things that happen in the final chapter (I will say that, unlike Mass Effect and Life is Strange, Fahrenheit doesn't go out of its way to claim that your choices will matter). And none of this is taking into account the gameplay flaws that hurt the story even more.
See, Fahrenheit came up with this idea to make action beats purely conducted through one of two methods: either doing a DDR-style button (keyboard/mouse) or joystick (controller) Simon Says response wherein you have to mimic the on-screen prompts within a set time frame. This would be boring enough on its own, but some genius at QD decided that these prompts should be in the middle of the screen, meaning you can't even enjoy the action on screen or see what you are successfully making your character do. Why waste time and money into choreographing these scenes if the player can't even view them? If I'm getting more enjoyment from watching an LP than I am from PLAYING your game, you've done something wrong.
The second minigame involves rapidly hitting the bumpers back and forth repeatedly. On the plus side, this interface is positioned at the bottom of the screen, meaning you can actually see what you're doing. On the downside, it will hurt your fingers after just a couple of times since you have to do it for up to a 20 seconds at a time. Also, it's not fun and gets tiresome quickly.
The rest of the gameplay is alright. I liked that cinematic camera angles you could cycle your camera through, showcasing that Cage does at least have an eye for filmmaking. However, this had the effect of sometimes affecting my character's movement since the directional keys change depending on the angle of the camera, and it wouldn't fully process to the next one in time to make the readjustment. But this wasn't as frequent as some critics have made it out to be. Likewise, the dreaded "stealth" sections in the game are few and not as bad as you would believe.
The soundscape exists and is unique enough to not feel repetitious, but it lacks gravitas. They could've made the SFX louder as I don't recall hearing anything particularly memorable. The OST is terrific all around, conveying the somber quality of the decaying world around you without jumping into a full-scale Fantasia-esque orchestra. That being said, I didn't like that tracks for action, the happy-go-lucky beats (boxing, ice skating, b-ball), and romance were repeated instead of unique ones being composed for each new scene.
Some minor graphical things I have to praise- characters breathing frost breath and leaving footprints in the snow.
Some minor graphical things I have to criticize- no bullets when a gun fires them.
The last major point of contention I have is the amount of self-pretentiousness present in the game. The opening tutorial has Cage voice a fictionalized version of himself as a "director" giving the player guidance. You remember the sarcastic tutorials provided by Bruce Campbell in the Spider-Man trilogy game adaptations? Yeah, remove the wit and self-aware sardonicism from those and you have Cage's version here.
Not only that, but he inserts himself into news stories present in the game as yet another filmmaker who offers insight into what's going on in the world. And then there's Quantic Dream being a basketball team (or high school basketball team) in the game, as though we needed that.
But yeah, overall Fahrenheit was not a good game. Inconsistent visuals, a lackluster story, and distracting QTEs that detract from what's happening on screen make up the bulk of why this isn't a title worth playing.
2017
Cosmic Star Heroine made me realize that relying on pure creativity and energy doesn't work for a video game. Anyone who is a fan of Rick & Morty (and not a part of the crazy fandom) is probably aware that the main reason the show has hit a stride is due to its blatant creativity- it's not that the stories are particularly original (although a number of them certainly are), it's more that the animators beautifully pastiche so many cool visual gags/action beats into a single 23 minute episode that you can't help but admire the fiesta on screen!
The same applies for movies. Avatar is most notorious for this, but how many films have garnered high praise (or at least strong cult followings) for their imaginative bliss despite not being the best storywise? The answer is a lot, even for flicks I genuinely love like Dredd.
Cosmic Star Heroine tries to do the same. In a lot of ways, I consider it a 2D version of Mass Effect 1. Both are space operas centered around a galactic law enforcement officer; both feature vast mythologies and races; both contain narratives/gameplay systems reliant on building a team, and both contain elevator loading screens!
But it's really that second one that hammers home my point. Drawing a comparison to Mass Effect is a big thing, and I stand by it 100%. CSH may very well be the most creative 2D turn-based RPG I have ever had the privilege to play. It throws set-piece after set-piece at you; artistic monstrosity after artistic monstrosity; new setting after setting. It truly lives up to the first two words in its title. And yet, it just isn't fun. The comparisons to Mass Effect are purely aesthetic as the gameplay and story don't equate at all.
Let's begin with the narrative. CSH casts you as Alyssa L'Salle, a member of a law enforcement agency called the API. Like an atypical cyberpunk tale, L'Salle is sent on a mission that causes her to question the API and her part in it. Story developments happen and a grand conspiracy is revealed, sending L'Salle and her comrades on an intergalactic journey to discover the truth.
I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, but the story ultimately isn't anything to write home about. Part of the issue is it plays all its cards within the first act- in Mass Effect, you were kept in the dark about Saren until well past the halfway point. In CSH, you'll already know what everyone is up to (or at least have a very strong idea based on past tropes/tales implemented in other games of this nature).
The bigger flaw, however, has to do with how short the game is. You should expect a minimum of 50 hours from a JRPG, even with the grinding aside. CSH has no grind, but it clocks in at less than 17 hours (the amount of time I took anyway- others may vary). This is not even close to the clock needed to expand on the world or side characters.
With the former, that's a big issue overall as CSH isn't really interested in fleshing out any of its aspects. You'll see tens of new concepts, races, species, abilities, pieces of lore, histories, etc...and only get glimpses into their intricacies. To be fair, Mass Effect did the same, but it made up for this by providing an encyclopedia and side missions/characters whose dialogues expanded upon these things when the main narrative didn't. CSH doesn't have an encyclopedia, and its NPCs give quick blurbs. Things like the Nuluupian's views on the afterlife, the existence of vampires, the logic behind gunmancy (all character powers in general), or the desolate history behind Araenu are barely imparted to you.
Your partners are the biggest letdown. Zeboyd Games was so focused on making all of them likable that it forgot to give them distinct personalities. They're either bland smartasses or bland straight-shooters, with no in-between. In Mass Effect, you were encouraged to seek your partners throughout the ship via their personalities being so distinct, enjoyable, and interesting. I didn't have that same draw here, with the exception of a cool bounty hunter who joins later on. This hurts considering that most of them give information about a new side mission - information that is time-sensitive.
But the gameplay is what the majority of JRPG fans will be most interested in, and that's sadly where CSH falters the most. I mentioned that there was no grind, which may remind some folks of Chrono Trigger- a title that was acclaimed for removing the grinding nature atypical of its genre (especially at the time). It did it through providing just enough enemies in an area that you could level up comfortably, as well as making boss fights strategy-based over bullet sponges.
CSH fails to do both. There are no respawning enemies: when you clear an area, it remains cleared unless a new narrative threat is brought in down-the-line. In its place, you have monsters that are essentially bullet spongey. Status affects like poison, stun, and charm exist, but most of these beings contain a resistance factor that negates this ability. And even if it does hit, it only lasts one turn, barely giving any advantage, especially if you're up against multiple thugs (poison being the exception- it lasts the entire battle [minus heals], but it barely does any damage on its own, so it doesn't matter). There's really no strategy to any fights the way there was in Chrono Trigger- you essentially have to use most of your team members to attack whilst the other one(s) heals. Even elemental advantages (which hovering over an enemy reveals) maybe rack up an extra 200 damage max, which is peanuts for these fights.
The only other option is buffing. To clarify, CSH has a charge or style meter that builds up over each character's turn- if it fills up, your character's damage is extended (not even inherently doubled, although it can be depending on external factors like element). You can increase a character's attack power through partner boosts or item boosts, thereby buffing them to do a ton of damage. But again, this is a one-time thing, and the enemy will more than likely have more than enough health to batter you.
It's not that CSH heroine is hard, it's that it's only hard or easy. There are 4 difficulties: the bottom two make the game way too simple and the top 4th makes it too hard. The middle ground is theoretically the 3rd (which is what I did it at for most of my playthrough), but you will run into so many parts during the game (particularly after the first third) wherein a miniboss or specific group of enemies are capable of spamming high damage on ALL your members, causing you to get mowed down easily. Your only choice? Turn down the difficulty. While CSH lets you restart a battle from there, you are only able to turn down the difficulty outside of the battle mode. And considering the spikes are inconsistent, you could very well not plan your saves well, meaning it's best to just save after every major encounter. Oh, and unlike Chrono Trigger, you’re unable to do combo-attacks between characters (L’Salle is the only exception, but she requires a specific item to be equipped on her).
Each character has a diversity of unique powers at their disposal that can make fights fun if only to try them all out, and leveling up gives you new abilities that you swap around (7 slots total per a character). Enemies, on the other hand, are very limited outside of boss fights- they'll have 1, if you're lucky 2, attacks, showcasing a surprising lack of initiative from a team that was brimming from head-to-heel with imagination.
Overall though, this combat system is very frustrating and makes fights not fun. I like a challenge in my games, but when you have no way to either strategize or grind to level-up, it leaves you with a system full of difficulty spikes that can only be alleviated by permanently keeping the difficulty low, which makes the game too easy! And considering there is no New Game+ mode, I don't see how it is possible to play CSH at higher difficulties. Hell, there is even a dungeon that is insanely hard on the EASIEST mode. With no way to level up, how in the world are you expected to beat it on any difficulty?
The short length of the game provides an additional harbinger onto the story- throughout the 13 chapters, you’re often forced to take on a new partner who, while matched to your current level, has abilities that flat-out suck in the battle scenario. Yet you’re forced to use them over the other partners you have been dedicating time to upgrading/customizing.
The loot/equipment system is abysmal as well. It's ridiculously old-school in that every new planet you explore contains a store with the latest equipment, meaning you'll want to buy it out to give your characters the best of the best. Or will you? See, immediately continuing the story/exploring after visiting that store will, 9 times out of 10, give you a weapon that is EVEN BETTER than the one you just bought from the store. I have no idea what the developers were thinking here. Thank goodness money (credits) is easy to come by, otherwise this would be a serious design flaw. Also, some idiot decided to put an Arete lootbox in the very last level (when you play the game, you’ll realize why this is idiotic).
Equipment can provide decent stat boosts, but it’s usually minimal (and doesn’t change the character sprite on-screen). You can also recruit people onto your ship that provide team boosts, but the majority of their recruitment is shoved into the third act, and there’s no way of knowing how to get them besides revisiting past planets Metroidvania style and TALKING to them (which you probably won’t be inclined to do since the majority of them don't stand out).
Graphically, the game is very beautiful. I loved the anime-esque style utilized for the human characters, while the aliens are all unique- again, it really is a 2D Mass Effect. Unfortunately, CSH has a serious problem with portraying 3D spacing, particularly verticality (read my review of Verdant Village and imagine that verticality issue 3x worse [https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/video-game-review-verdant-village/). Also, for all the creativity of the different cities/societies, I couldn’t help but feel that the color palette was lacking at times. Araenu is the one exception- every other place tends to be built around a three-hue scheme max.
The music OST is good- it tends to not stick out much, but when it does it’s excellent and when it’s not it’s soothing. The problem is there isn’t enough- a lot of areas, especially later in the title, have the same motifs playing through multiple stages despite them being different parts visually. Also, the battle theme is kept the same sadly.
Sound effects, on the other hand, are very lacking. The same elemental sound is reused for every attack of the same nature, despite them being radically different (ex. a laser sounds like a slap).
So yeah, overall I did not enjoy Cosmic Star Heroine. It has a lotta zaniness going for it, and throws so many things at you that you’re bound to be invigorated by the action viscera. But it doesn’t have a story strong enough to carry your interest (with an ending that tacks on a potential sequel), the characters are likable but bland, and the combat system gets atrociously inconsistent and, with the lack of strategy, VERY repetitive. And considering you’ll have to go out of your way to find the side missions, it sucks that there is no motivation to go out and talk to people, especially those on your ship (and even then it’s time-sensitive, and without in-game journal to jot down what the character said, you’ll have to write it up separately lest you forget it and lose out on a semi-invigorating action beat).
Like I said, it took me around 17 hours to beat it (Steam shows 19, but I fell asleep for about 1.5-2 of those hours, meaning they don’t count). This includes me going out of my way to find the side content (or rather, looking up how to find it since the game is so obtuse with regards to directions). Regardless, at $15.00, you’re getting your money’s worth since there is definitely at least 8 hours from the story alone.
But my issue here isn’t with the amount of content, it’s with the lack of funness. CSH wasn’t enjoyable because of all the reasons listed above, and due to that, I personally cannot recommend it.
The same applies for movies. Avatar is most notorious for this, but how many films have garnered high praise (or at least strong cult followings) for their imaginative bliss despite not being the best storywise? The answer is a lot, even for flicks I genuinely love like Dredd.
Cosmic Star Heroine tries to do the same. In a lot of ways, I consider it a 2D version of Mass Effect 1. Both are space operas centered around a galactic law enforcement officer; both feature vast mythologies and races; both contain narratives/gameplay systems reliant on building a team, and both contain elevator loading screens!
But it's really that second one that hammers home my point. Drawing a comparison to Mass Effect is a big thing, and I stand by it 100%. CSH may very well be the most creative 2D turn-based RPG I have ever had the privilege to play. It throws set-piece after set-piece at you; artistic monstrosity after artistic monstrosity; new setting after setting. It truly lives up to the first two words in its title. And yet, it just isn't fun. The comparisons to Mass Effect are purely aesthetic as the gameplay and story don't equate at all.
Let's begin with the narrative. CSH casts you as Alyssa L'Salle, a member of a law enforcement agency called the API. Like an atypical cyberpunk tale, L'Salle is sent on a mission that causes her to question the API and her part in it. Story developments happen and a grand conspiracy is revealed, sending L'Salle and her comrades on an intergalactic journey to discover the truth.
I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, but the story ultimately isn't anything to write home about. Part of the issue is it plays all its cards within the first act- in Mass Effect, you were kept in the dark about Saren until well past the halfway point. In CSH, you'll already know what everyone is up to (or at least have a very strong idea based on past tropes/tales implemented in other games of this nature).
The bigger flaw, however, has to do with how short the game is. You should expect a minimum of 50 hours from a JRPG, even with the grinding aside. CSH has no grind, but it clocks in at less than 17 hours (the amount of time I took anyway- others may vary). This is not even close to the clock needed to expand on the world or side characters.
With the former, that's a big issue overall as CSH isn't really interested in fleshing out any of its aspects. You'll see tens of new concepts, races, species, abilities, pieces of lore, histories, etc...and only get glimpses into their intricacies. To be fair, Mass Effect did the same, but it made up for this by providing an encyclopedia and side missions/characters whose dialogues expanded upon these things when the main narrative didn't. CSH doesn't have an encyclopedia, and its NPCs give quick blurbs. Things like the Nuluupian's views on the afterlife, the existence of vampires, the logic behind gunmancy (all character powers in general), or the desolate history behind Araenu are barely imparted to you.
Your partners are the biggest letdown. Zeboyd Games was so focused on making all of them likable that it forgot to give them distinct personalities. They're either bland smartasses or bland straight-shooters, with no in-between. In Mass Effect, you were encouraged to seek your partners throughout the ship via their personalities being so distinct, enjoyable, and interesting. I didn't have that same draw here, with the exception of a cool bounty hunter who joins later on. This hurts considering that most of them give information about a new side mission - information that is time-sensitive.
But the gameplay is what the majority of JRPG fans will be most interested in, and that's sadly where CSH falters the most. I mentioned that there was no grind, which may remind some folks of Chrono Trigger- a title that was acclaimed for removing the grinding nature atypical of its genre (especially at the time). It did it through providing just enough enemies in an area that you could level up comfortably, as well as making boss fights strategy-based over bullet sponges.
CSH fails to do both. There are no respawning enemies: when you clear an area, it remains cleared unless a new narrative threat is brought in down-the-line. In its place, you have monsters that are essentially bullet spongey. Status affects like poison, stun, and charm exist, but most of these beings contain a resistance factor that negates this ability. And even if it does hit, it only lasts one turn, barely giving any advantage, especially if you're up against multiple thugs (poison being the exception- it lasts the entire battle [minus heals], but it barely does any damage on its own, so it doesn't matter). There's really no strategy to any fights the way there was in Chrono Trigger- you essentially have to use most of your team members to attack whilst the other one(s) heals. Even elemental advantages (which hovering over an enemy reveals) maybe rack up an extra 200 damage max, which is peanuts for these fights.
The only other option is buffing. To clarify, CSH has a charge or style meter that builds up over each character's turn- if it fills up, your character's damage is extended (not even inherently doubled, although it can be depending on external factors like element). You can increase a character's attack power through partner boosts or item boosts, thereby buffing them to do a ton of damage. But again, this is a one-time thing, and the enemy will more than likely have more than enough health to batter you.
It's not that CSH heroine is hard, it's that it's only hard or easy. There are 4 difficulties: the bottom two make the game way too simple and the top 4th makes it too hard. The middle ground is theoretically the 3rd (which is what I did it at for most of my playthrough), but you will run into so many parts during the game (particularly after the first third) wherein a miniboss or specific group of enemies are capable of spamming high damage on ALL your members, causing you to get mowed down easily. Your only choice? Turn down the difficulty. While CSH lets you restart a battle from there, you are only able to turn down the difficulty outside of the battle mode. And considering the spikes are inconsistent, you could very well not plan your saves well, meaning it's best to just save after every major encounter. Oh, and unlike Chrono Trigger, you’re unable to do combo-attacks between characters (L’Salle is the only exception, but she requires a specific item to be equipped on her).
Each character has a diversity of unique powers at their disposal that can make fights fun if only to try them all out, and leveling up gives you new abilities that you swap around (7 slots total per a character). Enemies, on the other hand, are very limited outside of boss fights- they'll have 1, if you're lucky 2, attacks, showcasing a surprising lack of initiative from a team that was brimming from head-to-heel with imagination.
Overall though, this combat system is very frustrating and makes fights not fun. I like a challenge in my games, but when you have no way to either strategize or grind to level-up, it leaves you with a system full of difficulty spikes that can only be alleviated by permanently keeping the difficulty low, which makes the game too easy! And considering there is no New Game+ mode, I don't see how it is possible to play CSH at higher difficulties. Hell, there is even a dungeon that is insanely hard on the EASIEST mode. With no way to level up, how in the world are you expected to beat it on any difficulty?
The short length of the game provides an additional harbinger onto the story- throughout the 13 chapters, you’re often forced to take on a new partner who, while matched to your current level, has abilities that flat-out suck in the battle scenario. Yet you’re forced to use them over the other partners you have been dedicating time to upgrading/customizing.
The loot/equipment system is abysmal as well. It's ridiculously old-school in that every new planet you explore contains a store with the latest equipment, meaning you'll want to buy it out to give your characters the best of the best. Or will you? See, immediately continuing the story/exploring after visiting that store will, 9 times out of 10, give you a weapon that is EVEN BETTER than the one you just bought from the store. I have no idea what the developers were thinking here. Thank goodness money (credits) is easy to come by, otherwise this would be a serious design flaw. Also, some idiot decided to put an Arete lootbox in the very last level (when you play the game, you’ll realize why this is idiotic).
Equipment can provide decent stat boosts, but it’s usually minimal (and doesn’t change the character sprite on-screen). You can also recruit people onto your ship that provide team boosts, but the majority of their recruitment is shoved into the third act, and there’s no way of knowing how to get them besides revisiting past planets Metroidvania style and TALKING to them (which you probably won’t be inclined to do since the majority of them don't stand out).
Graphically, the game is very beautiful. I loved the anime-esque style utilized for the human characters, while the aliens are all unique- again, it really is a 2D Mass Effect. Unfortunately, CSH has a serious problem with portraying 3D spacing, particularly verticality (read my review of Verdant Village and imagine that verticality issue 3x worse [https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2020/09/video-game-review-verdant-village/). Also, for all the creativity of the different cities/societies, I couldn’t help but feel that the color palette was lacking at times. Araenu is the one exception- every other place tends to be built around a three-hue scheme max.
The music OST is good- it tends to not stick out much, but when it does it’s excellent and when it’s not it’s soothing. The problem is there isn’t enough- a lot of areas, especially later in the title, have the same motifs playing through multiple stages despite them being different parts visually. Also, the battle theme is kept the same sadly.
Sound effects, on the other hand, are very lacking. The same elemental sound is reused for every attack of the same nature, despite them being radically different (ex. a laser sounds like a slap).
So yeah, overall I did not enjoy Cosmic Star Heroine. It has a lotta zaniness going for it, and throws so many things at you that you’re bound to be invigorated by the action viscera. But it doesn’t have a story strong enough to carry your interest (with an ending that tacks on a potential sequel), the characters are likable but bland, and the combat system gets atrociously inconsistent and, with the lack of strategy, VERY repetitive. And considering you’ll have to go out of your way to find the side missions, it sucks that there is no motivation to go out and talk to people, especially those on your ship (and even then it’s time-sensitive, and without in-game journal to jot down what the character said, you’ll have to write it up separately lest you forget it and lose out on a semi-invigorating action beat).
Like I said, it took me around 17 hours to beat it (Steam shows 19, but I fell asleep for about 1.5-2 of those hours, meaning they don’t count). This includes me going out of my way to find the side content (or rather, looking up how to find it since the game is so obtuse with regards to directions). Regardless, at $15.00, you’re getting your money’s worth since there is definitely at least 8 hours from the story alone.
But my issue here isn’t with the amount of content, it’s with the lack of funness. CSH wasn’t enjoyable because of all the reasons listed above, and due to that, I personally cannot recommend it.