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To the Moon: affecting

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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.

The Typing of the Dead Overkill: trying to touch type

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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.

Tomb Raider 3: awkward

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I bought the entire Tomb Raider series on Steam a while ago, and I was inspired to play something after a short conversation with Sue on Twitter.
I never completed Tomb Raider 3, despite loving the first two, so this was an obvious thing to try. It took quite a while to get it working on my work laptop, and then configuring it to use the Xbox 360 pad took even longer.  I eventually settled an a scheme which meant I only needed to use the keyboard for crouching and walking slowly, and set off the the jungle.


The game looks a little rough nowadays, but that's not necessarily a bad thing given the paltry processing power of my laptop.  Rendering at 1280 x 800 meant that the game ran really smoothly; the cumbersome controls were a much bigger hindrance.  This was only part due to my inability to configure the 360 pad properly; the absence of a second stick to look around really hurts a game based around exploration.


It took a while to come across the first enemies.  I shot a monkey because I was convinced that he was looking at me funny; later on i realised that the monkeys only attack if attacked first.


That's not true of the tigers.  These took quite a few bullets to finish off, and bounded towards me very quickly.  Lara's not really a conservationist.


I got stuck on this bit for ages, mainly because the controls just weren't responsive enough for me to be able to pull the switch, turn around, and jump into the wall cavity before the big spiky wall killed me.

Despite the issues, it was fun to revisit the game.  As there doesn't seem to be a plan to remake TR2 and TR3 in the same way as Tomb Raider Anniversary, I may need to dig out my original PlayStation TR3 disc and play it on the PS3, which will overcome at least some of the control issues - plus, of course, in a month's time I'll be handing back this work laptop and have no idea if Steam will run on the next one.

DLC Quest – Live Freemium or Die: Completed!

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I started this a while ago, but unwisely didn't complete it at the time.  While waiting for The Typing of the Dead Overkill to download, I had to rediscover the whole map, talk to everyone again, and spend ages wandering around trying to find out my current objective.


Live Freemium isn't as biting a satire as the first game (not that that was particularly vicious anyway), but instead looks to send up many aspects of gaming culture.  The comedian simply parrots out lines from games; towards the end of the came there's a collectathon fetch quest just to get hold of a certain item; the most difficult enemies are zombies.  As with the first game, the primary objective is to collect coins in order to buy new abilities or optional random stuff.  I was amused by the high-def pack, which turned everything brown, and the DLC NPC, which just generated a new character called "DLC MAN" who complained that he couldn't have a central role to the plot since he was an optional extra.

Again, the writing was clever and funny.




I'm guessing this wasn't the same shepherd that I killed at the end of the first game.  Or maybe it was, and I'm the baddie ...



The village elder was senile.


This was another of my favourite DLC packs.  Many games are being patched in this way now, which is incredibly annoying for those of us with monthly bandwidth caps ...




I was surprised there wasn't a DLC pack to restore the colour here.


This one annoyed me a bit.  It made the text more annoying to read and I couldn't find a way of turning it off.



There's a whole area which is missing until you unlock it via DLC.


My heart fell at this point.  Yes, collecting flags is funny since it shows the pointlessness of the original Assassin's Creed achievements, but do I really have to fetch so many?


Yes, it turns out, but they're all in one box.


Battling against the wind and snow reminded me of the last part of Journey.


Again, annoyingly this couldn't be turned off once applied.


And it turns out the shopkeeper is the overall baddie ...


... who sells you the swords to kill him with.



To buy the swords, you have to collect coins that he throws out, while avoiding other rubbish.  I found that by standing on the far right, nothing could hurt me and I could just pop out to pick up coins when he stopped throwing.

DIary of a Witcher : Part 2

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Well as I suspected, Vensna only wanted me for my body! She was the hot waitress I was talking about in the last entry. At least I got to know her name before anything happened, I did have to get her drunk first though (what's new).

So anyway, I've realised this series of posts is going to be a bit spoilerific. But I'm okay with that, after all the game was released 6 years ago and frankly if you haven't played it before you're unlikely to now (but you should). Also, nobody is forcing you to read any of this, you could stop right now and click this link to be taken to happy place. Assuming you've not done that you've only got yourself to blame if this ruins anything for you!

So anyway, I've completed the Prologue and Chapter 1 of the game now, I'm not sure how many hours that is, but it feels like a lot. That's not to say much has happened, this game is quite the slow burner. I've had encounters with more Barghests and Drowners than I could care to remember and I've slaughtered my fair share of Ghouls too.

I met a Dwarf outside of Vizima who I think was a blacksmith, I had a chat with him and I was in stitches as he was swearing like a trooper! There was another Dwarf called Zoltan who taught me how to play a game of dice that's based on Poker. You can play several people in the game and it's a quick way to make money. The trouble is, whether you actually make money or not is all down to the luck of the dice. Sadly I haven't had much luck and I've lost far more money than I've made so far... damn gambling!

I also met a guy called Odo (not the one from Star Trek), a rich gentleman who partakes in the game of poker dice. He seemed a nice guy until I discovered he had killed his brother for his money, hence why he is so rich. Before I found that out though I had another interesting experience in the game, that of alcohol. He got me drunk! It's actually quite funny, you get double vision and struggle to walk straight. You can sleep it off easily enough and I'm not sure it has any benefit other than being a bit of fun.

Abigail doesn't look like a Witch
I had my first big decision to make too, there's a Witch called Abigail (she's also hot), and you have to decide if she was responsible for the beast that has been plaguing the village. The villagers have got their pitchforks out and are ready to burn her at the steak, they have lots of tales about her wicked deeds. The problem is there's a lot of evidence that supports her innocence too and if you talk to her there are two sides to the stories. Essentially it's left for you to make up your mind who you believe.

So, having had sex with her (well it would be rude not to) I went out to face the villagers and pass judgement. I decided she was innocent and that although she is a Witch, she was not doing evil. This lead to a fight with half the village and I ended up having to kill numerous people.

Did I let her manipulate me to save her life? Possibly, maybe I'll find out as the game progresses. But regardless of her good looks and charm I think I made the right choice.

Having completed the first Chapter I'm starting to see some of the issues with the game. The first is the amount of backtracking, it's seemingly endless. Every character you speak to seems to want you to walk to the opposite side of the area to fetch something or kill something. When you've done that you walk all the way back to collect your reward or information. This generally leads you to having to walk back to the other side of the map to get to your next objective. This process goes on and on and on. It's a bit repetitive, but I've managed to stick with it so far and the story is starting to draw me in to the point where I want to see where it is heading. So even though I despair at constantly trekking backwards and forwards, I'm having to go with it.

I'm also having trouble with some of the missions, the map marker isn't always very accurate. So while it will point an arrow in the direction you need to go, often you will follow it to a dead-end. Some places are only accessible from one direction and the tracking doesn't account for that! Also, when you reach your destination the person you need to see isn't always there. The NPCs have a fair amount of freedom in the game, but will be in certain locations at certain times. If you don't arrive at the right time you can get totally lost as to where you have to go. It's okay if you're meeting a character you've seen before as you can usually find them. But when it's someone new it's tough! I spent ages trying to find a merchant selling a certain herb who was never where the map said he should be. Turns out he was only about 15ft away but I was a long time figuring that out.

My Eyefinity setup is also giving me a few small problems, the game wasn't really designed with such a resolution in mind. So although the cut scenes play out, I'm missing a huge amount of the action, the way they've fudged it is to zoom in on the original view, so I'm only getting a tiny part of the vertical picture. In general gameplay it's fine, although the menu stuff is stuck to the far edges of the monitors which leads to a lot of mouse movement. I can live with these issues though, none of them are ruining the game. You can see it in the screenshot below:

Click to enlarge, OSD stuff is at the extreme edges :-(
In the Witcher 2 they fixed this and put all the On Screen Display stuff in the middle monitor, but there's no option to do that here.

I feel I've been quite negative in this post, and I don't mean to be. I'm really enjoying it, but not everything is perfect. None of these problems have caused me to give up yet, and normally I give up on things fairly quickly so it's definitely doing something right.

I've made it into Vizima now so that's a whole new area for me to explore, that's if I ever escape from this dungeon I've been put in....

EDIT: Just had a though, is it a coincidence that the three characters I've had sex with in the game so far (Triss, Vensna & Abigail) have all been redheads? Hmm, I do have a thing for redheads...