Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: August 2020

~ Game Over ~

Ellen (Switch) – Pixel-art, side-scrolly, spook-’em-up adventure. Head and shoulders above nearly any other similar game I’ve played. It’s right up there with The Cat Lady on my list of best horror-themed adventure games. Only a few hours long, but told an interesting (if somewhat clichéd and poorly translated) story and did an excellent job of maintaining its creepiness all the way to the end.

The Talos Principle (PS4) – Wrote lots of words. Actually beat it twice to claim all the trophies, and then played the DLC expansion.

Erica (PS4) – I wonder if I should actually put this here, as it’s less a game than a choose-your-own-adventure movie. Played through twice to see a couple different endings, but two was enough. There isn’t nearly enough variance in the story to bother with more replays. At least not right away. Notably, there’s an companion app that you can download to use as a controller, which is good since the game is otherwise controlled entirely by the DualShock 4’s touch pad, and the DualShock 4’s touch pad sucks ass.

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You should definitely play The Talos Principle

For years, it seemed, every time I checked my Steam inventory I would find a new discount coupon for a game called The Talos Principle. I had no idea what it really was, but the promotional image was of a humanoid robot holding a cat. Not exactly the ideal way to pique my interest. So I ignored it over and over until just recently.

When the 2020 Summer Sale started on PSN, I was browsing the games, and saw that The Talos Principle was on sale. I don’t recall exactly what it was that made me change my mind, but I clicked on in and noticed that it was described as a “philosophical first-person puzzle game” which made something click within me. I quickly Googled it and saw that it holds a 10/10 rating on Steam and has generally excellent review scores. So I bought it.

Even at that point, I didn’t even start playing it until weeks later, when I needed to clear out some space on my PS4’s hard drive. The Talos Principle seemed like it wouldn’t require a huge time commitment, so I hopped in.

I am so frustrated with myself for blowing this game off for so long.

The Talos Principle is, without a doubt, one of the most satisfying video games that I have ever played. Not only is the puzzle solving a ton of fun and mind-bending in all the best ways, but the theme and narrative of the game are maybe the deepest that I’ve ever seen in a video game.

Diving straight into that theme, I don’t think that I’ve ever played or even heard of another video game that so thoughtfully explores the realms of philosophy, faith, and artificial intelligence. The Talos Principle is a deep dive into existentialism, examining concepts such as the meaning of life and what it means to be a person. Many of these ideas are touched on in short text logs -either diaries or emails of in-game characters- or excerpts from (what I assume are) real-world texts. In addition to that, the main throughline of the the game is your constant interaction with an AI who presents philosophical questions to you and then challenges you to defend your points of view. It’s so unique, and really made me think about the ideas that I was working through. It’s also an awesome coincidence that I’ve actually been getting into philosophy in real life, so it it was all that more impactful to me.

There’s also a concurrent plot about figuring out exactly where you are, how you got there, and whether or not you should really be listening to the booming, disembodied voice that claims to be your character’s creator. It’s interesting stuff, and I always appreciate when a game’s backstory and world building is parceled out into little chunks that you discover throughout your journey, giving you the chance to come up with your own theories as you slowly put all the pieces together. It’s maybe been a little overused, but I still like it. Fortunately, The Talos Principle never really gives you the hard details of the backstory, so you get a nice picture of what happened while still being able to fill in the gaps with your imagination.

What I’m getting at here, is that I really like games -or any other media- that keeps me thinking about it even after I’m done interacting with it.

As far as the gameplay? It’s highly reminiscent of Portal. The game is broken up into worlds and levels, and each level has a handful of bite-sized “test chambers” for you to solve. There are a number of tools that you unlock along the way, each one adding more complexity to the puzzles that you’ll be tackling. So I guess it’s really more like Portal 2 in that way. While the designers were able to come up with many puzzle variations for each tool, it’s when you have to use multiple tools in a single puzzle that things get really nutty. One tool in particular, the recorder, allows you to make a ghostly copy of yourself and sort of duplicate all your other tools. Every time I came across a puzzle that used the recorder I got a pre-emptive headache because those puzzles were always the most mind-bending and really force you to think several moves ahead. There are even a few rare examples where you have to figure out completely new concepts on your own. The finale is an epic multi-tier series of puzzles where you have to work alongside another robot to make your way to the end.

Your prize for solving each main puzzle is a tetromino, which are used for various things: the green pieces unlock each world, the yellow pieces unlock new tools, and the red pieces unlock the finale. To unlock anything, you’re presented with a square or rectangular grid and smattering of tetrominos, and your job is to fit all the pieces into the grid. They start small, but the bigger grids near the end of the game get really tough. They may have even been some of the toughest puzzles in the game, since there isn’t really a good strategy (that I was able to discover) for reliably solving them.

And then there are the stars. 30 stars are hidden throughout the worlds, and they unlock bonus worlds that unlock a bonus ending. Many of the stars are maddeningly difficult to find, never mind actually figuring out how to claim them. Some require you to sneak tools out of puzzle chambers, some require you to criss-cross beams across multiple puzzles, some make you come up with unexpected ways to use your tools. One particularly nasty one requires you to follow a QR code to a hex code that you need to convert to a time and date, from which you need to pull numbers to punch into a giant dial. Basically, the stars tend to go way beyond the scope of the way that The Talos Principle teaches you to think, and I don’t feel bad for looking up hints or outright solutions for several of them. To my credit, I solved every other puzzle in the game on my own. It’s just that those damn stars could be so obtuse that I don’t think I would have even had the mental capacity to collect them all without help.

The PS4 version (and I’m assuming all versions at this point) even comes with an extra DLC chapter, Road to Gehenna, which is essentially a super-very-hard expansion pack. As of this writing I’m only a few puzzles in, but they have been absolutely crazy, and the stars have been just as obnoxious to find as ever. There’s also a whole new sub-plot about a bunch of androids who deal with being caged within the world’s puzzles by forming an online community. It’s intensely in-depth and you’d best bring your reading glasses because there is tons of text to burn through.

(Editor’s note: I’ve finished it now, and Road to Gehenna is incredible.)

I said earlier that The Talos Principle has much in common with Portal. Robots, puzzles, turrets, a disembodied voice directing you through puzzles. Portal goads you along with the false promise of cake, The Talos Principle goads you along with the false promise of ascension and immortality. Although maybe it’s not actually a false promise? You’ll have to play it yourself to find out, and I absolutely recommend doing so. The Talos Principle is an incredible game, a profoundly thoughtful experience unlike any other in the realm of video games. And also it’s just a lot of fun to solve all those puzzles.

Gotta Brush ’em All!

A couple months ago, The Pokémon Company released the weirdest little app called Pokémon Smile – a “game” that encourages children to brush their teeth by bringing Pokémon into the equation. Obviously I’ve been using it myself, despite not being a child (at least, physiologically).

Pokémon Smile is a strange thing – it watches you as you brush your teeth, and then rewards you based on how effectively it thinks you brushed. And I would like to put an emphasis on the “thinks” part, because it’s not great at determining how well you’re brushing your teeth. Quite often I’m brushing at full force, and it still relays the message “you’re doing good – but brush a bit faster!” It will also randomly lose sight of me, although my head and face have not moved from center-screen. I think it has problems understanding that one’s grip on their toothbrush will change depending on what area of the mouth they’re currently focusing on.

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Indie World Showcase 8.18.2020 – Ry-actions

Nintendo has been pretty quiet about games announcements this year, probably almost entirely due to the good ol’ coronavirus pandemic. Fortunately, we’ve still been getting little bits of info here and there. One such bit is today’s Indie World Showcase – what I’m sure will be an extended sizzle reel of indie games that I’ll think look neat and then completely forget about because they’ll get no marketing at all after this.

That said, let’s go ahead and see which of these games may get lucky enough to get placed on my wishlist!

Hades – Supergiant’s other games that I’ve played, Bastion and Transistor, were good and I can see why they have a following, but they didn’t really turn my crank. And this is a roguelike dungeon crawler? Ehhh, I dunno about that. The animation they showed looked great, but it’s kind of irrelevant. The brief glance at gameplay looks just like the previously mentioned games but with a different coat of paint. I’ll definitely pick it up when it inevitably goes on sale for $3, but probably not before then.

Continue reading Indie World Showcase 8.18.2020 – Ry-actions

Director’s cuts

I had grand plans for the summer of 2020 – namely to record and upload a video to my YouTube channel at least once a week. I failed miserably on only the third week. I’d like to blame technology, but in the end it still really comes down to me.

To explain: The wrench in the works here is that sometimes when I record a video, the file ends up being upside-down once I’ve moved it to my PC. I have no idea why, but it really shouldn’t have been a problem. Shouldn’t. But Camtasia 6 is like the only video editing software in the world that can’t flip a video’s orientation, and that’s the software that I’ve been using forever. My bad for using a far-outdated program, I suppose.

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Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: July 2020

~ Game Over ~

KIDS (PC) – Art (non-)game. Weirdly satisfying, except when it becomes tedious. You can only appreciate milking people through a digestive tract so many times. But it’s only like 20 minutes long, so.

LOVE (PC) – Retro platformer built for speedruns. Tense and occasionally frustrating, but not quite masocore. Interesting in that it allows you to plop down a respawn point just about anywhere. Very fun, but super short and of limited value if you’re not planning to learn and master it.

A Hat in Time (Switch) – Achieved 100% by clearing the DLC chapters. Seal the Deal was fun and super cute, but tragically short. I was less enthused by Nyakuza Metro’s massive, confusing, maze of a world. Didn’t play past the first two Death Wish challenges because ehhhhh I only have so much time, and I don’t really want harder remixes of all the things I’ve already done.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: July 2020

On The Topic of Horror in Video Games

It’s become something of a Friday night tradition for me to browse the Switch eShop in search of an interesting-looking horror game for under five bucks. I don’t find something every week -not even every month- but I am delighted by the times when I do, because I surely do enjoy me a good spook-’em-up.

It’s also worthy of note that I am a complete baby when it comes to such things. When it’s late at night and I’ve got all the lights off, a horror game that builds tension effectively will absolutely scare the pants off of me. It’s not uncommon that I will creep through them at a rate of one checkpoint per session, because I simply cannot bear the terror of what spooks may be hiding around the next bend. Also I have a crazy overactive imagination and pretty much anything that frightens me will invade my mind for weeks, keeping me in constant fear of what lies around a dark corner or over the edge of my bed at night. This is despite me being a grown man who knows perfectly well that ghosts and monsters aren’t real.

Now, when I say “builds tension effectively”, that generally means that the game in question will hold off on throwing any actual monsters or whatever at you. It’ll drop objects to create a clatter, give you blurred glimpses of unexpected movement, work in creepy sounds like growls or scratching, and make you think that you’re being threatened by something. At that part, that’s when I’m scared the most. When I know that there’s a threat, but I don’t know what it is, when it’s going to show up, or how I’m expected to deal with it. The unknown is the most frightening thing.

Among the Sleep is the most recent spooky game that I’ve played, and it does a pretty good job of keeping that tension at a very high level. I want to say that it’s a fairly generic survival horror game, but it really does do a good job of standing out from the crowd. At least in the spectrum of games that I’ve experienced. This is largely owed to the fact that you play as a baby, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It gives the player a unique viewpoint both literally and narratively, and makes for some interesting gameplay elements, like having crawling be your ideal mode of locomotion.

What Among the Sleep did right was to reserve any actual monsters for the second half of the game. In the first two and a half stages, you’re actually completely safe, but you never really know that. The darkness is overwhelming, doors close by themselves, you hear oppressive footsteps thumping around every now and then, large objects move around just past the point where you can see clearly. It’s impeccably designed, from a horror perspective.

But then you get into the second half of the third stage, and there’s an actual monster tromping around, and the tension dissolves completely. It wanders around in the open, chases you if you’re spotted, and can spawn in and out of the map wherever it likes. From there, it becomes about learning how the monster moves and how to avoid it. It becomes a game mechanic, and game mechanics aren’t scary. They’re problems to be solved.

Stage four reigns it back a little, by resigning the monster to popping out as a jumpscare or quickly whooshing by on the opposite side of a chasm. The only time that it’s a threat is -again- boiled down to another gameplay mechanic. In this stage, instead of avoiding a patrolling foe, you come across a hallway replete with glass bottles perched atop small towers of blocks. It’s painfully obvious that knocking over a bottle will summon the beast, but there is plenty of cover to hide underneath. So you quickly learn that the ideal way to stay safe is to pick up a stray block, run under a table, and then chuck the block at a bottle. It will crash to the ground and the monster will float by harmlessly. Repeat as necessary until you get to the end. So much for that section.

And so, it’s unfortunate that Among the Sleep’s horror element completely fizzles out halfway through the game, but I did appreciate the time when it kept me on the absolute edge of my seat. I had a lot of fun with it regardless, and I’d say that it’s easily one of the better horror games that I’ve played recently (note that it was originally released in 2015). But it does make me wonder if there are, or even can be, any video games that remain scary from beginning to end. If you happen to know of any strong candidates, by all means, please share. I’m constantly on the hunt for the next thing that will keep me from being able to sleep.