Review: Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

This one has been a long time coming.  My friend got this for me around Christmas time and I told him I would review it as soon as I beat it.  Which is a deal I actually have ongoing.  If there is a game you would like me to review and I do own it, you can request it and I'll get right on doing so.  If I don't own it, you can send it my way and I shall drop what I'm currently playing for fun to get through it for a review.  But anyway on to Bloodlines.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (here on out referred to as Bloodlines) is a marvelous RPG from Troika Games, published by Activision.  Based off of the World of Darkness Live Action Roleplay and tabletop system, Bloodlines has you playing as a vampire in the World of Darkness universe.  The whole idea of the World of Darkness system is that you get to play as the things that go bump in the night, you are the monster and loving it.

The Tremere clan.  Blood sorcerers. 

As far as character creation goes, Bloodlines gives you plenty of options.  There are seven "clans", or races, of vampire that you can choose from.  Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses and special abilities that they can employ.  Nosferatu are sneaky and physically powerful and can gain more blood from animals than other clans can, however they are physically disfigured and therefore cannot improve their looks or have any skill in seduction.  Tremere have special access to blood magic.  Toreadors are socialites and are amazing at talking their way through situations.  Malkavians are plain crazy and are one of the most interesting clans to play (apparently there is literally a point where you can talk to a stop sign).  However if you don't know anything about any of them and just want to dive right into the game, there is an option to take a personality test that will generate a character based on your answers. The amount of replay value that this system provides is incredible.  Each clan is completely unique in terms of how they play and the experience you will have by playing as them.  In addition to gameplay mechanics being different for each, characters in the story will respond differently to your character depending on what clan you play as.

 Which brings us around to the story.  The story is fantastic.  It's engaging, rich, and actually makes you think about what you say to various NPCs.  There is a lot of politics going on in Bloodlines between the clans, and if you want to stay ahead you need to be careful about what you say and to who you say it.  Dialogue and your actions throughout the game will change the ending, but only in the sense of what options are available to you.  Otherwise it is still a push button to choose ending, which honestly is fine for this game.

Vampires DO NOT like fire.

So the story is good, what about the gameplay?  Gameplay is great.  The game can be played in first or third person, though sometimes it forces you into one or the other, namely first person when using a gun or other ranged weapon and third when using a melee weapon.  Honestly what I love the most about this game's gameplay is the fact that there is so much variety to it.  One level you may be busting in and knocking heads together and defending a location, another level may play out like a survival horror experience.  Then you're on to an investigation to track down a serial killer, then you need to manipulate someone into doing what your quest giver wants, then you may be off to steal an artifact without being noticed and without killing anyone.  This game is all over the map in terms of mission types.  But the great part is that it does all of them very well.  The variety does not affect the quality of each experience.  In addition, there is no set way to do each mission.  You could stealth your way through, talk your way through, even just bust in and start shooting.  It's up to you on how to do it, and the game will reward you for going the extra mile and finding creative ways to do missions and completing side objectives.  This adds even further replay value to the experience, testing out all the different ways you could go about doing a mission.

Blood sorcery is fun.  

In more specific terms of gameplay, most of the mechanics work really well in bloodlines.  Sneaking can actually be effective and the HUD provides a meter that tells you how likely you are to be spotted if you haven't been already.  Powers are fun and effective, having everything from mind control, to invisibility, to summoning spectral animals, to supernatural strength, to animal forms, even blood magic.  Everything has a purpose and everything works well, and as your powers and stats increase you really feel the change and the power growing.  Which brings me to character advancement.  Bloodlines uses a point buy system instead of the traditional level up system of most RPGs.  Each mission will give you experience points which you can then spend on improving stats, skills, or special powers.  You can also spend these points whenever you like, so if you encounter a challenge that you need more sneak for, or maybe need to be stronger, or more persuasive, or you just can't afford that new gun you want and need some more bartering, or can't quite open that lock, you can spend some points that you have lying around to get you past the challenge.  In addition to this we have the blood system.  Everything in Bloodlines revolves around blood.  You need blood to fuel your powers and you need blood to quickly recover health.  You can get blood by drinking from blood packs or directly feeding on humans or rats (though rats are not very effective, unless you're a nosferatu).  To feed on someone you can grab them, sink your fangs in, and have at it.  But if you want to do it this way you have to be very careful that you do it when no one else is around.  There is a system in place called the masquerade system.  If you are seen doing vampiric things outside of a combat zone, such as feeding or using obvious powers, you will violate the masquerade.  Each time you violate the masquerade, the world becomes a bit more dangerous.  Hunters will start coming after you and such which is a bad time for all involved.  You can get masquerade violations back by doing certain quests.  If you're in a combat zone, you're not at risk of violating the masquerade ever so go nuts.  However, if you really need blood and have a high enough seduction, you can seduce people to feed on them.  There is a good reason for all this feeding outside of the fact that you need blood for your powers.  If your blood drops to really low points, you risk going into a frenzy.  When you're frenzied, you lose control of your character entirely and an AI takes over that will fight and attempt to feed at all costs.  As it should sound, frenzy is really bad.  But you can avoid it by having a high humanity.  Humanity reduces the risk of frenzy, and the lower your humanity the greater the risk of frenzy.  You can get humanity from certain quests where you do "good" things for people, but you can lose humanity by killing people outside of combat zones and doing other "bad" things.  It sounds like a lot to keep track of, but it is relatively easy to do so and adds up to a very unique and enjoyable experience.

However, while this game may be excellent, there are some aspects that are not so excellent.  The main thing is combat.  The combat is...well lets just say it's pretty bad.  The gunplay is loose and iffy.  It doesn't really have a satisfying punch to it and gunfights turn out to be either you popping up out of cover to fire off a single shot, hope you hit, and drop back down before you get return fire to the face, or running backwards trying to fruitlessly hit an annoyingly fast melee combatant who will drop your health like a rock if he gets within striking distance.  Melee combat isn't much better.  If you're in melee combat you're already right up in an enemy's face, giving them an easy target to go for.  If you're going for ranged opponents they will just keep running away and unloading into you, making your health drop quite significantly before you can get a hit in.  The best you can hope for is to knock them over as part of your three hit combo and keep wailing on them and chaining knockdowns together.  In addition, the melee combat does not have much variety.  It pretty much boils down to mashing the attack button and hoping you can knock your opponent over.  The developers tried to mix it up by saying that you do different stuff if you hold down a movement key while doing your attacks, but they just feel like animation variations on the same three hit combo.  Overall, combat pretty much just boils down to exploiting the system as much as possible.

All in all, this game is amazing.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs or the World of Darkness as a tabletop/LARP.  Actually, I would recommend this game to just about everyone, it has a little something for all gamers.  The only people I could think to not recommend this to would be to people who would get impatient with the less than stellar combat and might give up easily from some of the problems this can cause.

As always, thanks for reading!  Leave a comment on your way out and if you'd like me to review a game or discuss a topic let me know in the comments!

Gamer out.

To the Table: Tabletop RPGs and Videogames

Sorry guys it has been a long while since I posted last.  Various things have barred me posting including final exams, Christmas, and New Years.  But now I am back and bringing you more discussions and reviews.  And for my first post of the new year I have a discussion about something near and dear to me: tabletop RPGs and how they relate to video-games.

So for those of you who don't know what a tabletop RPG is I'll refer you to the image at the top of the post.  Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular and well known tabletop RPGs in existence, so if you know about that then you know what a tabletop RPG is.  For those of you who don't know what that is I'll give a brief explanation.  A tabletop RPG is sort of a mash up of board game, RPG, and improv acting.   Players create characters with stats, abilities, equipment, etc and play through a story created by another person known as the GM, or Game Master. Players use dice to determine if their character succeeds in a task, varying from spotting things to picking locks to hitting and doing damage in combat.  If it sounds familiar it should, a tabletop is very similar to video-game RPGs.

However there is a key difference: tabletops are a tad more free form and loose in terms of what you can do in game.  See in a video-game you're sort of locked in in terms of how much interactivity there is with the world.  The game developers determine what all you can do in game and you can't do much else.  In a tabletop the only limit is what you can imagine and what the dice allow you to do.  So if you are interested in video-games it is not too much of a jump to try tabletop RPGs and you would most likely find them highly enjoyable.  But now on to the real topic of this post: how tabletop RPGs relate to video-games.

There is a surprisingly large number of video-games that are influenced by or directly made using the mechanics of tabletop RPGs.  Many of them are regarded as classics in the video-game industry.  I'll name a few: Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Shadowrun for the SNES, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, and the more recent Neverwinter and Shadowrun Returns.  All of these are based off varying tabletop systems and all are quite good games.  The video-game industry has a surprisingly long and lasting history with making tabletops into video-games.  There is good reason for this.  Tabletop RPGs provide developers with a world to work with and mechanics to translate into the game.  With these pieces already worked out the developers can just tell their story.

With these factors in mind, the tabletop industry makes a perfect wealth of source material for making video-games.  So the real question is why don't developers take advantage of this more?  They used to do it all the time.  There are tons of old Dungeons & Dragons based games and while games based off Vampire The Masquerade are few they are amazing.  But these are just a few of the vast number of tabletops in existence.  Tabletops can range from being high fantasy to dark horror to cyberpunk to steampunk to action/adventure to just plain old storytelling.  There is such a wide variety of tabletop systems that you could probably find a tabletop system for any sort of video-game you would like to do.  In fact there are tons of tabletop systems I would love to see made into video-games.

But this is also a two way street.  You could just as easily turn a video-game into a tabletop system and it would be gloriously fun.  It has been done before.  There is a final fantasy tabletop system in existence.  There is also a Pokemon tabletop that has been made and is quite fun.  There are not really any others that I know of, but there are plenty of video-games that I would love to see be made into tabletops.  For example, one of the DLCs for Borderlands 2 is basically a giant parody of Dungeons & Dragons, in which they made up their own tabletop system called Bunkers and Badasses.  That would be a fun tabletop to play!  And it could easily be done. Or how about a Legend of Zelda tabletop RPG?  Exploring and creating your own stories in Hyrule?  Playing as a goron, or a kokiri villager, or a Zora?  There are so many possibilities for turning video-games into tabletops.  In fact, if anyone could make these tabletops I would be extremely excited to playtest them.

In short, tabletops and video-games are very closely related.  They are both highly interactive mediums of storytelling and can mix between each other very easily.  Indeed, making more video-games based off of tabletops and more tabletops based off of video-games is a practice that should be encouraged and supported as much as possible.  As gamers it is our job to show what we want more of by showing our support and effort in making these things happen.

Thanks for reading as always.  I look forward to another year of discussion and review.  As always leave a comment in the posts and requests for reviews and topics of discussion are always appreciated.  Leave a comment about games that you think would make great tabletops or tabletops that you think would make great games!

Gamer out.

MMOs: A Reader Request

So yea, here's my first reader request post.  I thank everyone who commented and asked for a topic for me to talk about, you guys are awesome.  So here it is, let's get it underway.

When I was first asked to do a post about MMORPGs I thought to myself, huh, that's a really general request.  How do I approach this one?  I started thinking about the various aspects of MMOs and came to a realization that MMORPGs can do a wide variety of things with gameplay and story.  With that in mind, I am going to talk about how MMOs can provide so many different options for different gamer types within the framework of being an MMO.

The first point I'd like to make is what people think about when they think of MMOs.  We can all assume that most people first think of World of Warcraft or Everquest or even Runescape.  Fantasy RPGs with lots of level grinding, loot gathering, monster killing quotas, and other players.  People think of raids, grouping up with people, and fighting tons of monsters.  While this is fine, the problem comes in when developers try to do the exact same thing to somehow lure more players in to make a profit.  This makes for many an MMO that cannot be differentiated from each other and all are pretty bad and a waste of money.  However, nowadays developers are coming to realize that the best way to make money on the MMO market is to stand out with something profoundly different from what has come before.

Now let's talk about some examples.  First off is Secret World, an intriguing MMORPG from Funcom.  This game took some interesting steps forward with it's game design.  First off it decided to do away with classes.  In its place players were given the ability to point buy their way through weapon and magic trees to buy both passive and active skills.  Players can then create "decks", loadouts of 7 active skills and 7 passive skills.  To make your deck effective you need to equip skills that will play off each other effectively.  On top of this, they added a radically different sort of quest to the repertoire of mission types offered by MMOs.  It has your standard quest types of killing a certain number of monsters and gathering a certain number of items and defending areas, but on top of that Secret World adds investigation missions.  Investigation missions task you with solving in depth puzzles that usually require you to go outside the game to find the answers.  These missions require you to use your brain more than your mouse and it is a refreshing change of pace.  I also give props to Secret world for making objectives in the mission very organic.  Missions are broken down into multiple parts that flow into each other naturally.  Every piece makes sense and has a legitimate justification for happening.  Finally, Secret World gives a fresh setting for the MMO genre.  Most MMOs take place in a fantasy world.  Secret World on the other hand uses a modern fantasy world for the setting.  It may not change much in how things work, you still fight monsters and collect items and other familiar things, but the environment makes a huge difference.  Just seeing your character in regular jeans and a t-shirt, or interacting with normal people, or any number of factors just lends itself to a very new and fun to interact with sort of world that you can really feel connected with.  It's not some way out of reach fantasy world or crazy advanced sci fi land, it's our world with a twist, familiar enough to connect with but different enough to be fantastical.


Next up on the list is Firefall.  Firefall is a free to play MMO from Red 5.  They took a big jump away from the standard MMO formula by making the game a skill based shooter instead of a leveling and button pushing RPG like many before it.  The way Firefall works is you choose a class, then set off into a world where aliens are invading humanity's territory and it is your job to beat them back.  However Firefall does things slightly differently, even outside the whole shooter MMO deal.  First off you don't receive quests from quest givers.  There are quests, but your receive them in a slightly different manner.  Missions are dished out to everyone at any time.  They just pop up on the map and anyone can go do them as they like.  It adds a much more friendly tone to the game, making players join together organically instead of just forcing you to group up to take on a difficult fight or making it way more rewarding to do things on your own.  Another interesting addition in Firefall is mining.  Essentially you're given giant drills that you can lay down around the world to gather resources for crafting new equipment and upgrading the defenses of cities.  Everything is very organic and just works well.  On top of that: jetpacks.  Everyone gets jetpacks.  That right there is awesome and a valid selling point.

Finally just going to do a rapid fire of some notable MMOs that do things differently.

Planetside 2: first person shooter MMO.  Expands the idea of competitive multiplayer first person shooters into the MMO formula.  You are a soldier in a massive, planet sized war.  You can be one of 3 sides all fighting for territorial control.  Great idea for taking a very popular gameplay type and expanding it into giant scale battles of awesome and adding RPG elements as well.

Day Z:  Zombie apocalypse MMO.  Huge focus on survival and roguelike elements.  You need to eat, you need to drink.  You need to find weapons and supplies and you need to stay alive.  Zombies are scary, players are scarier.  You die and it's game over, start over.  Brutal, crazy, and a lot of fun to play.

Finally I want to look at where we're going with the MMO genre by taking a quick peek at Everquest Next.  I was never a big fan of the Everquest games, never really played them myself.  So when my friend told me to talk about Everquest Next I was a bit suspicious.  But now I'm a believer too.  First off EQ:N looks gorgeous.  It's like a moving water painting, beautiful in design.  On top of that, destruction physics.  Yes, everything is destroyable.  And the whole world is seamless.  WOW.  In addition, there is multiclassing.  Players start off with a base class with its own multi-tiered abilities and specialized weapon skills, but then players can acquire abilities from any of the other classes to make a truly unique character build.  There are no levels, so it seems like everything will be point buy.  If that wasn't enough, there are real, permanent consequences for player actions.  Players can fully affect and shape the world around them in permanent ways that dynamically affect the whole game world.   But wait, there's more.  NPCs in EQ:N will have more natural and nuanced behavior than just plain aggro.  Sometimes they'll go after an adventurer's gold instead of just because an adventurer wandered into their area.  These are not just static spawn points, these are decisions made by behavioral AI.  Lastly, every player will have their own unique story.  No predetermined funneling storyline quests here.  Players will have to go and hunt down adventure, finding opportunities to seek out fame, fortune, and adventure in the world.  The game will recognize what sorts of missions you prefer as you play and will adjust accordingly to allow for more things that YOU the player want to do.
All in all, the future looks very bright for MMOs.  Every one is unique, providing different games for different folks as it were.   And with Everquest: Next in the works, we can look forward to a whole new redefining of what it means to be an MMO nowadays.

Thanks for reading everybody.  Leave a comment to tell us what you think, or to even talk about MMOs that you like and think are unique.  If I forgot an MMO you think should be on the list tell me!  Also requests for new topics and games to review are always appreciated, as this proves I do in fact do them!

Gamer out.

Why I'm Not Excited About Next Gen

Ok, so we're all excited about the upcoming next generation of consoles right?  The Xbox One just came out recently and we're all getting geared up for new games on new hardware.  Everything is fresh, bright, and right in the world.  So before you all start rage quitting this discussion before it even begins let me preface this: it's probably not what you think, these systems are great, and just hold out until the end before you start commenting.  Got it?  Thanks.  Here we go.

So new consoles.  Gotta love em right?  And the xbox one and PS4 are some of the most powerful home consoles yet (shut up PC master race we all know how much you love your uber computers but that's not what we're talking about here).  With this new hardware we can push to new heights of what we can do with gaming.  Developers can do things that we never even dreamed possible with games before because the hardware can handle whatever we throw at it.  So....why don't they?

So far with the launch games I've heard about (throw some examples at me to prove me wrong please if I am, I'd like my excitement levels raised again) have just been the same old bleugh with prettier graphics.  Assassin's Creed 4 is just more of the same Assassin's Creed stuff, battlefield and Call of Duty never change so that's no different, and other things like Killzone or upcoming things like Titanfall just feel like more of the same things that I've seen time and time again.  Where's my innovation?  Where's the jaw dropping mind blowing things that we couldn't even imagine before now?

This is my issue: it feels like developers now a days seem to feel like why innovate on something when the same old tried and true formula works already and we can just make it prettier?  Granted I am generalizing a bit but it still feels like this.  I've seen more innovation from indie developers and they're not even working with half the power that AAA developers have.

Here's a perfect poster child for my gripes: mario.  Now granted, mario has been doing a lot of the same thing for years and years and years now.  Some might say that this invalidates my point.  But let's turn back the clock a bit.  Let's go back to the launch of the gamecube.  You know what was an early launch title for gamecube?  Super Mario Sunshine.  That game was brilliant.  It added a slew of new mechanics to the 3D mario formula that was in place from Super Mario 64 by adding the FLUDD.  On top of that we had Yoshis, and a beautiful tropical island to explore and play around in.  And that was two generations ago!  Then came the wii.  Early title for that console?  Super Mario Galaxy.  That game added a whole new dimension to the 3D mario series with the whole crazy gravity mechanics.  Just that little innovation radically changed the whole game!  Now we get to Wii U.  First big standout 3D mario game?  Mario 3D land.  With the wii and gamecube we had limited hardware and the developers were able to blow our minds with creative and brilliant innovations on the formula, so surely with this bigger better stronger hardware we will get something we could never have even dreamed of right?  So what do you have for us Nintendo?
"We're going to give you the ability to choose between four different characters like you were able to in Super Mario World 2!  Only now its in 3D!"
"Ok, that's pretty cool I guess even if it's rehashing an idea you've already done, what else?"
"Well, uh, you can turn into a cat now?  And you can split into two characters in a few stages?"
"Cool cool, and?"
"That's it."
See my point?  They've got all this potential to work with and all we get is an old idea brought back and a couple new power ups.  Don't get me wrong, Super Mario 3D land is a great game, but what happened to those brilliant levels of innovation we had a generation or two ago?

Granted I may be being too harsh.  There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for us.  Two standout examples I would like to point out are Watch Dogs and The Division.  Let's start with Watch Dogs.  The "hack anything" mechanic is exactly what we need in this upcoming generation.  Such a simple idea turned what could have been a simple and forgettable action game into a brilliant foray into the next generation.  This one little innovation gives you an expansive toolbox constantly at your disposal giving you an incredible amount of options to approach any given situation.  Then we have The Division.  This is great twist on the MMO formula that we are so used to nowadays.  Mixing rpg like elements into a apocalyptic near future militaristic setting with PvE and random PvP is a refreshing change to both genres.

To wrap up, we need to encourage this kind of innovation.  While these other games may be fun, they don't push the industry forward to new and greater things that we are capable of as a medium.  We have the technology, let's put it to good use.

As always, leave comments about games I could review or other topics I could talk about.  Thanks for reading and supporting me!

Gamer Out

Discussion: Roguelikes Are Better Than Most AAA Titles

Yes, you did in fact read that title correctly.  And I know what you're already thinking so let's get a few things out of the way now: Yes I do know I am basically comparing apples with oranges BUT there is a reason for it.  I'm going to be putting up some well loved franchises on the chopping block today but bear in mind, I do think that most of these are fantastic games despite what I'm going to say about them.  That being said, please keep an open mind and read through to the end.  Now off we go.

So I bet you're wondering what I meant by that title.  Or you've already interpreted it a specific way and are heatedly typing away at your keyboard to give me angry, hate spewing comments.  So allow me to clarify in both cases: roguelikes do some things far better than AAA titles and are a better genre of games to invest in.  I'm going to break this down into a few main points and discuss each of them in turn while using general roguelike examples or specific titles compared against AAA titles.  So let's dig in shall we?

The first point I'd like to bring up is that roguelikes are fresh every time you boot them up while AAA titles can easily get stale after the first playthrough.  Perfect example to start with; Bioshock Infinite.  Bioshock infinite is critically acclaimed.  Fans and reviewers alike love and adore this game to death.  But you know what they love it for?  The story,  which is great.  I love a game with a great story.  However once you've played that story, there's really not much left going for the game.  Once you've gone through the game the first time you're left with a very "meh" first person shooter.  Let's compare that against a roguelike which is different every time you boot it up.  Maps are random, item drops are random, enemy spawns are random, everything about these games are random.  Heck, in Rogue Legacy, one of the more recent roguelikes, even your character is random.  Every time you play these games it will be different.  There's always something new and wonderous to look forward to and that is something that many AAA games just do not have going for them.

This ties in nicely with my next point: roguelikes have a staggering amount of game time to them.  You pick up a new AAA title and you have, what, maybe 6-8 hours?  Maybe a bit more if you go for a second time through?  That's not a lot in the long run.  What about roguelikes?  Well let's take a look at my Binding of Isaac play time on steam: 36 hours.  And there is still TONS of content that I haven't even touched yet.  Wow.  See the difference here?  Because of the random nature of roguelikes, you get tons and tons and tons more mileage out of them than you would many AAA titles. I'm sure you could easily get into the hundreds of hours on these.  "But dude, what about games like Borderlands 2?  Or GTA V?  I have hundreds of hours logged on those!"  Yes I do know that there are AAA titles that you can get tons of hours out of.  But that brings me back to that point of roguelikes staying fresh.  Don't get me wrong, I love Borderlands 2.  But after awhile it just starts feeling like you're pointlessly shooting tons of dudes with the same guns. There is no variety to the experience.  It gets stale.  Roguelikes keep from going stale by actually having significantly different experiences through differing enemies, maps, and items to help you along the way.

The next point I have to bring up is that in addition to staying fresh longer, roguelikes provide a more challenging and satisfying experience overall than most AAA titles.  Now hold on, hear me out.  I do in fact know that AAA titles can be very challenging indeed.  Dark Souls is a good example, being extremely hard and requiring a great amount of skill to play.  But then again, is death in that game really all that bad?  You lose your collected souls, money for those of you who haven't played, but you can get them back without too much of a fuss.  And how about other games?  Checkpoints are liberally distributed throughout most AAA games nowadays, death is hardly more than a minor inconvenience, and many games practically hold your hand through the entire experience.  It's a bit pathetic really.  Roguelikes on the other hand are not nearly as forgiving.  When you die in a roguelike, that really is game over.  Back to start, no checkpoints no nothing.  You died, you're done.  Start over from scratch.  This may seem like a horrible thing to most gamers.  Why would you want to play a game that is so unforgiving?  But see that's the whole point.  Death is actually meaningful.  When you overcome the challenges it is WAY more satisfying.  The game was unforgiving but you were even better.  But even if you do die, it's not too horrible either.  Which brings me to my next point.

Roguelikes are built to be shorter yet more brutal experiences.  You could probably get through an entire game in 5-30 minutes or less.  But of course you'll probably play more than that, just because of the factor of "Just one more try, I know I'll get farther this time...".  How does that compare with AAA titles?  Well most AAA games you really need to sit down for a bit with it to really get engaged with the game.  The worst offenders are RPGs.  Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Skyrim, all really require you as a player to set aside a good few hours to just sit down and play for awhile.  Now this is not an inherently bad thing, but let's face it we have lives too.  Sometimes we just don't have that much time to commit to a game.  On the flipside there's always time for a bite sized adventure or 3 with a roguelike.

My final point that I want to bring up is that roguelikes are more cost effective than AAA games.  For both the customer AND the developer.  Let's go back to those previous AAA examples, how much did you spend on those?  About $60?  And how much time did you get out of the majority of them?  6-8 hours?  Maybe more?  Maybe WAY more in the case of something like Mass Effect or Fallout or Skyrim.  And how much did the developers spend?  Millions of dollars you say?  Now go to the flipside.  Roguelikes will maybe run you up $5-$20 at most.  They can last for hundreds of hours.  And on top of that they're cheap enough that indie developers can make them.  INDIE DEVELOPERS GUYS.  It doesn't take much to make a decent roguelike.

So I bet you're all wondering now "Well man if roguelikes are so awesome like you say then why don't more developers make them?".  That is indeed the question of the hour: why don't more developers make them?  The only people who do it nowadays are indie devs.  Could you imagine what we could have if a developer were to make a roguelike with AAA levels of quality?  It would still be much cheaper than AAA titles nowadays and would have plenty of polish and shine on the current formula for roguelikes.  On top of that there's so much room for possibility in roguelikes.  Rogue Legacy is a 2D hack and slash platformer, Binding of Isaac is a top down pseudo twin stick shooter, Risk of Rain is a cooperative 2D exploration shooter, and Eldritch is a first person action game with an incredible variety of styles of combat and a wonderful mobility system.  Those were just 4 games and already we have a wide variety of different gameplay styles.  Imagine what else you could do with this formula.  The possibilities are staggering.  Thing is we as consumers need to direct the market.  We need to show what we want by what we buy and what we support.

Until next time, keep leaving comments and suggestions for more things for me to review and topics to discuss!  Thank you all for your continued support!

Gamer out.

Discussion: Home

So recently I got my hands on a little game called Home.  If you look at it on Steam it has a really low price of entry, only about $3 not on sale and under $1 on sale.  Looking at it, one might think, "well what can I get out of a game that comes at THAT low of a price?  Must not be super good because of how cheap it is."  Turns out the price tag is only because the game is VERY short, only about an hour to an hour and a half for a play through.  However what it lacks in quantity it definitely makes up in quality.

Now, originally I was going to review this game.  However, after playing it I realized you couldn't really review it without MASSIVE spoilers.  Also its a bit of a difficult game to review in general since its incredibly unconventional in how it plays out.  So I have decided to instead do a discussion post about Home and talk about some things it does well and some things that make it stand out on the gaming scene.  So going to say right now you should pick this up and play it, or find someone who has it and play it so you know what I'm going to be talking about.  It's cheap and not very long, worth the price of admission in my opinion. Warning label going up regardless:

SPOILERS AHEAD SPOILERS AHEAD

Alright lets start with the basics.  What is Home?  Home is a very simple and unconventional little story driven horror game.  You play as a guy who wakes up to find himself in a strange house with no idea how he got there.  But this is not the setting for the game.  Oh no.  The game is about this man's journey back home and what he finds along the way.

Now the first question that should be asked of every horror title is what makes it horror?  What makes this game scary?  Well, I can tell you one thing, it's definitely not a danger factor.  It's not about managing supplies and feeling that rush of adrenaline that comes from narrowly escaping death at the hands of a much more powerful opponent.  In fact there is no combat in Home at all.  All you do is walk around and look at things.  No, what makes Home scary is two things: it's atmosphere and the dread of what you'll find next.

Home effectively makes you feel like you're in danger for the beginning of the game.  It always feels like there is something out there, something coming and there's nothing you can do about it except keep putting one foot in front of the other.  However since you will quickly learn that there is no danger to you as a player the other type of horror that this game does well takes over.  Throughout Home you find pieces of things that happened before the start of the game.  A dead body, a video tape, your possessions in places they shouldn't be.  You slowly put the pieces together to find out what happened before.  And each new piece is one more piece you wish you did not know.

Throughout all this the gloomy lighting and your own footsteps help the atmosphere of the game to weigh heavily on your mind as each new piece of evidence comes to light.  Why was your wallet at the top of the water tower?  Who were those two dead campers and what happened to them?  Why is your friend dead?  Each new bit brings more questions than answers, leaving the player to interpret what happened for themselves.  Which brings us to the most fascinating part of Home: how it tells the story.

See, in many games you're run down a storyline that is predetermined.  The set pieces are in place, the ending is going to be a certain way, there is a definitive way this story is going to go.  Some games build upon that formula and let the player shape the story by giving them choices.  The Mass Effect series is a prime example, giving the player options throughout the whole game as to how they want to approach a situation and giving them control over many major events throughout the game.  However Home takes this a step farther.  Home lets you decide not only how your character acts, but how he perceives the world around him.

This next part is probably the biggest spoiler so far.  So if you really don't want spoilers, now is the time to abandon ship and come back after you've played the game.  You have been warned.

The prime example of how this mechanic comes into play is at the very end of the game.  You finally arrive at home.  It all comes down to this.  You explore the house a bit, and make your way into the basement.  Down there, you find a body wrapped in rags.  Up to this point, you've been making decisions like, did I take this or that item?  Did I go down the shaft without anything to help me down or did I use the rope?  Etc.  But then comes this decision: Was this body my beloved wife?

At this moment when I was playing, I just stopped.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  They were going to let me make THIS major of a decision?  They were going to let me decide whether my wife was dead or not?  But then you realize: they're not letting you decide whether your wife is dead or not, they let you decide how your character is going to perceive this dead body.  Is he going to deny that his wife is dead and keep searching for her?  Is he going to recognize who this is and try to piece together what could have led to this?  Then after that crucial moment comes a sequence where you go through all the bits of evidence you collected throughout the game and make decisions about each.  And each is a decision in how your character perceives what this evidence means in the grand scheme of things.

This is what I find the most fascinating about Home.  Not only are you affecting the story by your decisions, you're directly affecting your character's psyche by your decisions.  And not only your decisions affect this: whether or not you missed an item will affect how the story goes because of what evidence you have.  However this does not give it replay value.  Quite the opposite in fact.  If you were to go back and try to do Home over again, picking up all the items that you missed before, you would be severely disappointed.  The whole point of the game is to give players a unique experience that they can interpret and affect how the character interprets it.  The game is purposefully vague in what it gives you, and will remain so no matter how much evidence you collect.  So going back and redoing all of that just devalues the outcome you received.  Those questions that remain unanswered are better than if you had answered them.  What was in that room?  What was on that video tape?

It's games like Home that show how the gaming industry is so unique as a medium for storytelling.  Letting you directly control more than just your characters actions is something you just cannot do in any other medium.  My final word here is that this game is brilliant, unique, and is definitely worth the price of admission and the discussion with other players that it leads to.

To wrap up, I am still accepting requests for topics and reviews you would like me to do.  Post about your own Home experience in the comments below and post requests in the comments!

Gamer out.

Shantae: Risky's Revenge Review: A Hop, Whip, and a Shake

Ok, let me open up by saying this:

WAYFORWARD I LOVE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU DO PLEASE KEEP MAKING GAMES FOREVER!

*cough*  Well then.  On to the review.

Shantae: Risky's Revenge (here on out referred to as S:RR because long title) is a sequel to the Gameboy Color game Shantae.  When I first heard about S:RR coming to the DSiware shop I was a little confused to hear that it was a sequel to a GBC game.  Usually in the gaming world reviving a franchise from that long ago is unlikely, and if it DOES happen somehow a lot of the time it's not great.  Granted however it has been happening a lot more lately with things like XCOM coming back from the dead.  But I'm going off on a tangent, let's talk about how the game is.

Environments and sprites are gorgeous.

In S:RR we pick up shortly after the events of the first game.  But don't worry, you can easily pick up here and still understand what's happening.  You play as a half-genie girl named Shantae.  Shantae is the guardian of Scuttle Town and it is your job to protect the town from pirates such as your nemesis/rival Risky Boots.  The story kicks off with Risky Boots stealing a magical lamp from your uncle and you set off to foil her latest evil plot.  I should probably mention here that story is, to be brutally honest, one of S:RR's weakest points.  The story is....bare bones at best.  However what it lacks in content it makes up for in charm.  The writing in S:RR is wonderful.  Charming and quirky, cutscenes will leave a smile on your face and a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart.  The character cast is great, with Shantae spearheading the whole thing as a wonderfully strong female lead.

Shantae is not amused Octo-dude.

Once the story is set up and running its time to get into actual gameplay.  Shantae is a 2D action platformer game.  It's got all your basics: running, jumping, basic hair whip attack to take out enemies, and shinies to collect to buy upgrades in the Scuttle Town hub.  There's a large overworld to explore, dungeons to delve into, and bosses to defeat.  But the main thing that makes Shantae special is her transformation abilities.  In each dungeon, you unlock a new animal form that you can transform into by dancing.  Each form gives Shantae new abilities, such as wall climbing, block smashing, and swimming  to gain access to new areas.  That being said, there's tons to explore in the overworld and lots of collectibles to find.  Everything is well made and running and jumping from place to place feels smooth and natural.

Shantae's got the magic.

Now, while I do adore this game, there are some downsides.  There is a lot of backtracking.  And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT.  You will revisit areas over and over and over again through the course of the adventure, granted with new abilities to access new areas, but sometimes those areas are very small and don't really scratch that itch of exploration for the time it took to get there.  Also, many times the game really doesn't give you any direction as to where to go next.  One memorable time (spoiler free) was when I was asked to get hot coffee and a rotten egg.  I went to my NPC buddies for a tip.  Nothing super helpful at the time.  So I'm stuck wandering around looking for the things I need to fulfill this part of the game.  This can be frustrating sometimes, though not game breakingly so.  On the contrary, it is downright organic gameplay, making you explore and think and really find the bits on your own is far more rewarding than being told exactly where to go.

See this is why I love S:RR.  It has a big world but not so big that you'll get lost.  It has puzzles that are challenging but not so difficult that you'll ever be stuck for long.  It's platforming is difficult enough to test your skills but not so hard that it's unconquerable.  It oozes with charm, color, quirkiness, and downright FUN.  S:RR knows what it wants to do and does it extremely well.  After finishing the game, I realized that this game was the first thing that I could really say I had fun with from beginning to end without ever getting burnt out on it.

Now for the recommendation.  If you own a 3DS and want that old school platformer itch scratched, BUY THIS GAME RIGHT NOW.  If you like metroidvania-esque exploration and love a title that is fun and charming, buy this game.  However if you're looking for complex story or something that will push your skills to the limits, you may want to look elsewhere.

As always, please leave comments and requests on other games to review and topics to discuss!

Gamer out.