deKay

Dear Esther (Mac): COMPLETED!

Posted on 13/04/2014 Written by deKay

I’ve had this sat on my Mac’s hard drive for some time now, but being a non-console game it never crosses my mind to play it. Not least because connecting up a TV and a controller and so on… Today I had a couple of hours free and a game a couple of hours long was available, so Dear Esther came out.

First, I should point out this isn’t a game. I know there are people who would argue that it is, but it’s no more game than it is fish. It’s a story wrapped in a mostly linear walk around an island. A confusing, broken story relayed out of order in paragraphs both lucid and on the edge of insanity. Walking to various places triggers a section of plot, and eventually your wandering leads you to the radio mast you can see in the distance from the very start of the game.

And there it ends. Along the way, if you’re lucky, your exploration will reveal a little about who you are, who Esther is, and why you’re on the island. Or it won’t, as these story snippets are apparently random.

I think I found enough to make a sense of the proceedings. Perhaps not the sense, but I can certainly make some organisation of the information my playthrough revealed. Er, not playthrough. As that implies a game. Which this isn’t. No, really – you do no game stuff.

But was it good? I don’t know. I’m glad I experienced it (narrowly avoided saying played there), and it was pretty and clever, but I’m not sure how much more I got out of it via this medium rather than by just reading a short story. It didn’t help that you move so slowly, artificially extending the length of the notgame. It took me only about an hour and a half in total, and even though the vistas were nice and the cave drawings and chalk scrawlings added a little, I think I’d have preferred more wordy exposition in that time, or less time.

Things I’ve been playing recently

Posted on 07/04/2014 Written by deKay

Earthbound (Wii U)

Progressing well through this now. Well, at least I was until I entered Moonside where everythings is… wrong. The map is like Fourside only upside down, and all in neon. And there are invisible walls. And some people you talk to warp you all over the place but not to anywhere useful. And “yes” and “no” are reversed, except when saving your game. It’s very odd.

Oh yeah, and Paula got kidnapped by a green squidalienghost in the department store, which means some of the fights now are pretty hard as I had been relying on her Freeze “magic” (although it isn’t called magic – what is it? PP? What?) a lot.

Edge (Wii U)

I still have some eShop credit and this was reduced last week to just £1.79 or something, so I picked it up. It’s a nice puzzle game where you roll a cube around picking up smaller cubes and hitting switches which make the platforms appear, move, or transform. Seems good so far, but I’m only about 20 (short) levels in. The controls are a bit of a pain though – it’s too easy to allow the cube to keep rolling even after you stop pressing the direction pad, which is odd as it’s a cube, not a ball.

Animal Crossing (3DS)

Still playing this every day! Big news this week though – I finally managed to get a lighthouse! That space I’ve been saving on the clifftop for almost EIGHT MONTHS has now been filled with a lovely shiny lighthouse. Awesome!

I’ve also been trying to get more special tree stumps. I’d visited someone else’s village and they had at least two special stump designs that I didn’t, so I chopped down half my trees in the hope I’d find them in my own village. I didn’t. So a lot of time has been spent planting new trees.

Skylanders Giants (360)

Late to the party with this, as Skylanders Swapforce has been out about six months now, but someone was selling Giants (and ten Skylanders we didn’t have) for a bargain price, so I snapped them up. I’ve been playing it with my daughter, and although we’re only about four levels in, and it does seems like more of the same (only without the right-stick “waggle” events to open chests and locks and things), it’s just as fun as the original. Having a pile of new Skylanders to try is nice too. We’ve 27 overall now.

Steel Diver (3DS)

This was one of the “three for a tenner” games I bought a while back, along with Tetris 3DS and Heroes of Ruin. I can see why people complained at the price when it was £30, but for what I paid it’s a perfectly good title. You control a submarine and have to navigate through areas by moving depth and velocity sliders on the touch screen, rather than with the d-pad. Torpedo firing controls are all “buttons” on the touch screen too, as is the attitude “wheel”.

There are three different subs to choose, from a nimble but weak tiny one, to a strong but difficult to manoeuvre underwater tank. You actually have to play all of the levels with all three subs to unlock the later levels, and I’m currently struggling to pass Level 5, where there’s a massive ship you have to destroy, only I can’t. Boo!

Megami Paradise (PC Engine)

I have no idea what is happening. I intended to play this for Game Over, Yeah!! but couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do, so didn’t get to any areas where it was possible to die, so had to abort it. It appears to be an RPG where you control a girl at a convent school (it’s full of nuns). I managed to find some other girls who were stuck in chests or surrounded by frogs, and then found a dressing room where I could strip to my bra and knickers (but it wouldn’t let me leave the room until I’d put my clothes back on). Pretty standard Japanese fare, then. See:

Earthbound (Wii U)

Posted on 30/03/2014 Written by deKay

Even though I was all over this several months ago, I stopped playing. Not because I was bored with it, but I got stuck. I couldn’t get much further than the pencil bit – the enemies were just too hard, and I died $hlmun times.

But, with Backlog Fighter still in full effect, I returned to it a week or so ago and did that bit on my first go with no difficulty whatsoever. The game was back on. Woo!

Across that area was Paula, who I needed to rescue. We then returned to Twoson where I was given $10,000, which I couldn’t spend on myself, so gave it to popular beat combo Runaway Five so they could be released from their contract and drive to Fourside, dropping me off in Threed on the way. Threed that was full of zombies.

Zombies who caught me, and I had to take control of Jeff instead, who came to the rescue. With three members of my party, I took down the zombie menace (actually, I put some paper on the floor and they all stuck to it). Oh, and killed a sentient circus tent. No, really.

Now I’m on my way somewhere else, presumably Fourside via a non-direct route, and I’ve ended up in Saturn Valley. This place is populated with strange scrotum people who are all called Mr Saturn. And they speak in a very difficult to read font. And have telephones up ladders. And say Zoom a lot. I’m scared they might do… something… while I sleep.

Heroes of Ruin (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 27/03/2014 Written by deKay

What seems like a very long time ago now, there was a sale on at some place I don’t even recall where three 3DS games were a tenner. Or something. One of those games was Heroes of Ruin, and since it was the first time I’d seen it alone for under ten quid, let alone with two other games for the same price, I leapt on it (along with Tetris and Steel Diver). Then they all went on my backlog shelf, and time passed.

Even longer ago, I’d played the Heroes of Ruin demo, and really rather enjoyed it. Why I didn’t start the full game the very second it arrived, I’m not sure. I was probably playing something else at the time.

Not very long ago (last week) I finally got round to making a start, and very recently (today) a finish.

For the first few hours play, I was hooked. The game plays out much like I’ve seen and read (but never played) Diablo does, or Skylanders, for that matter. You choose one of four classes of character (I went for Gunslinger), and then enter levels where you complete quests. These range from finding items, through defeating bosses, to solving some very simple puzzles. Or just reaching the end of the level.

In each level, you defeat foes who get increasingly more dangerous, but you get increasingly more powerful and well defended as you level up and find (or buy, not that you need to buy anything) better items and unlock new buffs and skills. You can return to areas later on to grind if you want (but you never need to), or complete other optional quests (which you never need to) for more money and XP (neither of which you need to grind for).

After a while, you move on from one type of area to another (you start in the caves, then go into the forest), which is filled with different, but similar quests and different, but similar, enemies. Later, the forest gives way to snow covered mountains, and that into a sort of ruined magician’s lab in a hole between dimensions. But the quests and enemies are strangely familiar.

And that’s it. Four areas. Sure, each area has several levels, but they all look the same. In fact, I’m pretty sure most are the same, just with the camera angle rotated. Which is a problem. Combined with the palette-swapped baddies and repetitive quests, Heroes of Ruin just feels like they didn’t spend enough time with it. Another couple of level types, a few more quests which aren’t the same as those already in it, and some more enemy designs and it would have been so much better. It doesn’t help that it’s such an easy game either. I didn’t die, never once had fewer than 15 of my 20 health potions left, never once used an energy potion, never needed to grind for XP, and never needed to spend a single gold coin. Only the final boss caused any real problems, and even that was only because he took ages, not because he was difficult.

I did play multiplayer a bit (it has drop-in, drop-out play for up to four players) which is fun, and even had voice chat, but ultimately it doesn’t change the game in any way, aside from make it even easier. For much of my playthrough I didn’t have anyone to play with anyway.

As it is, there’s no way I can complain for £3.33, and I did enjoy it a great deal, but I can see why it didn’t get the sales it could have.

RSG – The Return

Posted on 27/03/2014 Written by deKay

Oh so many years ago, even further back than my last site update post, I wrote a game called RSG for the CSSCGC. It was too good to win.

Now, I have made a new version. A tiny, tiny version. So tiny!

Have a look on my new RSG page.