Xexyz

To the Moon: upsetting

Posted on 15/02/2014 Written by Xexyz

Man, this is really quite a difficult game. Not because of the gameplay, but because of the story. As you go further back, it's clear why River experienced problems in later life, why John has been left with so much trouble in his mind. The meaning of the paper rabbits has just been revealed; I've just seen John and River get married, with River saying that nothing felt different and John saying the difference was responsibility. Did he know of River's condition at that point?

It's a beautiful game. I was welling up as they danced at the top of the lighthouse, after (or, rather, before) naming it. The cynicism of the researchers seemed ill-placed that point.

And my first bug ... pretty sure they shouldn't be standing in mid-air ...

To the Moon: affecting

Posted on 12/02/2014 Written by Xexyz

It's hardly the most stunning of games from a technical point of view. I've encountered no bugs, but the slow text and stuttery animation are initially difficult to get past. The graphics, while basic, are atmospheric, and at times feel rather foreboding. And the story ...

You start the game arriving at a house where two kids are playing the piano. It's a really lovely tune, and variants of it continue throughout the game. You learn why it is you're there - to go back in time and change things to ensure that your client gets to visit the moon.

The script is well written and funny at times, and while at the start there are lots of little details that are easily overlooked, these tend to be expanded on later.

I've taken quite a few steps back in time now, but according to the timeline I'm still only a fifth of the way through the game. The story is already getting to affect me though, as I know how things turn out when I learn about promises made, news being shared, and feelings exposed.

You see, ordinarily that last screen would be a massive spoiler, but you know she dies from the very start of the game - in fact, at the start she's already dead, but you go back in time to find her. That's where the spoilers lie.

I'll continue this sometime soon.

Stacking: completed!

Posted on 09/02/2014 Written by Xexyz

Woah, where did that come from? Nothing about the game at all, then suddenly completed?

Stacking is sort of an evolution of the point-and-click adventure game, except rather than using objects you find in the world, you use the individual abilities of the characters you meet instead. You do this by stacking inside them - you play as Charlie, the smallest Russian doll in the world, and the other Russian dolls are of varying sizes. To control a doll of size 3, you need to first stack into a doll of size 2. You directly control Charlie (or the doll which Charlie is inside), and at times this was a little imprecise, with at least one instance of the doll getting stuck on scenery.

That was a minor annoyance though, and the game has plenty of charm to overcome it. Presentationally, it's well thought out, set in the 1930s with a silent movie art deco feel to it. It's very clever, as well, as most of the puzzles have multiple solutions, and you only require one to continue through the story. On the first level I did just this, but by the time I was running around a Zeppelin, I was intrigued as to how to solve each puzzle in as many ways possible.

Not only that, but there are additional challenges and special characters to collect and amusing things to do. I'm not one for repeating things over and over again, but this game was amusing, charming and (maybe most importantly) short, and I found myself at the end of a few hours seeing the ending with the majority of collectibles from levels three and four in the bag.

I still went back to those levels though. There are some really funny bits of dialogue throughout the game, and some of the animations on dolls is ingenious. The Widow Chastity manages to sway her hips, even though she doesn't have any hips.

Other dolls have their own personality.

So enamoured was I with the game, that I immediately went back to the first levels and found all the collectibles there as well. I completed the game by wrapping five dolls in bandages aboard the ocean liner, which seems a fitting end.

There's some additional content available for about £3.50 (causing the locked achievements above); I may well buy that one day when I'm tired of playing a gritty brown adventure game.

Gauntlet: generally boring

Posted on 31/01/2014 Written by Xexyz

Some games don't age well, unfortunately. Moreover, some games just don't suit certain settings in the first place, and age makes it ever more evident. Playing Gauntlet last night, I felt that it should have stayed in the arcade, as the constant draining of health and difficulty in dispatching enemies feels odd when there's nobody waiting to have the next go on the machine.

In the end I just decided to clear an achievement for getting the highest score on the leaderboard. This meant getting above 8000 on a single life. By warping to level four, I found I could stand in a corridor and kill all the enemies spawning around a corner; after a while the walls changed to exits and I could kill even more in the level. Not the most fun thing ever, though.

The Typing of the Dead Overkill: trying to touch type

Posted on 30/01/2014 Written by Xexyz

I played the original Tying of the Dead quite a lot, both on the Dreamcast and the PC. The Dreamcast version was a bit of a faff, since it was a US import which therefore required a boot disc and crossed fingers, and you could never be sure it wasn't going to corrupt your VMU. The PC game was more accessible, except I never really had a gaming PC that could do it justice. I still have the disc, somewhere.

When I heard that The House of the Dead Overkill was to get the same treatment, I was a little excited. When I learnt that it had just been released on Steam around five minutes later, I was more excited and went to download it. It's not like me to buy something without seeing any reviews or impressions from trusted sources, but, well, it's The Typing of the Dead. I was glad that I bought it even before I started to play, after I learnt of the game's troubled development and eventual rescue.

Firstly, the bad news. Unlike the first TotD game, which was based on The House of the Dead 2, the characters aren't wearing Dreamcasts on their backs with a bizarre keyboard lap tray. Instead, the graphics are completely unchanged, which means that they must be using incredibly bizarre guns.

The core gameplay remains the same, though. Zombies appear and shamble towards you; you must type the word that appears next to them. As soon as you do so, they are killed. Kill them before they kill you, and all is rosy.

This would all be fine if I was a decent touch typist. I'm not - despite me being able to type entire sentences of reports without looking at the keyboard, it appears that as soon as it's no longer about economics, I need to see which letters I'm hitting. And this then causes issues, because I can't see when new zombies appear, I can't see which ones are running towards me rather than ambling, I can't see when something is thrown and I need to press a single key quickly.

There is a mechanic in the game where if an enemy starts to approach you faster, you can cancel your current word by pressing backspace, and start the new word. Guess what I need to do in order to hit backspace? Look at the keyboard.

I made a conscious effort to look at the screen. My accuracy dropped right down, but all the time I was typing normal words my keyboard mashing was working OK. But then this happened:

And it wasn't just phalanges. As soon as I was having to type single letters in order to spell the word, my typing rhythm disappeared and I started to panic.

Having said that, I got through the first chapter fine, before leaving it for now. I will be back, though - just maybe after getting a better keyboard. Or a Mac version.