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.