Lone Survivor - Thoughts

Jasper Byrne's stylish 2D survival horror game Lone Survivor is a puzzling product. It finds itself wedged between the likes of Silent Hill and Clock Tower, being a game about minimal combat, psychological trauma, and the collection of a wide variety of items. It has a very distinct personality and flavor, but I can't exactly say it offered me a platter I enjoyed. By the end of the journey I felt very alienated from the author and his message, uncertain if it was worth the time I sunk into it.

Make no mistake—the game is competently programmed and very frightening. Despite being comprised of colorful pixels, the post-apocalyptic world you explore evokes an unsettling atmosphere thanks to some smart lighting and disturbing monster design (audio especially). Areas feel cramped and dim as you wander around, and you're never sure whether turning on your flashlight is going to reveal a hidden goodie or pull nasty nightmares lurking in the dark to your position. At first I found the blown-up resolution unbecoming, but wound up appreciating how much space the game occupied, constantly being in your face at every moment. The use of the dithered display is quite clever as well, and conjoined with some spooky sequences, Lone Survivor can get easily get under your skin (the use of intestinal imagery in one of the endings is fantastic).

Yet the survival aspect of the game is both less evident and unrefined. In the genre, I believe the most important conditions you must prime players on in is what they need to be monitoring for their survival. In Resident Evil, it's things like ammo, herbs, and ink ribbons—each being necessary to stave off the player's doom. In Lone Survivor, your goals are far more obscure. You have health, but no health bar (outside of a flashing red screen). There's food, but no way of telling how hungry you are. You also have to manage sleep, flashlight batteries, and ammo on top of this, all without knowing what penalty you'll receive if you happen to run out of any of these. On one hand, it keeps the player from obsessively checking a stat screen to make sure they're in the clear, but on the other it can be aggravating trying to determine whether a warm meal or crackers would sate the main character's (noisy) appetite. All of these factors tie into what ending you receive too, and it was a bit disappointing to find that out only after the story was over.

Speaking of, it's a somewhat unspoken idea that horror games are, to a degree, dependent on their stories. Though there are spooky games bereft of exposition like Slender: The Eight Pages and Kraken, a lot of horror games can become significantly more disturbing due to their lore, such as Five Nights at Freddy's and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. However, Lone Survivor is far too muddled in its own madness to make any kind of coherent sense. The game has five separate endings and not a single one clarifies anything that happens throughout the plot (in fact they only serve to compound it), and when the credits roll around I was left asking "that's it?". Perhaps the subtlety of the story went over my head, but when you can't make heads or tails on whether the main character is absolutely bonkers or not, the plot winds up feeling like a string of trippy scenes from Twin Peaks, just without the nuance or payoff.

Lone Survivor may be worth a playthrough if you love the ruthlessly dark and oppressive atmosphere that games like Silent Hill and Clock Tower ascribe to, or prefer to unravel its mechanics by your lonesome. But if you're looking for an interesting story fraught with complex symbolism, you'll have to dig inconceivably deep and make some mental leaps that I'm concerned the text doesn't support. Byrne showcases some really neat ideas wrapped up in an intriguing style, but Lone Survivor is too abstruse to ultimately avoid its exasperating disappointment.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Thoughts

I'm not a really big fan of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. This is partly due to how invasive his brand of lore has become in the fantasy setting, essentially establishing the archetypes of dwarves, elves and orcs. I didn't feel like exploring this universe in an action game, but with the glowing reviews Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor kept getting with regards to its Nemesis system (an AI ecosystem where enemies vie for power in their military caste), my interest was definitely piqued. Even if the lore has no pull on you, there's a really fun game in here that gives the player a lot of power.

I'm not going to spend any time discussing the story, since it barely registers as anything more than background noise during the majority of the journey (a Tolkienite would likely have more to say on Monolith's implementation of the lore). Playing past the tutorial, you'll find yourself in an open world with a lot of UI and mechanics similar to that of the Assassin's Creed series, with a splash of Arkham Asylum's combat thrown in. If you were to look at this under a critical lens you may find the design uninspired and lacking ingenuity, solely implemented to cash in on the brand name and success of its progenitors. But Shadow of Mordor only retains this stigma in its early hours.

Once the Nemesis system becomes available to you—along with a wealth of abilities and unique runes—the game really comes into its own. The ways in which you can conquer a stronghold or engage in side missions only keep increasing as you progress, and due to the myriad of skills each orc leader can possess, you'll often find yourself in some really entertaining situations. However, Shadow of Mordor's most significant failing is that it eventually propels you into a godhood-like status where almost no encounter can deter you from victory. The optimal solution once you're fully leveled is to vault over an opponent and strike at them a few times, allowing you to build your combo quickly (which is cinch if you're timing your hits) and spam execution or branding attacks against those around you. The gap in difficulty between the first set of warchiefs and the second set is astounding, and by the end of the game it becomes a bit inconceivable how you could possibly lose.

But as long as you don't care about trampling over the endgame, Shadow of Mordor is a blast. It's pleasing visually (especially the second area), sounds great, and the combat never gets stale. The orc leaders are especially fun to interact with; thanks to their character models and the pugnacious quips they spout, many of them feel like their own unique characters (despite being a combination of randomly chosen attributes). There's also a gritty glee to be had in how outlandishly violent the game is, avoiding any kind of genocidal guilt since all your opponents are monsters anyway (well, without reading deeply into any subtext). Sometimes it can be annoying to run into a dozen captains when you're just trying to kill a single one (especially if he's fleeing), but otherwise the Nemesis system is an invigorating and worthwhile addition. Sure, it becomes trivialized when you get so strong that no one can stop you, but it doesn't stop it from being the best part of the game.

I'm going to close this entry out by regaling the short-lived tale of Grublik the Stout:

During the initial hours of the game, I undertook a mission to interrupt an orc captain's festivities. He yelled at me about how he was gonna drink grog after he gutted me, but I didn't care, striking at him swiftly with my blade as soon as he shut his yap. Unfortunately another captain stumbled upon the struggle, and the amount of troops he brought into the battle meant that I had no option other than to retreat. As I was turning to leave, Grublik—a tall, shield-weilding uruk—gave me the fatal blow. After I died he was promoted for slaying me, and I was eager to seek revenge on this audacious amateur. I took a side mission to engage him while he was battling a fellow captain, but the big blue doofus was hopelessly outmatched. I took pity on him and vowed to alter his destiny—I would help Grublik to become a warchief, and then take his life.

Grublik's ascension through the ranks wasn't hard to fulfill. Besides intentionally avoiding him whenever he'd pop up at various missions and strongholds, the dopey orc quickly rose through the ranks due to his oafish charm. That, and his competition had been cut into pieces. Despite a small detour I took to finish the campaign, I returned post-game to the Black Gate to check up on my old pal. I decided to congratulate Grublik on becoming warchief by paying him a visit. Drawing him out was simple (20 kills without being detected), but what was difficult was trying to decide how I wanted this to go down. Stab him stealthily from behind? Draw some caragors in to wreak havoc on his forces? Brand his captains and have him betrayed? I decided finally upon fighting him like a man one-on-one, though he was annoyingly persistent on calling more nameless soldiers in during our duel. It didn't matter though—vengeance was mine in the end. The first monster to kill me was the last one to die in my game (well, one of the last).

This is just a single example of the wild yarns that can be spun solely through the game mechanics alone. People can't stop talking about how good Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is for good reason. It joins Wolfenstein: The New Order as an unexpectedly competent and brilliant entry in 2014 for me, and I'm curious what Monolith will work on next.

Iridion 3D - Thoughts

I have a strange soft spot in my heart for the somewhat janky Iridion 3D. It was one of my earliest GBA games and the first handheld title to really awe me with it's visuals—the pre-rendered backgrounds are still the most striking feature of the game today (especially in motion). Shin'en's shooter aimed to blend Star Fox's 3D perspective with more shmup/STG influences, but it ultimately mutated into an awkward combination of both, serving to showcase how unsuccessful 3D rail shooters can be if handled poorly.

Besides the visuals, the first thing you're likely to notice is how wonky the collision is. Star Fox wisely allows objects and enemies to traverse the foreground (behind the Arwing), giving the player a good handle on the game's perspective, but here you're pretty much a sprite slapped onto the front of the screen. Though your ship appears to take up a small amount of space, it acts more like an interstellar rectangle, as you're likely to notice bullets colliding against your lean wings (or the empty space above them). This can make dodging projectiles quite tricky, as your bulky size negates any mobility you might have (the stage 2 midboss and stage 6 enemies are astoundingly difficult to defeat unscathed). Luckily you'll only suffer one pellet of damage if a purple bullet touches your hitbox, but crash into any solid object and you'll lose five. With only twelve points of health and limited lives for the entire journey, you'll find that an enemy veering into your ship at the start of a level can pretty much end the entire run—it's a frustrating thing that happens a bit too often.

The game thankfully has passwords so it's easy to restart a stage, although the passwords keep your lives and power-ups intact (meaning you can screw yourself over if you're careless). The power-ups are also a little haphazardly implemented, reducing your power when you die and when you switch abilities. This pushes the player to sit on a single power-up and be potentially punished for their choice if the stage doesn't feature their specific weapon. Conflated by the fact that certain power-ups (green, purple) don't fire in a straight line—making it hard to hit certain enemies—I think it's demonstrably clear that the gameplay of Iridion 3D is too imprecise to be considered a good shmup.

Yet despite those detrimental factors, I still contend that the game can be an enjoyable experience. If you strap yourself in knowing that the shooter has its share of gameplay issues, I think the variety and atmosphere it offers overcomes a lot of its failings. Each stage is beautiful and distinct from the one before, containing a series of quirky little challenges. There are some frustrating parts here and there (the entirety of stage 4 is a collision nightmare), but the experience is a cohesive one with a good difficulty curve.

I've said that the visuals are the premier aspect of Iridion 3D, but I would be remiss not to boast that the music is the most phenomenal part of the game. Out of the entire soundtrack there's only one dud (stage 6 boss), the other compositions being extremely catchy and atmospheric. I think this accomplishment is made all the more impressive considering how utterly lackluster the GBA soundchip is, as many good games were a bit stifled by the garbled audio. Shin'en's custom GAX sound engine went a long way in achieving this, although I'd argue that Manfred Linzner is a competent composer as well. Seriously, some songs are pretty amazing.

I tend to visit the clumsy shooter title biennially, tapping into feelings that have long since been overwritten by a multitude of mundane etchings. From the large bosses to the captivating music, I still hold a lot of admiration for Iridion 3D. I can't excuse how poor and repetitive the gameplay can get at times, and I must confess that nostalgia is a significant factor in my enjoyment. Yet I don't think much will change me from looking back on Iridion 3D as a flawed game with a lot of heart.

Rygar - Thoughts

It may be a bit weird that I'm an ardent fan of the Ninja Gaiden trilogy on NES, yet have sparse experience with other Tecmo titles. To be frank, their non-sports games are few and far between, and not much else seemed to hook me like Fire n' Ice upon initial play (though I'm still determined to one day complete Solomon's Key). So picking up Rygar for the first time felt like a fun experiment—I wanted to see how the developers handled platforming before they mastered it with Ninja Gaiden two years later.

The journey begins immediately, thrusting the player into a wasteland crawling with critters. Here you'll come to learn Rygar's modus operandi—spawning enemies with an incessant annoyance a la Kung Fu. Combined with the fact that you have only a single method of attack, combat distills into a pretty basic formula of determining whether your closest foe is to your right or your left. Thankfully the gameplay often switches between top-down and left-right perspectives for some variety (though the top-down view is fraught with strange issues like how jump-attacking means you have more mobility PLUS a longer attack range), and there are a few spells you have available (though the energy pickups for them have an abysmal drop rate). The game is also slightly nonlinear with handful of upgrades, fleshing out its sense of adventure.

What I thought was most revolutionary about Rygar was that it incorporates character stats that persist through death. Every enemy you slay can add to your strength or vitality (which are denoted by TONE and LAST for some peculiar reason) and at unstated intervals you'll gain an increase to your damage or health bar. This means that you'll rarely be stuck fighting a boss, as a bit of grinding can lead you to wipe the floor with monstrosity in a minute or two, even if you die repeatedly while farming. The final boss in particular is especially subject to this consequence, as I had spent so long exploring his palace that I was able to kill him in roughly ten hits, closing out my journey with an uneventful climax. Finally, the game is also not nearly as archaic or cryptic as Adventure of Link or Castlevania II, so even if you haven't played before it's not too hard to figure out where to go.

I really can't say I adore Rygar but I certainly wasn't put off by it; the Argoolian journey is a simplistic romp that would have enhanced had I any nostalgia for it. The gameplay fits somewhere between the questionable design of Mighty Bomb Jack and the flawless artistry of Ninja Gaiden, incorporating some interesting mechanics that are surprisingly subversive in modern games nowadays. I think the infinite continues, stat carry-over and relative brevity of the entry all help to make it an entertaining title, but it's hardly one I'd suggest to those that aren't NES fanatics. In a way, the 2002 sequel Rygar: The Legendary Adventure echoes the essence of the original very well—an interesting game unfortunately outclassed by everything that came after it.

Wolfenstein: The New Order - Thoughts

[contains slight spoilers]

While I concluded that 2009's Wolfenstein was fairly unremarkable, 2014's sequel Wolfenstein: The New Order is quite the opposite. Machinegames took a big gamble by altering the standard formula, adding a pulpy edge to BJ Blaszkowicz's formerly plain narrative—but it succeeds! Europe's alternate future is a grim, dystopian world where the Nazis have infested every corner, the resistance against them diminishing slowly day by day. Despite ludicrous advancements like cyborg dogs and lunar bases, it's a setting that remains horrifyingly lifelike as well as tremendously engrossing. Oh, and the game is a ton of fun to play too.

The New Order shares Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon's unfortunate folly of greeting the player with a turret section of all things (possibly the worst way you can open your game), but past the linear prologue the action really takes off. Scenarios will alternate between stealth, shooting and bouts of dialogue, the designers carefully making sure that each portion never overstays its welcome. After large fights you'll be treated to some captivating discourse and the moment your bloodlust begins to wax you'll be back in a concrete compound with some soldiers to slice up. There are some miscellaneous issues that will unavoidably stand out: cutscene transitions are jarring, stealth sections are largely shallow (Nazi soldiers make murmurs of curiosity upon finding an ally's corpse rather than trigger an alarm), and the lack of manual checkpoints means the game will send you struggling through difficult hallways over and over again. While these issues slightly mar the experience, The New Order remains fantastic at its core.

At this core sits the riveting gunplay, being one of the most holistically satisfying shooters I've experienced. Weapons are large and have a good weight to them, there's a smart judge of how much ammo is allotted to each gun, and upon being shot enemies animate as if they feel the bullets shattering their bones. Even with a small arsenal available (there's about six arms) it never becomes grueling to switch back to the standard assault rifle and burst into a room, both guns blaring raucously. A couple of minor variations exist to shake-up the routine FPS load-out—the shotgun is less powerful than you'd expect but holds 20 shells, the assault rifle has a rocket launcher add-on, and your laser cutter becomes stronger as you find enhancements. The rifle is perhaps the only useless armament, bereft of bullets for the majority of the journey and being outclassed by the multi-targeting the laser cutter, but it gets plenty of screen time on the moon.

Despite its Nazi-crushing exterior the game is shockingly heartfelt, with many of Blaszkowicz's inner monologues and interactions feeling strikingly thoughtful. From important story beats to some of the small conversations you'll overhear, there's an interesting array of subjects touched upon. At one point I was traveling through the sewers and overheard a man talking to a woman, telling her about his vacation in Africa with his wife, and the woman asks whether or not her favorite animal—the elephant—was still there. The man replies that he didn't see any, and the dialogue ends; the potential extinction of elephants in Africa is an extremely minor detail added to the world but paints a great picture of the Third Reich's recklessness towards anything but their own progress. Foot-soldiers are also commonly portrayed as nothing more than privileged men in a uniform, abstaining from using childish, dehumanizing derivatives. Of course it doesn't excuse their crimes, and there's some utterly demented commanders in charge of their forces, but it's nice to see the game approach something like Nazi infantry with such honesty.

The plot also does a good job at changing scenery changes often, ferrying you from one great locale to another. From a ruined bridge to a mock-concentration camp you'll engage with legions of soldiers, and from murky aqueducts to a surreptitious Hebrew hideout you'll spend time exploring and poking at the scenery. The comparisons to Half-Life 2 are surprisingly apt in this regard, as the game does its best to tell a story while keeping the setting varied, ending the tale on one hell of a heart-pounding climax. In direct contrast to Wolfenstein's final boss, The New Order's mechanized monstrosity shows how to make a nod to the older games while adding flourishes of its own, especially regarding the intense final phase. The melancholy ending that comes afterwards is pitch perfect, and caps off the experience most appropriately.

You'll find few big budget games in 2014 as full of charm, brutality and heart as Wolfenstein: The New Order (let alone a combination of all three). Machinegames did the impossible and made the bulky meathead of a protagonist actually likable without peddling some kind of sob story background, rarely forcing his emotions throughout the hardboiled journey. The guns take center stage despite the minimal assortment of them, although this isn't too surprising given the developer's pedigree. The New Order is a solid, frantic outing through and through, and quite possibly the best Nazi-killin' game yet.
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Logo obtained from: edge-online.com

Dino Crisis - Thoughts

If you've ever thought to yourself "gee, the old Resident Evil games sure do sound cool, but what it really needed was dinosaurs!" then you may be in luck. Directed and Produced by Resident Evil's very own Shinji Mikami, Dino Crisis is cut from the same virus-infested cloth, switching out the brainhungry undead for bloodthirsty lizards*. Compared to its cousin, Dino Crisis feels eerily similar in control, interface, and progression... to a serious fault at times.

I mean, the game has the same exact jump scare in a windowed hallway early on!

I initially thought that the fossilized beasts would be used in ways unique to their biology but they roughly act as speedy zombie surrogates most of the time. Despite the exorbitant amount of parallels between the two games there are a couple of minor variations here and there. A larger amount of items are available to mix together and anesthetics play an important role, allowing you to put down a raptor momentarily instead of wasting precious ammo on them (which, if you play on Easy like me, doesn't become much of a problem). Rather than giving you a bottomless crate to store goodies in every save room, you get keys to open up either ammo or medical boxes, forcing you to choose both where your storehouses are and what equipment you'll receive. This makes your inventory a bit more cluttered as you can go long stretches without bumping into any of the boxes you can use, forcing more components to be mixed together until you're sitting on top of L++ medical supplies. Photorealistic backgrounds have been removed in place of smooth rendering, letting the camera move around freely as you're running down corridors, akin to Silent Hill. These are admittedly small touches but I think they're kinda neat.

The tank controls don't gel as well in this game as compared to Resident Evil. The zombie thriller was more about lumbering enemies ambling towards you, but dinosaurs (as you'd expect) are significantly quicker—pterodactyls are nigh-impossible to snipe out of the sky and it's difficult to out-maneuver a velociraptor. You're better off pumping the anachronistic carnivores full of lead when you see them (unless you know where you're going), as kiting them is a suboptimal solution (especially in later areas where two of them can stand shoulder to shoulder to block your progress). I'm a little bummed there's not more variety (there's basically one boss and five enemy types), but the journey is relatively short so the enemies don't overstay their welcome either.

The story may be a mixed bag for some people; one of the most important aspects for a B-themed medium to capture is possessing a self-serious tone despite the poor presentation, and here Dino Crisis doesn't falter. From the overly long computer introduction to the internal drama between teammates to some of the eye-roll worthy one liners, the game certainly has a quirky charm to it. Perhaps the biggest disappointment throughout Regina's journey is that every time the mighty king of the dinosaurs shows up, he's used in pretty poor gameplay segments—he can kill the player so easily (instantly!) that he becomes more frustrating than terrifying. Otherwise the plot is a predictable, yet mindlessly entertaining affair.

Dino Crisis is novel only in conception, taking far too many notes from the Resident Evil series to do anything on its own. Yet there's plenty of creative tweaks within these systems; a peculiar kind of fun can be found from blasting anesthetic darts from shotgun at a raptor. These are short diversions from the issue at hand, but if the dearly departed classic design of Resident Evil is still something that tickles your fancy (especially since the tank control scheme has gone extinct), Dino Crisis is a wonderfully droll substitute.


*dinosaurs are not actually lizards
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Images obtained from: capcom.co.jp, fullgameshub.com, relyonhorror.com, retrogamer.net

Thief (2014) - Thoughts

Sometimes, it's easy to bungle your own playthrough of a game. I had the clever idea while starting Eidos Montreal's Thief that I'd intentionally make it harder for myself by turning off the focus mode, arrow reticule, hints and waypoint markers in order to have a more authentic thieving experience. I haven't played any entries in the Thief franchise before and after hearing some unfortunate comments directed at the newest title, I decided that going with all these optional challenges would be the best way to make the game feel more "classic". Unfortunately, this meant getting lost... constantly. Looking back, I'm unsure how much of it is due to the obscure game design or my own general ineptitude while traversing the levels.

This confusion was confounded by what may be ironically the best aspect about Thief—the wealth of customizable gameplay options. I previously stated what changes I made but you can go further than that, like making it impossible to incapacitate enemies if they spot you and having only a single chapter checkpoint as your save. Additionally, in the options you can turn off a wide range of interface elements, like the minimap, loot glint, lock-picking assistance, alertness of guards and more. The extent to which your can affect your gameplay is fantastic (the HUD options can be switched on/off at any time) and it's a shame more games don't allow players this much variability... even if it did add some detrimental factors to my playthrough.

Thief is at its best when it provides the player room, letting you sneak around, spot routes, and steal goodies right under naive noses. Conversely it plays worse the more restrictive it gets, with certain linear paths standing out as the worst offenders; the only thing you're left to play around with is inferring the "correct" way out. Eidos Montreal's attempt to rope in non-stealth gamers is visibly apparent when you're funneled through Assassin's Creed-like sections, climbing around the terrain in 3rd person or recklessly fleeing from urgent scripted sequences. I think it's odd that the game forgoes stealth in so many sections, placing the player into more bombastic roles in order to rouse excitement out of them. The lack of focus mode certainly didn't help me in any of these constrictive situations, as at certain points I would be surrounded by enemies after a cutscene and unsure of where to go (like the end of chapter 4). Thief danced between frustration and relief quite often during my experience.

Since the large open playgrounds are the most gratifying component of this stealth title, it may be surprising to learn that the town's hub doesn't hit the mark in this regard. It certainly looks expansive on the map but so many houses and alleys require a loading time QTE to access (you'll do around a hundred times before the journey's end) that you'll eventually be deterred from exploring unless your side-quests demand it. And the paths that don't require mashing "E" to open a window are often narrow and long, lacking shortcuts to other parts of the city. Every time I wanted to go see Basso I'd have to pass through the same alley each time from the same direction, and it became an unfortunate chore by the end of the game.

If the gameplay tweaks don't excite you, the visuals hopefully will—textures are rich, dark and gothic, with certain vistas and rooms worth a repeated gander. Thief is a caliginous beauty but the story suffers from some abhorrently subpar writing & direction. The central antagonist is cartoonishly evil and your tutorial companion is cartoonishly arrogant, the dialogue from both coming across as painstakingly cliche in any scene that they're featured. While the locales are excellent (the insane asylum is my favorite) there was such little reason to care for the town or the characters without diving into the optional text that I felt isolated from the place, largely concerned with upgrading my gear more than whether Orion's revolution would work against the local guard. It's a dreary, atmospheric town but I had little reason to care about it other than for the money.

When you're lurking in the shadows, a hair's breadth behind a guard and you snatch his wallet successfully, turning around and scampering silently back up to the rooftops, Thief works beautifully. But when you're stuck in a small underground passage way, looking for the tiny glowing object you're supposed to interact with as you hear the same ambient noises loop over and over, Thief reminds you that it's still a video game, subject to questionable design. It's largely left to the player to determine which side they'll find themselves partaking in more, but it's not unconscionable to suggest that the fourth entry in the Thief series is certainly marred by its errors, and quite possibly a disappointment considering its legacy... I guess I'll have to delve into the older games to make that decision for myself some day.