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The Guest Mini-Review

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One thing that has been really awesome with my job lately is that I’ve played so many indie PC games this year. I love AAA games, but indie games often bend the traditional rules of games or they bring back that retro feature/mechanic you had no idea that you missed. The Guest is an indie game that takes a page from Gone Home, in that it is a first-person exploration game, but unlike Gone Home, it stays as sinister as the game appears. In fact, the game goes downright WTF up to the very last second.

The Guest collectible

The player controls Dr. Leonov who was summoned from Volgograd to Boston to give a lecture at Boston University. He wakes up in the middle of the night in his hotel to quickly learn that nothing is what it seems, and he’s actually a prisoner in this room. The only way to escape? Why puzzles, of course!

Here’s a bit of my review from Action Trip:

Like most puzzle games, The Guest starts players off lightly and then pulls no punches later. I doubt it’s half as complicated as the puzzles from The Witness, but a couple did make me tug at my hair in frustration, and sadly, there were no other puzzles I could distract myself with at the time. Only one puzzle made me turn to the Internet for assistance, and the solution still baffled me for a while.

Dr. Leonov doesn’t have many rooms to explore in his little prison, and backtracking is kept down to a minimum. My overall time with the game ended up being between three and four hours, and yet according to the Steam Achievements, I didn’t find half of the items Leonov could add to his inventory or read all the newspapers. I cleaned out every drawer and cabinet I came across, but it is possible that I missed a secret room in my fervor to plow through the puzzles. However, the story isn’t enough to make me want to play again to find these wayward items and there are a few puzzles I couldn’t be paid enough to go through again (I’m looking at you, you damn valve puzzle).

My overall experience was okay, I guess. The ending wasn’t predictable, but I have no idea why any of it happened. I thought I was pretty thorough with exploration, but as I mentioned in my review, the Steam Achievements say I didn’t look at half of what I should have been able to find. I liked the story better than in Gone Home, as at least this one didn’t seem as pointless, but I didn’t like the puzzles as much either.

I definitely learned that if I’m ever kidnapped and can only escape by solving puzzles, I will die alone. That is a fact.

Street Fighter V Mini-Review

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STREET FIGHTER V

I’m no fighting game guru, but I do enjoy playing them. If I didn’t have so many other things to review, I’d play them a whole lot more. I haven’t played a Street Fighter game since Street Fighter II, but I was really excited about Street Fighter V. Capcom was very excited about it too, so much so that they’ve done all they can to push the game out the door. Unfortunately that meant pushing the game out before it was 100% complete. At least what it has is excellently executed.

At least the combat is incredibly solid. In fact, I’d have to say it’s the best of any fighting game I’ve ever played. The button inputs and analog stick swivels are incredibly tight. Naturally it will take practice to remember and master each move in a match, but it’s rather rare for me to be able to perform a combo and instantly feel and see how the move works with the button inputs. It helps that there was zero button lag as well, even when playing the online matches. For the first time in several years, I really believe that I can master some of the more complex button combinations, something I gave up a long time ago. Of course, I wonder if I can swing the crazy combos, then several others can as well, which will create an influx of new dedicated players into this fighting community. Some will call it dumbing down, others say it’s becoming more inclusive, but I believe it’s a matter of improving the commands and making the game more fun for all, which it definitely does. Even though my ass was handed to me in every ranked match, I didn’t care because the gameplay was such a rush to experience.

All that said, unless you’re interested in fighting online and/or practicing for fights online, it’s best to hold off the game for now. Capcom plans to release more characters, a real story mode, and additional modes down the line. For now, there’s a “story” mode (yes, the quotes are important), training, and online and local matches. The framework is there for a great game, but right now, it’s built for tournaments.

Check out the rest of my full review at Action Trip.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia Mini-Review

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The third and final (thus far) entry of the Assassin’s Creed Chronicles series is out, and after my “delightful” experiences with ACC: India, I went into the game rather cautiously. Would Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia be like India? Would they go back to ACC: China? Would it be something in between? Something completely different?

ACCRussia-8

Well, it had some great potential with new gameplay features, an interesting twist on the Princess Anastasia legend, and playing as two different characters each with their own subset of abilities. And then it’s all blown with gameplay that requires you to be absolutely perfect in your execution at all times. Here’s a bit of the review I wrote for Action Trip:

At the outset, ACC: Russia appears to have vastly improved from the mistakes made in ACC: India. The missions go back to letting players play how they want to play, whether it’s ghosting, assassinating, or engaging enemies in open combat. At least, this is how it all starts off initially. About two-three Memories in, and it’s readily apparent that you’re supposed to play how the developers want you to, and not how you want to.

The ACC games have always put a strong emphasis upon ghosting, or being a shadow, as players are awarded performance points at various stages of the Memory Sequence. At the end of the Memory, the points are tallied up, and if the player racks up so many, upgrades will unlock. These upgrades include more ammunition, more smoke bombs, quieter lock picking, more health, etc. The upgrades available vary from Memory to Memory, so if you missed out on gaining a longer health bar, you’ll have to either replay the Memory, which starts over your save progress, or wait until several Memories down the line for another chance. Perhaps the devs thought that ACC: China was too forgiving with the required points to unlock an upgrade, because the point bar is extremely high in ACC: Russia. In other words, they really want you to be a perfect shadow or assassin and obtain that Gold ranking on each stage for top points. Earning just one Bronze ranking will ruin all chances of obtaining a single upgrade.

Oh yeah, that’s just as fun as it sounds, especially when you get to timed speed-stealth missions, where you have less than 50 seconds to get past 8 enemies without being seen or alerting them at all (which means dead body discovery). Oh and they have gas masks, so smoke bombs won’t work on them.

It sounds great, right?

I’m not one who ever strives for perfection in games, because I play games to relax. I don’t want to stress out about doing this the best or the fastest; there’s a reason why I’m not a speedrunner. Perhaps this game would be ideal for speedrunning, and that’s great, but that’s not a game for the masses. Or for me, for that matter.

LEGO Marvel’s Avengers Mini-Review

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tahiti

I am a huge fan of the LEGO games, of that there is no doubt. I’m fairly certain I own almost all of them, and I love most of them. Of course I was all over LEGO Marvel’s Avengers when it was first announced, and I was fortunate to get a review copy of the game for Action Trip.

LEGO Marvel’s Avengers is the LEGO “retelling” of the Avengers movies that are currently out, and it throws in some pieces from Captain America, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Thor: Dark World, and Iron Man 3. The game definitely needed those pulls from the other movies for content, but how they implemented them were sometimes incredibly awkward. In particular, I’m not sure who thought it would be a fun and entertaining idea to have Captain America putting together his gym and punching bags while Nick Fury watches.

I’ve played a lot of the game over the last couple of weeks, and while it is fun for the most part, it just doesn’t have that LEGO pizzazz these games normally do. Nothing really made me laugh out loud and nothing was all that clever with abilities. In fact, we’ve already seen all of the abilities before in either the LEGO Batman games or LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. That may not be entirely their fault, as they have already done the super hero games and therefore the abilities. However, I would have liked to do more than crack the occasional smile at a clever reference, such as the Tahiti vacation reference above.

Here’s a bit from my full review on AT:

The game does find ways to turn the more violent aspects of these movies into kid-friendly devices that are rather humorous. For example, instead of Black Widow stabbing a Chitauri to get him to turn his air-scooter, LEGO Marvel’s Avengers has her use a toilet plunger. There’s also this strange motif with everyone drinking strawberry shakes and spilling ice cream. Apparently that’s the real reason for Hulk’s anger—dropped ice cream. Stan Lee’s random appearances and comments are just as hilarious as well. And of course, the idea of Thanos growling over the loss of yet another Infinity Stone while doing his laundry is quite comical indeed. But that’s the extent of the humor in the game, and it’s sadly far and few between in comparison to other titles.

I still like the game, but it’s not the best LEGO game out there by far. Right now I’m plowing through the freeplay and all of the Hub Worlds. I still can’t believe there are so many.

Broken Age Act 2 Mini-Review

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brokenageact24It’s been over two years since the first Broken Age act released, and I really enjoyed the short little romp through Double Fine’s point-and-click adventure. They magically brought together two stories that seemed to have nothing to do with one another, and revealed their relations in a rather shocking cliffhanger of a twist. Now that it’s been several months later, I can finally see how this all comes together and these two protagonists band together and make the world right again.

I most certainly did, and while I absolutely loved how the story came together, I learned to be careful what I wish for. I had said in my original review of the first act that it was rather short at 4 hours and I was ready for something meatier. They gave me a meaty experience at over double the hours of game time, but the meatiness was a facade covering up hours of frustrating back-and-forth traveling over the same areas and obfuscated puzzles that are anything but whimsical and fun.

The puzzles in act one were obscure, as Double Fine has been wont to do, but in act two, they were downright bizarre. In addition, act two required the player to jump back and forth between the two characters in order to solve puzzles. For example, each character would come across a Hexipal they would have to rewire in order to get the Hexipal to perform certain tasks. The clues to how to rewire the little guys could only be found in their counterpart’s story. I have a feeling that the thought process was to get players to play until they were stuck to trigger them to switch to the next character, find that wayward clue, and then jump back. That would have worked really well if you had to do that with the first act, but you did not. I wasted so much time running back and forth between the different areas and re-talking to people and presenting them with different objects at different times in hopes the clue would come to light before I finally gave up and switched to the other character. Oh so something Vella and only Vella sees will clue Shay in on how to wire his Hexipal? Makes complete sense since they’re in two completely different parts of the world.

The puzzles are also far more complex this time than they were in the first act, which makes sense, yet it adds to the frustration I experienced jumping into act two fifteen months after the first act. Tim Schaefer did recommend that all players play act one immediately before act two, and I think that would have alleviated the “jumping in feet first” feeling I had within the first five minutes. However, using act one as a warm-up would not have prepared me for the insanely obtuse logic required to solve many of the puzzles. I realize that this is part of the appeal of these games ala Monkey Island, but the charm wears off rather quickly. Yes, yes, it’s adorable that I need to use a fork and some yarn to get the spaceship’s navigation system up and running, but after the fifth absolutely insane and obfuscated puzzle solution, it’s no longer adorable. It’s an utter beating, and all you want is for the madness to end and end quickly.

I hated being so down on the game when so much else is incredibly charming, but these are not the types of point-and-click adventures I want to see return to the mainstream. A new King’s Quest game is supposed to release rather soon, and I hope they stick to their formula, which was always outside of the box but never overly obtuse.

You can read the rest of my review on Action Trip.

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