Category Archives: Reviews

Draw Pinchbeck pretty, Dear Esther’s got grass

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The syndicated remake of 2008’s Dear Esther is out in a day and there’s hubbub. People seem to think that something wonderful is just breaching the horizon. And they’ve been talking – everyone has – about the life-changing power they’ll be imbued with. By the time this is published, thousands of people will have already drunk themselves into a Dear Esther paralysis. Just a taste and they’ll have grown feeble from the knees down, just like that.

I have no doubts that the game will be good. It’ll be better than that, probably, and then some. Like clockwork it’ll happen: top scores piling up, whitewashing the floor of every game-related site for a few hours. The praise will be a full-up foamy pit with good things and great things about Dear Esther and the criticisms will be a pathetic snake ditch, sandy, and boon to plague. There’s got to be something to say – something big – that slanders, slurs, smears.

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Dofus Review: A pretty gem with one too many flaws

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I’m just going to start with this. I hate the standard MMORPG gameplay. I hate cool-downs, auto-targeting, and watching arrows curve to hit me because the shooter’s accuracy stat defeated my agility stat. I often look at games with a system like this and wonder, “Why don’t they just be honest and make it turn-based? It’s all decided by ability scores and dice rolls anyways.” Dofus, while quite enjoyable in many ways, has made me eat my words on that opinion.

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Review: Pineapple Smash Crew

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Thanks to Pineapple Smash Crew I have screamed at my computer more than any other game.

These weren’t screams of rage, or frustration: they were exhortations. “No, Jools, keep away from the fire!” They were accompanied by pleading—“Okay, Roo, we just got to get you out of this level in one piece”—and depression—“No! Stoo! Why did you have to die!” Because at its heart, Pineapple Smash Crew, like its obvious predecessor Cannon Fodder, is a game about stories. It’s not a game about burly space marines shooting anything that moves (though this does happen), it’s a game about life and death, the struggle for survival.

Pineapple Smash Crew delivers because it does everything it tries to with such aplomb. There are exactly two mechanics in the game: running around shooting things with a PC-centric twin stick control set and grenades. And the grenades are laughably, lovably dangerous. Pineapple Smash Crew plays its best card immediately. It gives you grenades and missiles, which you will fire with reckless abandon. And then your four little guys will be close to death, because you didn’t expect friendly fire.

You might as well call it Friendly Fire: The Game.

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Punk baby, lycanthropy rock

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KEYBOARD DRUMSET FUCKING WEREWOLF is a 2011 independent game by Cactus and can be played here.

Something in the freshly-minted Swedish air made KEYBOARD DRUMSET FUCKING WEREWOLF a totally feasible, attainable thing. It’s an attitude – some counter-cultural, punk, piss on everything attitude that found its niche in underground games. It’s the intercourse of anti-everything and pro-pixels; rejection is the only alternative to mainstream success. It’s a drug-riddled six year old let loose in an arcade.

But it’s no Pixies, no Big Black. Screaming’s not reserved for emotion or guttural terror. Chords you forget are there except when they line up at each scene change and usher in a new platforming suplex. KDFW is not a passive music experience. You’re the newest band member and you play the keyboard, smashing ‘x’ and ‘z’ until finger fatigue wins you over and your breath slows and slows and slows.

Whatever’s in the air, it’s thick and snarky – some disdainful impertinence for our modern mainstream video game culture. I don’t have a problem with this. No limit can be breached without sidelining the norm and embracing edginess. Here, gradual steps are for chumps. Here, we take leaps and we color them pink.

All those …

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Wish upon a Starwish

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Flash game Starwish has only the best of intentions. It combines JRPG style advancement and narrative with shmup style combat reminiscent of Gradius, and endeavors to make an entertaining soup out of them. And while it stands as definite proof of concept, Starwish falls into the traditional JRPG traps: poor pacing, a lack of integration, and being too damn long.

Starwish begins with your character, the loveable Deuce, getting shot down on the imaginatively named “Home Planet” and meeting one-third or Starwish’s harem, Ginny, the cute, clumsy one. There’s also the mad scientist, violent one who doesn’t know how to deal with human emotions and the tsundere childhood friend. The first third of the game focuses its energy on which one of these girls Deuce likes.

That may sound utterly terrible, but it’s not a terrible story for the first third. Maybe this comes from optimism, seeing the game marry visual novel with Gradius, but the first third of the game is well-paced. It bounces back and forth between Deuce flying missions on Home Planet, shooting down enemy drones and looking for the resident macguffin, and Deuce flirting with ladies and talking with the strong cast, which also includes a drunken panda, …

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DARK MEADOW and the Monologue Conundrun

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We shouldn’t like monologues – particularly in games. Games are about agency. They are about the player acting out its desires. Monologues are contrary to that spirit of agency permeating games. They enforce passiveness and reflection. Above all, monologues are intrusive. Unlike cutscenes, one cannot skip a monologue happening in-game.

And yet here is Dark Meadow! A game that basically works as a one-man show, with a comedian stand-up hoping to entertain our protagonist with his musings via loudspeaker – and it’s captivating!

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Tales From The Fireplace – A Trine 2 Review

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Tales From the Fireplace – A Trine 2 ReviewMade for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. Developed by Frozenbytes, published by Atlus

The narrator speaks with a warm, friendly voice. He has a British accent. How could he not? It is a voice that could only be used by a storyteller. The only other sound audible is the crackling of the burning firewood, which also bathes the room in an orange-red light. The light reflects off the eyes of the eager and anticipating audience. The narrator takes a deep breath, preparing himself. The adventure is about to begin.

Like many other things in Trine 2, the specific information the narrator gives is not important. The way he says it is what matters. With his eager and inquisitive voice, his sole purpose is to put the player in the right mindset when playing the game. After introducing our three heroes Pontius, Zoya and Amadeus, his has served his purpose, and he fades from the audience’s attention, as they instead focus on the world he creates with his words.
The three heroes’ first adventure concluded with them settling down in a peaceful village in the kingdom, after having destroyed the the Great Evil in the …

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Dustforce Review: Cleaning in motion

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The question, whenever you talk about Dustforce, is “Is it Super Meat Boy hard?” Super Meat Boy has become the gold standard for difficulty in platformers, so much so that everything has to be compared to it. For instance, I would say that VVVVVV is probably half a Super Meat Boy except for the nigh-impossible bonus in Vidi, Vini, Vici. I Wanna Be the Guy is four Super Meat Boys in difficulty, at least, though Super Meat Boy has an I Wanna Be the Guy level.

Dustforce doesn’t rank on this scale, though. It’s a flawed comparison. Those games encourage survival, while Dustforce encourages perfection.

The central premise of Dustforce places you as a member of a cleaning super team tasked with cleaning up some filthy, terrifying areas. Imagine scaling a sheer cliff face, wiping dust from spiked platforms, and you’re there. Or running through a lab where sentient filth has turned office supplies into aggressive balls of slop. You’ve got to clean all this up.

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L.A. NOIRE and the Story That Wasn’t There

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Hank Quinlan: “Come on, read my future for me.”

In some ways, a game based on Film Noir would be the anti-GTA. Ah, the GTA series! The pursuit of the American Dream! To fight that good fight requires a great deal of optimist, no? The optimist believes the future is within his grasp.

Tanya: “You haven’t got any.”

Noir Films, however, are filled with pessimists who already know that the game they are playing is futile. That what they are playing is actually a poker game of death.

“What do you mean?”

The world is merciless. It’s unforgiving. We are already doomed no matter what we do. In the search of the American Dream, the fall from glory is a surprise; in Film Noir, the surprise would be not to fall from glory.

L.A. Noire isn’t the anti-GTA. It certainly isn’t the gaming equivalent to L.A. Confidential… or Double Indemnity …or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit. L.A. Noire may be many things – but it certainly isn’t Noir.

“Your future is all used up.”

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Just won the moon, what else?

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Apollo 2 is a Unity-based browser game created by Robert Yang. It can be played here.

It was full of gold! That’s what he said. I mean, it wasn’t really gold and he didn’t say anything, not much. He pulled out a family portrait, not gold. “Gold!” It was rich like gold, but not gold strictly speaking. Not gold.

Too bad it wasn’t air. God, how valuable air is in space, on the moon, in some crater on the moon. At six percent remaining oxygen, where can you get to in this white-powder desert? There’s just nothing here at all.

Over the lip, there’ll be Earth, its clouds, its peoples, your family back home, and some lens flare. But… you’re on the moon and you’re already resigned to your fate.

Apollo 2 has no objective. Or it’s not clear. If it exists, it’s understated in the distilled calm of air flow in your helmet. The goal is apparent, though. You’re to reminisce for your last minute 200-something-thousand miles away from home. How you do it is up to you. They’re your eyes in the helmet, your hands that are outstretched. You can break the game, walk a bit, jump some, do some hard thinking.

But …

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