Game Titles Gone Wrong

Not sure what "KONG" is in this context,
but Diddy is on a quest for it

"Red One, lock blush into attack position"

You're not fooling anyone with that mustache
and slight name change, Toad!

 

Winter Games

Winter is here!  Well, at least if you happen to live in the northern hemisphere...and that statement is doubly true if you reside in North America or Europe.  So, for those of you who are entombed under a mound of heavy snowfall, what better way to celebrate the season that with some winter-themed video games?  Here's three, in which not freezing to death is a key aspect of the game.    

Survival-strategy is an incredibly rare subgenre of which Frostpunk is the only recent entry.  Taking place in an alternative version of Victorian England, the player is tasked with keeping a band of refugees alive as the world around them is slowly swallowed up by an apocalyptic super-blizzard.  It's a grim game filled with difficult moral decisions that require a tricky balancing act between pragmatism and empathy.  On top of this the player has to gather and manage resources such as food, timber and coal; all while building a city radially outward from a massive central furnace.  This towering construct is the heart of the game because it supplies much needed warmth which is actually Frostpunk's most basic and vital resource.  

The Long Dark was successfully kickstarted in 2013 and subsequently released in early access on Steam in 2014, before ultimately hitting version 1.0 in 2017.  Since then, it has gotten more updates and content in the form of DLC.  The game takes place in the Canadian wilderness with players assuming the role of a marooned bush pilot.  The story goes he crashed his plane after a massive geomagnetic storm and now is simply trying to survive.  Despite the somewhat sci-fi premise, the actual game is firmly grounded in reality.  There are no zombies or other supernatural threats.  Hungry wolves and bears, on the other hand, pose a serious danger (as does the harsh climate), but at it's heart The Long Dark is a streamlined resource management and survival game.  Finding shelter from the cold and scavenging for supplies in an open-world setting is what this game is all about.

Not to be confused with Frostpunk, this final entry is simply entitled Frost.  It's an odd little indie game about a small tribe of Neolithic wanderers trying to survive an approaching ice age.  The gameplay is centered around a deckbuilding card game of sorts.  The art is simple, but evocative.  Cards the player has at their disposal are typically tools and resources which are used to overcome challenges.  These obstacles often take the form of imposing terrain features or hostile wildlife.  The music is pretty neat as well because it's entirely made with vocalizations.  The best way I can describe it is stone age beatbox.  Overall, the game is quite difficult (even on the easier settings).  There are several kinds of character archetypes to choose from as well (each with their own style of play).  Regardless of the individual though the goal is the same - don't let the cold get you.

2022 Awards

Avant-garde Award: 

Scorn is a game that challenges the player to figure out where they are, what they are looking at, and why they are even there.  The game is incredibly obtuse, to the point that some have suggested that there is no meaning that can be derived from it.  Considering there is no text or dialogue, this might very well be deliberate.  Is human suffering due to karma?...or is it simply the result of random circumstance?  It seems to me most of the meaning in this game is what we give it.   

Backlash Award: 

Ah, Blizzard Entertainment...how the mighty have fallen.  As if bad management and all the reports of internal harassments/abuse weren't bad enough, their handling of China relations (and really their fan base in general) has been a huge disaster.  Adding to the list of issues is the poor quality of their PC version of Diablo Immortal.  It has a "0.3" user review score on Metacritic due, in large part to it being a perfectly functional game completely broken by cynical cash-grab loot box mechanics.

Brutality Award: 

What can I say?  Elden Ring is a From Software game, and as such has all the challenges that one would expect from the makers of Bloodborne and Sekiro.  Elden Ring though, allows for a level of character customization that wasn't previously possible (even in the Souls games).  As such it can be really hard to defeat certain bosses with certain builds; namely the infamous Blade of Miquella and  Goddess of Rot - Melania. 

 

Canvas Award: 

The blackness of space spotted by the white light of stars; the smear of the grey metal hull of the ring station know as Erlin's Eye.  It could make for some dull viewing, but Citizen Sleeper adds much needed splashes of neon reds, blues and yellows, plus the occasional patch of oxygen-garden green.  Of course if you jump up to the data cloud to do bit of spying everything turns an ethereal grey, but this only serves to highlight the vibrance of the real world in all its cell-shaded glory.

Ecology Award:

Considering that it was already remade for the PS4, The Last of Us Part 1 definitely feels like a case of double-dipping.  The full price doesn't do the game any favors either, especially since it lacks the multiplayer that came included in the original.  Heck, it doesn't even integrate mechanics used in The Last of Us Part 2.  The reuse of the original performances by the cast really makes this a case of Naughty Dog resting on their laurels.    

"Engrish" Award:

From the maker of My Summer Car comes Mon Bazou, a game about scraping together enough money to fix up an old junk heap of a car in rural Canada by working a bunch of odd jobs.  Despite (or perhaps because of) it being in early access, the NPC dialogue has some real zingers like "You looks good today" and  "You really talking to me about the rack track, hm".  Maybe their supposed to be French Canadian?  

Esoteric Award:  

Signalis claims to be a horror game, but isn't scary.  It tries to be retro with tank controls, but doesn't utilize cinematic camera angles.  It has some bits from novelists H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers, but really comes across as a mix of Silent Hill and Resident Evil.  The story is such a convoluted mess it somehow makes the ending of Evangelion look straightforward by comparison.  Critics appear to like the game, but none of them can really articulate why.  Also, for some reason, nobody has feet.  

Lemon Award: 

It would have been easy to pick an EA sports game again this year, but for the sake of variety Skyrim: Anniversary Edition for the Nintendo Switch is the winner.  It runs terrible do to poor coding and long-known issue involving the installation of mods.  11 years was more than enough time to fix all this.  Of course being a Bethesda game they never got around to it.  That said, the real kicker is the outrageous price tag.  It launched as a brand new full-priced triple-AAA title.

Testosterone Award: 

Do you like games such as DOOM and Space Hulk, but get annoyed by that pesky third-dimension you need to keep track of?  Well, worry no more because Let Them Come is the game for you!  In fact, this game doesn't require any movement on your part.  Every round of play begins with your character hunkered down behind the barrel(s) of a mounted machine gun.  From there it's a lot of yelling incoherently as you blast through waves of alien monsters leaving nothing but spent shells and gore in your wake.

Underdog Award: 

For this (our final category), I'm going to give the award to Horizon: Forbidden West.  It's not an especially good game, but it definitely had its thunder unfairly stolen by Elden Ring (which came out only a week after).  This is especially sad to see given that Horizon: Zero Dawn, in-turn, had its thunder stolen by Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when it came out last gen half-a-decade before.  Guerrilla Games (the publisher) really can't seem to catch a break in this regard. 

Shimmy Simulator

The clear visor and internal helmet lighting are there
so you don't accidentally mistake Jacob for Riddick

Callisto Protocol (A.K.A. Splatterhouse meets Super Punch-Out) is basically the original concept for Dead Space.  Set on the titular moon of Jupiter, gameplay consists of linear third-person exploration and combat.  The latter of those two is further broken down into a fairly even mix of ranged and melee fighting.  In a way it reminds me a lot of the Condemned duology.  Like that pair of games, the sound design is second to none.  Aside from setting the mood, various audio cues are used to convey important information to the player ranging from the location and types of nearby enemies to the effect an attack is having on said enemies.  Graphics are also impressive from a technical perspective, but (in terms of art direction) are painfully bland.

What do get when you combine the common elements of every grim space sci-fi movie and television series from "Moon 44" to "The Expanse"?  It turns out you get Callisto Protocol in all it's generic glory.  Don't get me wrong...the game looks very genre appropriate.  It's just there is a severe lack of distinctive setting material.  The original Dead Space (for how derivative that game was) at least had a few things that made it standout; examples include Unitology, The Markers and Planet Cracking.  Here, though there really isn't anything unique.  Even stuff that could have been special, such as the exotic location, is made a lot more ordinary than it should be.  

Here's where it all began...

To demonstrate my point look at the moon of Callisto itself.  In real life, it's a big frozen ball with no atmosphere. The surface is nearly as ancient as the solar system itself and has almost one-hundred percent crater saturation.  In layman terms this means every new asteroid impact happens on top of an already existing one.  Underneath all that pockmarked terrain is the possibility of a subsurface ocean.  Imagine digging down through the permafrost only to emerge into some kind of cold underwater abyss roofed in ice with god-knows-what dwelling down in the dark depths.  It's a thalassophobic nightmare, that the game designers obviously had no interest in letting the player experience.  Instead, that terrifying encounter is only mentioned in passing and (as a substitute) we get a bunch of boring zombie mutants hanging out around what is definitely not OSHA approved industrial machinery.  Worse yet partial terraforming of Callisto has transformed the "dead moon" into basically Antarctica, complete with clouds, wind and snow.  I'm not sure why opening an airlock would suck people out if there's an atmosphere, but the game's creator (Glen Schofield) has a reputation for pointless scientific inaccuracies.  Case in point, Callisto (despite being a rather huge moon) only has 12.6 percent the surface gravity of Earth.  This seems to come into play a bit during one scripted sequence when the protagonist slowly falls down the side of a building.  The devs could have made up some excuse like "magnetic boots" to explain why low gravity isn't an issue onboard space ships or inside the prison complex, but once your out on the surface this fact should have really come into play.  Specifically, having to navigate around chasms and fences should have been trivial since you character can vault over them with ease.  It could have been an interesting change of pace from a gameplay standpoint...more of an open sandbox arena...also, zombies coming flying at our hero through the snowstorm would have been absolutely unnerving.

Speaking of the hero of this story, he fits the Dude McGuy roll perfectly in that he is a short-haired scruffy thirty-something that has little in the way of personality and no motivation beyond immediate survival.  I get that they were going for the everyman protagonist here, but give him a lisp, a tic, a phobia; make him religious or superstitious...something that the actor can work with! As is, his female counterpart would have made a far more interesting main character given that she has a backstory that could have shed some much needed light on the underdeveloped plot.  It's weird that known profession actors were hired to play the various character roles when they were given so little to do.  The real kicker though has got to be the ending.  Just as the story feels like it's starting to go somewhere the credits roll on a sequel-bate cliffhanger...got to justify that season pass, I guess.

To anyone on the fence about getting this game, I would recommend waiting until it's on sale in a bundle that includes all the DLC plus (as of now much needed) performance patches.  Only then will it be worth playing.  Unless you're in Japan, of course, in which case it's simply not available because it was deemed too violent.  To everyone else...well...you've already made up your mind, haven't you?  

Howling at the Moon

The word "quarry" has two meanings
a "rock mine" or a "hunted animal" -
Hackett's Quarry indeed!

Callisto Protocol is the hot new game out right now, but why talk about that when there's another six-month-old horror title I never got around to?  Made by Supermassive Games (the developers behind Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology), The Quarry has a lot in common with those games mechanically.  From a story perspective, it uses the classic teenagers-at-a-summer-camp setup.  Even so, it doesn't have all that much in common with the "Friday the 13th" films.  Instead, it borrows more from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the "Blair Witch"...plus there are werewolves.

That last bit isn't so much of a spoiler as an approximation.  While the featured creatures of The Quarry have a lot in common with lycanthropes lore-wise, they are visually quite different to what one would expect; tall, hairless and gaunt with elongated limbs.  These werewolves are uniquely disturbing to look at.  In particular, the first reveal scene presents them via some absolutely creepy shots.  All this is aided by (as is always the case in Supermassive Games) excellent use of lighting, sound and camera placement.  Sadly, the spectacle is undercut somewhat by their physical movement which can come across as rather weightless at times.  Worse still, this lack of inertia and mass extends to instances where said werewolves interact with other character models.  In other words, the kill scenes sometimes look more goofy than horrifying.  Regrettably, these animation woes also extend to some of the facial motion capture performances as well.  Maybe it's due to technical issues, or simply a lack of polish.  Hair and water effects are a bit rough too, though these are long-standing problems when it comes to video game development.  Overall, it's disappointing to see given the clear amount of attention and effort that went into other aspects of the production.

The writing, particularly when it comes to dialogue, is sharp in a way that reminds me of Oxenfree. To elaborate on that, the characters talk like actual American teens minus their most braindead colloquialisms.  That may make it somewhat inauthentic, but trust me...we are all better off because of it.  Of course, well written dialogue is never truly going to elevate the script unless it has a good cast to deliver the lines.  Thankfully, The Quarry excels here with a talented list of known (though not especially famous) actors who nail their respective parts perfectly.

Ironically, their sensitivity to water means that the
 teens could have waited out the whole werewolf
 attack on boats in the lake, though this only
 becomes apparent to them after it is too late 

The story itself is somewhat of a slow burn; taking the first two hours (approximately a quarter of its entire length) introducing a cast nearly the size of a Stephan King novel.  In fact, this is kind of a roadblock in terms of story comprehension due to several plot-important characters only having a very short amount of screen time.  Adding to the confusion are the werewolves themselves which look indistinguishable from one another.  While this may have been intentional, I think the game would have benefited from including some easy-to-spot hints about the origin of each lycanthrope via accessories or tattered bits of clothing still on them even after they have transformed.  Incidentally, the transformation scenes in The Quarry are cleverly dramatic in that they use a burst of gore to hide the model swap from character to werewolf.  I actually feel like it's a welcome change from the traditionally slow and drawn-out morphing that is typically depicted.  Having stated that, I do think it's a bit weird that when they revert back to human form they are suddenly wearing scraps of strategically placed clothing again.  To be clear, I'm not asking for nude characters here, just an eye for consistency.

While we're on the topic of consistency, I should mention that the shear number of variations and outcomes in The Quarry is nothing short of staggering.  As is the case with all recent titles by Supermassive Games, anyone can die though there's only one minor character that has (for story reasons) an unavoidable death.  Visualizing the tangled web of possible plotlines must be a nightmare unto itself, but somehow the dev team managed to keep it logical...albeit with two caveats.

The first is the the kind of pitfall I encountered many years ago playing an obscure indie game entitled Uncanny Valley.  Basically, what can happen is player-made choices lead to vital chunks of the plot being skipped over such that, by the time the credits roll, it feels like they accidently missed one or more important scenes...because that's exactly what they inadvertently did.  If you want to see an example of this, look no farther than the final part of Nexlander's Let's Play The Quarry.

Aside from the surprisingly hard-to-get "everyone dies" ending,
it's also possible to have any one of the main characters be
the sole survivor

The other issue with having a wide variety of potential endings is it makes wrapping things up pretty difficult.  The Quarry does have a string of vignettes summarizing how things stand at the conclusion, but doesn't offer much in the way of resolution outside of a pseudo-podcast over the closing credits.  It's better than nothing, but not exactly satisfying either.  Aside from a few post-launch technical issues, this is the biggest criticism I've seen leveled at the game.  In a roundabout way I guess it's a compliment since the implied meaning is a lot of players actually cared enough about the characters to want to know what ultimately happened to them.  I don't know though...maybe a little F.B.I. style watchlist report using snippets of condition-sensitive dialogue or text would have been better?  Like I said before, it's a hard thing to do well without creating a massive resource sink.  Endings are hard...and on that note, until next time! 

Plot Iceberg

 

Confidently Cheesy

Bookended by the spiritual prequel Until Dawn and its spiritual sequel The Quarry, The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of horror games that feel inspired by Telltale's various sojourns into the adventure genre.  They are all games heavily based around quick time events and decision trees with some light third-person exploration sprinkled in.  The appeal of them, I think, is the ability to manipulate what are essentially fairly by-the-numbers horror film scripts.  In particular, the player can influence dialogue and actions which, in turn, determine who lives and who dies.

As of the date in which this was written, there have been four (out of an planed 8+) entries in the series.  They are, thus far, a mix of ghost, witch, vampire and slasher stories that rely on stock character archetypes and interpersonal drama to propel the plot forward.  To say these games are corny would be a mild understatement, but it is very clear that Supermassive Games (the developers behind The Dark Pictures Anthology) know what they are doing.  Having said that, there is still room for improvement.

The performances by the cast are generally quite solid, but something about the motion capture seems a bit off.  It's especially noticeable when it comes to facial expressions in some of the more subtly acted scenes.  Another area in need of attention is the button prompts.  As one Rob Zacny of Waypoint Vice pointed out, it has been four games at this point and still there are times when the desired input is unclear.  Of course, these issues pale in comparison to the importance of the stories themselves.

Tastes will vary from one individual to the next, but I personally feel House of Ashes is the most enjoyable of the bunch so far.  Its action-heavy approach works well within the framework of a video game.  In all the series entries, I have to say that the camerawork and lighting is pitch perfect...although it can be kind of weird seeing the same actors playing different roles in one game to the next.  It's also a bit strange in that it wouldn't be all that hard to hide this fact by making some changes to their in-game character models.  Maybe the dev team simply doesn't have enough resources to make said adjustments though...

Still, the fundamental appeal remains.  Depending on player choice any or all the main characters in a given story can survive or perish; encouraging replays and experimentation in equal measure.  At the very least, it makes for good Youtube/Twitch viewing fodder.  Hopefully, Supermassive Games continues the series to its intended conclusion so we can see where the enigmatic narrator and his metatextual observations lead.     

No Signal

Do you love anime?  Are you chronically depressed?  Well, I have the video game for you!  It's called Signalis.

As a fan of that storytelling niche wherein sci-fi and horror meet, one would think Signalis is a perfect fit for me.  Yet, for reasons I will try to elaborate on, this indie title completely failed to garner my interest.  It's especially odd considering a similar game that came out less than a month prior, Scorn, was a very enjoyable experience for me.  What could be so different as to divide these two games into the wholly separate categories of "like" and "dislike" in my brain?

Certainly the visual differences are one thing.  Signalis is very anime inspired, so much so it's fairly easy to spot the influences - "Ghost in the Shell", "Blame!" and "Evangelion" being the most obvious examples.  While there are some first-person sections, the majority of the game is played from a fixed isometric perspective.  It's a rather baffling choice given that every entity and object is 3D rendered.  Why not use more dynamic camera placement and movement like the classic survival horror games Signalis seeks to emulate?

One comment I read recently online criticized Signalis for being too much like a Silent Hill cover band; not a homage, so much as a direct copy.  There is most definitely a lot of Silent Hill baked into the game, but some Resident Evil is sprinkled in too.  A strict six item inventory limit and pocket-dimension storage containers are the most obvious examples, but torching corpses to prevent revival (as well as some puzzles) harken directly back to the RE1 remake.  The thing is Silent Hill and Resident Evil are two great flavors that don't really go well together despite both being popular entries in the survival horror subgenre.

Compounding the problem is a strange decision on the part of the developers to make basic utility items like the flashlight and camera take up inventory slots, not to mention some weirdly restrictive limits on ammo stacking.  Other issues include difficult to trigger (or outright hidden) interaction prompts, and an overly obtuse plot.  Just to clarify, I'm not against unconventional forms of storytelling.  However, I do feel like a player should have a through line to latch onto provided they take notice of the broad strokes.  Signalis doesn't do this though, choosing instead to dump a bunch of misleading thematic elements into a chronological/POV blender.

Despite all those criticisms, the game seems to have been received well on Steam in addition to more official review outlets.  Honestly, it makes me wonder if I'm missing something fundamental.  Maybe it's just the overall vibe that people find appealing...and since my answer to the first two questions asked at the beginning of this blog post are "no", I can only conclude that I must not be tuned into the frequency this game is broadcasting on.  

Front Mission Rebuilt

When someone mentions the words "strategy role-playing game" (SRPG), I think most people imagine Final Fantasy: Tactics, or maybe Triangle Strategy.  Those are both excellent examples of the sub-genre, but only one side of the proverbial coin.  The other half is a more sci-fi take on the concept, and nowhere is this better represented than with the Front Mission series.

It all began with a game for the Super Famicom.  I actually played it many years back in Japanese using an SNES emulator.  At the time, my knowledge of the language was pretty limited so I couldn't really follow the story.  Thankfully, the gameplay was fairly intuitive.  The player has control over an ever-increasing roster of characters who go through a liner set of missions gaining upgrades in the form of better machinery and weapons for the mecha they pilot (referred to in-game as "Wanzers").  Later, I got to play Front Mission 3 and 4, but never had a chance to try out the second entry in the series due to it being Japanese PS1 exclusive.  Fast-forward to now, and it looks like Nintendo Switch owners will finally have the opportunity to play a remastered version of the original entitled Front Mission 1st.  The second game is also getting the remaster treatment, but won't make it's debut until sometime later.  I'm not opposed to this plan though if you happened to have a Nintendo DS there was a chance to play the original with a proper English localization.  

Looking at trailers for Front Mission 1st, it's easy to notice the audio and visual upgrade.  Rather than pixel art, the wanzers are rendered as fully 3D models - a feature that allows for more dynamic camera angles in battle.  Character portraits also received upscaling that is so faithfully adapted they look like HD versions of the originals.  The musical score has been rerecorded and sound effects have obviously been improved as well.  As far as I can tell, gameplay appears to be largely unaltered.  That's fine by me, but I wish more effort went into giving the wanzers a bit more flare when engaged in combat.  I would love to see more detailed damage modeling and some eye-popping particle effects, as well as the weightiness one would associate with giant robots bashing away at each other.  As is though, it all looks a bit bland presentation-wise.  I assume that it's too late to apply much in the way of additional visual enhancements to Front Mission 1st, but maybe the Front Mission 2 remaster could receive a boost to its visuals before going to market.  Given that it's the entry in the series I really want to play, here's hoping that will turn out to be the case.        

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Kerbal Space Program 2 (abbreviated as "KSP2") is coming out...seriously this time.  After being delayed over and over, from 2020 to 2023, it now has a set launch date of February 24th.  There's just one catch though - it's early access.

Normally I wouldn't have a problem with this except the price tag is just shy of what full retail titles cost.  That's a lot for a game that doesn't have a campaign mode, base building, interstellar travel, multiplayer, or any of the other features implemented yet that would make KSP2 a proper sequel.

Well, surely the graphics are a big improvement over the original, right?  Not exactly...with the Parallax 2.0 mod coming out for the original KSP soon, the difference is a lot slimmer than one might expect.  Granted KSP2 may have some under-the-hood improvements (such as code optimization, better UI, and a true banishment of the dreaded physics kraken), but I'm not believing it until I see it.  That high degree of skepticism might seem unduly harsh.  However, keep in mind the dev team has gone on record in interviews incorrectly claiming that time warping while under acceleration is a new feature.  In fact, it was possible in the original KSP up to a "x4" increase.  As discouraging as all this is, I might be willing to overlook these failings if not for a rather huge misstep early on in KSP2's development.

The original team behind KSP2 consisted of a studio called Star Theory Games.  For reasons that remain nebulous, the publisher, Take Two, cut funding which in turn caused the developers to go belly up.  Take Two then immediately poached a bunch of the studio's former employees with the allured of a new job and sign-on bonuses.  Essentially, it allowed Take Two to move the entire operation in-house while simultaneously purging anyone they didn't see eye-to-eye with.  It's about as sleazy as business practices get, plus it was done by a corporation with a (let's just say) less-then-stellar reputation...not that the original inventor of KSP, Squad, was all that great either.  Recently it came light that they apparently paid their employees very poorly even by Mexican standards.  No wonder the programming work on that game was such a hack job.

Sorry little Kerbals.  You guys might be adorable, but your creators have all the flaws of Greek gods and none of the splendor.    

A Voice from Beyond

Editor's Note: I'm doing something out of the ordinary this time and making the final blog entry for this month about what someone other than me wrote.  This particular text is lifted from the ResetEra forums (yeah...I know the admin and mod team there are trash, but the same doesn't hold true for all the website's members).  Case in point, a user going by the name of "PlanetSmasher" shared an interesting idea they had regarding From Software developing a new entry in the Castlevania franchise.  Everything that follows in this post is their words (aside from a few minor typos that I corrected).  Please enjoy...and I'll be back in a week or so.  

I've been thinking a lot about how Castlevania needs to be brought back. Konami's put a ton of muscle (rightly or wrongly is up to you) behind Silent Hill, but the original Konami classic is as of now relegated to a few remaster collections. I don't think this is right. Castlevania deserves a full revival, with real meat and bone behind it.

And I think the ideal candidate for such a revival is From Software.

Now, before you accuse me of using From Software as a new-generation version of the "give every game to Platinum" meme, hear me out. I think the ideal way to bring Castlevania back as a franchise is as a hybrid of design elements from Bloodborne and Elden Ring. In many of the linear Classicvania games, especially the ones after the original Vampire Killer, the player begins their journey outside of Dracula's castle and has to cross Wallachia to get to the titular Castlevania before beginning their climb up to face Drac himself. This has also been reflected to some degree in some of the Metroidvania games such as Mirror of Fate, Portrait of Ruin, Curse of Darkness and Order of Ecclesia, all of which spend significant time outside of the castle.

So imagine this: you get to create your own vampire hunter and pick their lineage at the beginning of the game. Are they a Belmont? They get bonus damage with whip weapons. Are they a Dhampir? They can regenerate HP by damaging enemies, but only at night. Are they descended from clan Belnades? Their MP passively regenerates. And so on and so forth. Once you've created your hunter, you're dropped into a ramshackle hut on the outskirts of Wallachia. Your only goal is to reach Dracula's Castle and kill the big man himself. Once you leave the hut and finish the tutorial, you get a view of this, looming in the distance on the other side of a great field:

How you get there, how you get in, and what you bring with you is up to you.

The Wallachian countryside is littered with villages under siege by Dracula's supernatural forces, and smaller palaces run by his lieutenants. Countess Elizabeth Bathory's blood-soaked mansion sits on an island in the middle of a lake, filled with the bodies of her blood-drained victims. Count Orlok rules over a small gateway fortress dividing part of the map off from the rest - he must be defeated to open the colossal gate. Each of these lieutenants' home bases can act as the spiritual equivalent of a Legacy Dungeon, providing the player with mid-scale goals to conquer on their way to face off against Dracula in the main castle. And along the way, smaller areas like haunted graveyards, vampire-operated dungeons and cursed temples can fill the role of the smaller dungeons, providing shorter-term goals and sources of special weapons and gear.

Obviously, Dracula's Castle will make up a substantial chunk of the game. I see it as being the size of two or two-and-a-half Elden Ring legacy dungeons stapled together - reaching the castle is your first goal, and then actually surviving the journey through it is the second half of the game. The castle can be divided into several sub-dungeons like the Alchemy Laboratory and the Long Library, each with their own level design quirks, special loot finds and bosses. As you make your way to the top, collecting artifacts to unlock doors and higher floors, you'll occasionally be able to look out over the countryside and see the places you explored before, or spot areas you missed on your journey to the castle, before finally reaching the Keep and facing Dracula himself.

While I could see the logic in making the game more of a Sekiro-type with a fixed player moveset based around the Vampire Killer, I think the goal should be to try to encapsulate multiple playstyles. The classic Belmont playstyle of a whip (and a backup sword) mixed with classic subweapons standing in for spells or Hunter Tools would be fairly easy to adapt, but they should also allow players to go with a more Belnades-inspired spell-slinging build, or one more inspired by Alucard with quick, speedy melee attacks and technical magic. This would allow them to fill out the side content with all kinds of weapons, spells, and items to discover, including classic Castlevania weapons like the Crissaegrim, the Cross Boomerang and Sypha's litany of ice spells, giving players more customization choices for their builds.

And hell, now that From has finally figured out jumping in their games, you can even work in some mild platforming challenges. Maybe one of the dungeons is the legendary Clock Tower, full of Medusa Heads and giant clock gears that the player has to navigate to reach the top, where everybody's favorite scythe-slinging bastard is ready to challenge them.

When I played Bloodborne all those years ago, the entire way through it I thought to myself "this is the way Castlevania should've evolved in 3D" - and with the improvements to movement and exploration that Elden Ring premiered, I think it's now finally time for From to take the reins of the Castlevania series from Konami and make something truly legendary that blends the strengths of Castlevania's core concept with the challenge and dedication to a setting that From has built their entire brand around.

Only One Chance to Make a Second Impression

Scorn is a short game.  How long it takes to complete varies from person to person but, in terms of hours, the length seems to be somewhere in the mid single digit range.  It's a bit disappointing considering the price tag, and the fact that the game spent over seven years in development.  Even so, there is still greater potential for Scorn in the form of a sequel.

Whenever a dev team is considering a whether or not to make a follow-up to one of their video games, it's a good idea to look at player feedback.  In the case of Scorn, a lot of the criticisms boils down to certain players being disappointed that the game wasn't a run'n'gun style shooter, or a walking sim, or another entry in the survival horror genre.  Scorn is most definitely creepy, but it's more focused on psychological and body horror than anything else.  For some that might lessen its appeal, but I think those focal points (along with the strong visual presentation) are what make the game noteworthy.  Having said all that, there are some aspects of Scorn that could be improved upon in a sequel.

Combat in Scorn is neither good nor bad.  A lot of fights in the game can be avoided with a little patience and some attention placed on character movement within the environment.  Personally, I think it's a nice touch.  Sadly, that design philosophy doesn't extend to the end "boss" encounter.  In fact, what is supposed to be the final climatic battle is a bit tedious (or possibly just underwhelming, depending on how quickly the player can figure out what they need to do).  Pro tip: side strafing is slow, sprinting forward and changing facing with the mouse is a faster and a better way to avoid damage.  I think that having a slight puzzle design to enemies is a good way to make combat more interesting.  Something along the lines of shoot-one-place-to-open-up-a-weak-point is preferable to the overused aim-for-the-head strategy.  Especially since the monsters in Scorn don't really conform to human norms.

As far as locations go, there is a number of places that could be added based on cut content alone.  The artbook for Scorn features concept drawings for a tower and labyrinth areas that never made it into the final game.  There's even an underground crypt-like zone that was supposed to be part of "Polis" (the temple structure players travel to by railcar at the end of the game).  As far as I can tell based on screenshots and trailers a hall of heads was made using in-game assets, but for whatever reason wasn't accessible in the game.  The same sort of thing holds true for some of the more interesting bits of lore.  There are some neat details about the "Homunculi" (those Krang/Utrom looking creatures in jars of red liquid) and three-eyed people (one of which dies after emerging from a pod next to the place where players acquire the door key and ammo/healing storage device) that could be integrated into a sequel.  

Scorn is a bit deceptive when it comes to continuity.  For example the face we see in the background of the main menu is actually that of the prologue character after he was incased in that white sludge at the end of the prologue.  When beginning a new game, the opening cutscene flashes back and forth to the events that led up to this.  For a sequel it might be interesting to take an approach similar to Half-life: Opposing Force or Half-life: Blue Shift...show us some of the same places as before, but from a different point of view under different circumstances.  Personally, I'd like to play as a "Mold Man" (one of those poor wretches encountered near the beginning of the game) who is trying to find refuge for themselves and their kin, but maybe that's just me looking for an excuse to root for the underdogs.  Regardless, I hope that we do get a Scorn sequel someday.  I feel like Kepler Interactive has only scratched the surface of the world that they've created.  

For Science (and Fun)

Realistic space sci-fi has some difficult challenges when it comes to mainstream gaming appeal.  Certainly a lot of the math involved could be abstracted, but unless spaceships have delta-v budgets and heat radiators then what's the point?  Saying your spaceship runs on pixie dust and crocodile tears would be just as accurate as some technobabble like "nanomachines powered by zero-point quantum energy."  That all said, I'm not posting this blog entry simply to dunk on Star Trek or Star Wars.  There are a lot of people (myself included) who enjoy fantastical stories and that's totally okay.  Instead, what I want to do is highlight some aspects of hard science fiction that could hold wider appeal if they were executed in clever ways

Automation is a major component of real-life space exploration.  Quite a bit of spaceflight involves math and calculations that are the kind of thing that computers excel at.  What they're not so good at is trouble-shooting.  Generally speaking, keeping humans alive and well in space is tricky.  It requires a menagerie of special equipment which could be replaced with other resources that are more mission specific.  The thing is though tasks that take a Mars rover hours to complete could be done by a human in a matter of minutes.  Additionally, there are much more stringent limits as to what a machine can accomplish.  So, the basic takeaway here is a few astronauts supported by computers go a long way compared to a setup that relies completely on automation.  For folks who love space battles, this means a bunch of warships would only need a few (or maybe even just one) manned spaceship for command and support purposes.  Vessels such as tankers and cargo vessels wouldn't need any crew, but a tender or salvage/repair spacecraft would almost certainly benefit from having trained professionals onboard.  Some examples of games that capture this reality to varying degrees are as follows:

• Carrier Commander
• Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• House of the Dying Sun
• Mission Critical

Asymmetric warfare is another aspect of space that often gets overlooked.  Taking vehicle stat sheets and bashing them into each other is a time-honored tradition of war games, but not necessarily an accurate depiction.  Just because we don't get massive capital ships exchanging point-blank pyrotechnic broadsides, doesn't mean it has to be boring to look at though.  Actual visuals could be swapped out for tactical displays.  Lasers might be invisible to the naked eye, but there's no reason not to show them on a sensor readout.  The same is true for size scales and distances.  Time, too, can be skipped over so as to not bore the player with long uneventful journeys.  Best of all these kinds of games can be educational in an indirect way.  Scientific realities might be overwhelming in their totality, but in smaller (more digestible) chunks it is possible to advance a player's understanding simply by interacting with such games.    

War isn't a Game, or is it?

 

A Game Made of Games

Making a video game that consists of several smaller games (all stitched together) is a hardly a new concept.  The first game I can recall playing that embraced this design aesthetic was Defender of the Crown.  The oldest I ever played was almost certainly Beachhead, a game that initially released way back in 1983.  Of course more recently there are a bunch of Nintendo games that fit this mold such as Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and the Mario Party series.  While these sorts of games provide a nice variety of gaming experiences all rolled into a single title, there is the problem of one weak entry dragging the whole product down.  The asteroid turret sequence has a notorious reputation among fans of the original Dead Space.  Personally, I found turning up the in-game brightness and disabling the rumble control enough to make it a doable (although still not terribly fun) experience.  To me, these sorts of diversions are only a minor annoyance, like hacking mini-games in a third-person shooter.  The problem is, what if one of the uninteresting mini-games is actually a major component?  I've heard people say they don't like either the tactical or strategic layer in Total War games, which sounds like a hard thing to work around as a player looking for enjoyment.  Both of those "games" work in conjunction with each other to create the overall experience.  Certainly it's possible to play one without the other - skirmish mode for tactile engagements only and auto-resolve for people who just want to strategize.  However, I can't help but feeling that maybe Total War really isn't the series for them.  So, now that the lengthy introductions are out of the way, what is the main thrust of this particular blog post?  Well...to sum it up in two words:  Terra Invicta.

Brought to us by the same creative minds behind the Long War mods for the XCOM and XCOM 2 reboots, Terra Invicta (Latin for "unconquered land") is the name of their first stand-alone title.  It definitely has some thematic similarities to the XCOM series.  Unlike those games though (which are mostly about turn-based squad-sized firefights) Terra Invicta's gameplay has more in common with a lot of Paradox titles in that it is grand strategy in real-time.  Upon closer examination though it isn't simply a modern version of Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis, but actually three games stacked on top of each other.  At the bottom is an incredibly detailed global domination simulation.  Almost every country found in the world today is simulated via a collection of numerical values: population, GDP, wealth distribution, economic ties, cultural unity, etc.  The player takes the role of one of seven different international factions, each with their own agenda and agents.  The goal here is to gain control over various nations by subterfuge or military action.  Things like nuclear weaponry and global warming are thrown in to enhance the sim aspect, but what makes Terra Invicta similar to XCOM is the presence of nefarious alien invaders.  There's a twist though...you can take the battle to them.

Well...sort of...the second game (which sits on top of the previously mentioned one) is a space colonization simulation.  It's more abstracted than say Kerbal Space Program, but there are still a number of considerations that players must make regarding where and what to scout and mine within the confines of our solar system.  True to real life, launching payloads into space is less resource intensive the closer the rocket facility is to the equator.  Aside from every planet and moon, a variety of large asteroids are modeled all the way out to the Kuiper Belt. This is also entirely contested territory for the various aforementioned factions since they continue to be rivals in space.  The aliens are here as well, attempting to infiltrate humanity and escalating matters when they are met with failure or threats.  Figuring out what they are and what they want is a mystery that the player must unravel in an echo of XCOM's tried-and-true campaign structure.  The topmost game is the last players will find themselves interacting with.  It's a proper space combat simulation complete with real physics models, supported by current and near future technology.  Players can design their own ships and even give them maneuvering orders in combat.  There is an auto-pilot feature, as well as the ability to pause the action at any time.  What is lacking is a combat log, but this is an early access game so...work in progress, I suppose.  

UI, AI and optimization issues aside, Terra Invicta has some general problems at the weld points between each of its three games.  Balance is one way to phrase the problem, but the needed solution, fine tuning, is a tall order to fulfil given how complex it all is.  To paraphrase a quote from the strategy game podcast Three Moves Ahead, "I can't believe this game doesn't immediately collapse under the weight of its own hubris."  I sincerely hope we don't see too much in the way of feature creep, and in fact some simplification of certain subsystems might be the easiest way to iron out the wrinkles as the game approaches its full release.  It's ambitious and interesting, but I have no desire to dive into a 40 to 100 hour long game of Terra Invicta until is has received a hefty amount of polish.  To those determined individuals who are playing it extensively now though I say best of luck and I hope you have fun. 

Pixels for Games that Never Were

 

October Approaches

First announced in November 2014, Scorn is game that (assuming it isn't delayed any more) will have spent just under eight years in development.  That's quite a long time.  However, only a cursorily glance at the visuals will relevel that it is a game with a very distinctive look.  Every room, item, object and creature has an extremely detailed bio-mechanical look to it.  I imagine this must have been very labor intensive work to render in a three-dimensional environment.   Needless to say the dev team are undoubtable fans H.R. Giger's artwork, as well as Zdzislaw Beksinski's...possibly even Wayne Barlowe's.  The sound design is quite impressive too.  There are all the grinding, squishing, creaking and cracking noises you would expect to hear in such a techno-organic landscape.  On top of that the game has eerie ambient sounds that echo in the background.  Combining that with the moody lighting and ever-present haze, results in something that manages to be both weirdly surreal and yet disturbingly tangible.  Enough about visuals and sound though, how is the game actually played?

Well...all the information that I have comes from the relatively short preview build of the game, so I can comment too much on actual gameplay.  As far as I can gather though the game was originally intended to be a FPS, but that aspect of Scorn has since been lessened in prominence in order to make room for puzzles and exploration.  Personally, I think this was probably a wise decision.  Currently, it appears that the moment-to-moment gameplay has a lot in common with tiles such as SOMA and Amnesia: Rebirth.  The key difference between those games and Scorn being the player has some fighting capability rather than always opting to run and hide.  This mix of different kinds of gameplay should help break up repetition.  Even so, I think Scorn is going to need a bit more to really shine.

What am I talking about here?  Well, in a word - story.  I don't think the game will benefit from dialogue sequences, unless they were done in some strange sounding alien language with subtitles.  That might fit well with the overall tone.  Regardless, it's clear that the developers know that they can say a lot with visuals alone.  Take, for example, the half-hatched humanoid that players come across in the preview build.  Through superb animation and sound it's made plain that this creature doesn't know what is going on or what to do...assuming the player doesn't accidentally (or on purpose) kill it.  Little details like that make for good pieces of story that can then be woven together with other bits to form a somewhat cohesive tale.  The only potential pitfall I can see with this approach is an insufficient number of those story pieces.  In order to generate enough of them Scorn is going to need some meat on it's bones (pun intended).  Here's hoping the devs have enough interesting ideas packed into their game to make it a solid adventure.

Strangely Evocative

Back when I was little, I played a version of Rogue on a friend's IBM PC.  I remember that experience quite well because it (now famously) relied on ASCII for the visuals.  Ampersand represents the player's position in an underground multilevel dungeon.  Various other keyboard symbols are used to indicate objects of interest; "*" for gold coins, "?" for magical scrolls, ":" for food, "!" are potions, "+" marks doorways, "%" is a stairwell, "/" are wands, "]" is armor, "=" is a ring, and so on.  Letters of the alphabet represent monsters.  Some are fairly obvious; "H" for hobgoblin, "S" for snake, "D" for dragon.  Others are a bit less so; "A" for Aquator, "Q" for Quagga and "U" for Ur-vile.  I'm not sure what "J" is supposed to be...maybe Jerry the dungeon janitor (complete with mop, bucket and blue overalls).  I'm kidding, of course.  "J" is for Jabberwock.  At the time, I don't remember the game doing all that much to stimulate my imagination.  However, fast forward 26 years to the release of Dwarf Fortress and the results were noticeably different.

The first time I tried adventure mode in Dwarf Fortress, I started in a forest wilderness. Because of the line-of-sight mechanics, I got the impression that it was a dark and overgrown place.  The "O" letters scattered about (representing tree trunks) blocked my view somewhat, creating sight lines that radiated out from my character like a beacon in the gloom.  Commas, apostrophes and quote marks all around the place indicated tuffs of grass and other forest undergrowth.  Despite being nothing more than a bunch of keyboard gobbledygook it was a strangely eerie scene, in large part, conjured up by my own imagination.  I decided to head west because the lay of the land slowly elevated in that direction.  This too led to feelings of more apprehension because, as my character ascended each new Z-level, I couldn't see what was over the next rise beforehand.  As it turned out, wolves were waiting in ambush.  The results were predictably grewsome with my character turning in to their meal for that day.  

Much later in fortress mode, I remember the first time a human trade caravan came to visit.  As the wagons unloaded their goods in the trade depot, I noticed an "H" move leisurely, but deliberately to a spot that was both nearby and out of the way of foot traffic.  Almost immediately a vivid image of a tall man dressed in traveling clothes and a cloak appeared in my head.  I even pictured him gently resting his hand on the hilt of the sword sheathed at his side, while watching over the business proceedings like a hawk.  It's odd how the mind will fill in information gaps like that.  Combat can invoke a similar reaction.  In fortress mode, dwarfs tend to move about at a measured pace, when in a battle their icons will skitter around with blazing rapidity which lends itself to feelings of frenzy and desperation.  It can also be quite disturbing to see a wounded character slowly inch across the screen while leaving a trail of crimson ASCII behind them.  

I know I'm not alone in this.  There are countless pieces of art and even whole videos featuring what other players of Dwarf Fortress imagined while looking at nothing more than a bunch of dancing letters and static symbols.  If I were to hazard a guess, I would say this is one of the main appeals of playing Dwarf Fortress.  Because of that, I'm a little bit worried about the graphically upgraded version that is set to release in later 2022.  This new version appears to improve the game in a lot of ways (especially when it comes to the UI).  However, the addition of detailed sprites might actually lessen the experience for those of us with big imaginations.  I sincerely hope that I am wrong though.

In the Early Days of Middle-Earth Games...