This game was Made For Me: Dear Esther

Dear Reader,

It's hard to talk about Dear Esther, surprisingly. The game, once a mod for Half Life 2 and now a full-fledged indie production, has received critical acclaim, and has proven a financial success so soon after its release. Indeed, I bought it mere minutes after it was released on Steam. I sat waiting with my tantalized memory... the aged visions of the last and frayed teasers of the new, intermingling in my mind as a vision of what was to come.

I am a man in love, and thus a release on the day of that was going to take second place. I spent the evening with the woman I love and I saw a fantastic, good old-fashioned ghost film. Though I had spent the day up till the purchase and download of Dear Esther, waiting for it to unlock, once I had it I knew I need only wait till the night.

With my love heading off home and myself sitting alone in my room, I turned off the lights and the volume suitably high. I sat in darkness, waiting, as the screen loaded. The room seemed so much louder, the whirr of the fan of my laptop amplified in my ears. Yet the game did load, and I found myself soon, standing on the edge of an island.

What elements, specifically, appeal to me, in Dear Esther? I can probably list the facts, as they are all important. I have forever been obsessed with islands as locations, both due to their often lush and elaborate locals, and due to my love of Myst that was so deeply ingrained accidentally by my grandfather. And even were it not an island, the rampant beauty of nature, juxtaposed against the abandoned remnants of man, pull out an emotional side of me. History is in the place, as is life.

The narration is lovely. In an age where most of our first-person experiences have protagonists who snark, sleuth, or spit, it stands out all the more when a man simply rambles in his lost consciousness, monologues and letters spoken with more flowery prose than I could hope to create. Perhaps it is the theater enthusiast in me, but some of the speeches in this game... even a single, cracked and croaked out line of despair... are the most touching narration I've heard in a game.

The music is the definition of atmospheric. It brings every ounce of emotion to the scene, accompanying the dialogue in perfect precision. Mostly. A common complaint is that the music is too sparse, which I both agree and disagree with. There are parts where the music cuts out entirely, where it just feels empty and strange. However at other parts, the silence is necessary. It makes you feel alone, and stranded. I think the lack of music wasn't so much the problem, as much as one of transition; the music should've faded in and out more, lulling you in and out of emotion.

The graphics of this game are stunning. They do not wow you with explosions, or collapsing towers, or any of the other flashy shows which have begun to compose modern "quality" in game graphics. They are simply beautifully crafted, where every scene offers a thousand good angles. There are many points in the game where I simply stopped and looked. Were one interested in the realms of video game photography, this would be a good place to start practice.

Moving through the caves, I came to a series of water falls. Pouring across the rocks into a pool below, I could do naught but gasp at the brilliance. A game, I am playing, but this render of stone and water has caught my breath. I can do nothing but stare as I absorb it, wondering how such marvel can be grasped by mine eyes.

The story is not the focus. It may seem like it, and indeed you find yourself putting clues together, but once you know, the game is not over. This is a game about emotion. This is a game about feeling. You need not fully understand the story, or keep track of who is who, as that is of little importance. The point of this game is to feel, and feel inside the head of a man lost and alone.

I don't know if it's just a personal problem of mine, but I'm absolutely terrified of drowning in video games. Dear Esther takes advantage of one's fear of the deep, several times. The game takes place on a dark island, and it is quite possible for one to sink under the water surrounding it. Several beaches lead off into the water, allowing deep submersion if you merely keep walking. Falling below the water dumps you in pure darkness, only accompanied by shadowy visions of your past. It's dark and unnerving, the sound of the water filling your ears.

And sometimes you are even driven to dip into the water, trying not to drown in the dark murk. However inside the caves, where luminescent fungus and mould cover the walls, you can see clearly in the water, there pure. The harsh difference between these two realities makes the water so inviting in the caves, yet makes it all the more terrifying when you get back out into the moonlit surface.

The game is emotionally manipulative, I suppose you could say, but that's the point. That's how it immerses you in the mind of this man. Personally, I think it's brilliant, and felt more playing this game than in most games I've played; even those touting their stories and emotive content.

Yet despite all this praise, despite how much I love it, I cannot recommend it to everyone. To every critic, and every developer who wants to understand the possibilites of the medium, of course. This is the sort of game that parallels the subject matter of Film Studies courses. But there are definite flaws which make the experience less enjoyable to those who are searching for more of an outright game.

This version has even less interaction in it than the mod. Half Life 2 gave you the ability to pick up most small objects, which did little to change the story, but lots to immerse you in the environment. Were we able to pick up the little paper boats scattered in the water in this game, it may not help us read the folded pages any better, but it would help us feel like the reality were more real.

The ability to jump has also been removed. A very strange change, considering that this game doesn't let you die. I fell from a cliff once, and before I hit the ground the screen faded, the game asked "Come back to me..." and I was returned to the precipice I had fallen from. I don't really see why it was removed, as again it would allow more immersive movement in the game. Likewise the ability to crouch has been automated, for cave sections where it's predefined. These sort of things streamline the experience, I guess, but they remove the sort of dirty interaction which often can immerse us in these sort of environments.

Likewise the ending of the game pulls all control away from you. I'd like to avoid spoilers, but effectively you are put in a situation of complete despair, with only one possible way out. But instead of letting you walk the way yourself, climb on your own, and make the decision yourself, you lose all control as the game makes the motions for you. The ending is still emotional, and effective, but not as much as if the player had been forced to do it themselves, instead of the game doing it for you.

 
People looking for a deep story won't really be pleased. It's a simple one, just immensely obscured. Really, this is a type of game that is immensely niche, which is why it's surprising it has already become profitable.

Though really, that just makes me happy, more than anything. For all its faults, Dear Esther is a game that felt completely worth it to me. I am glad I paid the ten dollars that I did.

When the game ended, I was plunged into the dark. Only a black screen did greet me as I sat in contemplation. My heart was beating, and it beat along the path that a man had walked round an island. No words came to the screen, I was not brought back to a menu, and the game merely sat in darkness. I knew that was the end, as no more fitting an end could come. All I was left with was my feelings, as they dripped through my veins and pooled in the pit of my heart.

Esther, I'm sorry he never came back to you.

Dear Esther is not a game I recommend to everyone, but it is a game I absolutely adore. It has taken the place as one of my new favorite games, if not experiences. I would recommend it to anyone who really plays games in search of something to feel.

Washed up upon this lonely shore, I write to tell you of a man, who wrote to tell you of men before him. If my message swims in with the tide, I hope it is a blessing that leads you to a land of treasure, and no mere trash to clog your drain. Beauty as I have seen surely belongs in this world, and though all may not appreciate it, it is forever burned into my mind.

Rating:

In love.

Why Valve will never tell us about Half-Life 3

I think it's impossible for Valve to even say "we've been working hard" without people immediately jumping to speculation about Half Life Episode 3, or even Half Life 3. Seriously, it's starting to get ridiculous. Which is why I am not even going to go into why it may or may not be happening, but go into why Valve won't even say what's going on.

It boils down to one simple fact:

Half-Life, as a series, is worth more as an undefined concept than an announced project.

What do I mean by that? I mean that Valve will make more money off Half-Life games, and their games in general, if speculation continues. They get a humongous amount of free advertising, just from people talking about their games; even ones which may or may not exist!

A lot of people make the argument "if they're not working on it, nobody is going to be angry, so just let us know since we've been waiting so long!"

But that doesn't make any business sense. If you type in "half life" into Google search right now, here's what you get:

Half of those searches are about something that doesn't exist. And at the bottom of page one of searching "half life" I come across this:

Half-Life 2 has that same link at the bottom of its first page. Out of curiosity, I did a brief test to see how many results I got for different Valve-related searches, and compiled them to show number of results.

Bottom row is games, left column is number of search results. Here we can see that... people who use Google really love Left 4 Dead. Uhm... look I'm not one for normally throwing out values that go against point, so I'm gonna briefly explain this. I am taking into account that Left 4 Dead is one of the core Valve IPs. Portal didn't make it on here becaues as a search term, "Portal" is pretty much the most ambiguous thing on the Internet. Left 4 Dead may have small problems of that, but I think it probably is just that popular.

We can also see that later releases in the series are less popular than the original release, though that may just be a result of search term branding. So in the interest of fairness, I put quotes around all these results to see what happened.

 Just noting: this is using a logarithmic scale. Now, as we can see here, the distribution is a lot more even. We can also see that no game had a search below 100 000 results, on any engine.

So what does this mean? Valve is getting around 1 000 000 results for Half Life 3, even though it doesn't exist. Episode 1, which people didn't like as much as Episode 2, has less hits than Episode 2. The episodes also have less hits in general. What does that mean? I guess it means they aren't as popular, but I think it really just means that Half Life and Half Life 2 really stood out. Now, if they aren't working on Half Life 3, what happens then?

All those people who are constantly looking for info on Half Life 3 will stop searching. Some percentage of those searchers probably get back to Steam, and it's really just more company publicity. Revealing the lack of Half Life 3 would only remove free advertising for them, so why do that?

And if they are working on Half Life 3? Why not just tell us then?

Because last time they talked about a Half Life title heavily in advance, it did not end well.

And either way, they're getting tons of advertising. So might as well keep at it. Speaking of which, looks like I did exactly what Valve wanted. I talked about Half Life 3.

(Bonus points if you noticed I stopped using a hyphen.)

Made For Me, but won't see The End: STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl

Shadow of Chernobyl is my second-favourite game. You might've been able to guess, from hints I've dropped in my previous writeups, but I might as well start by revealing all.

Surprisingly Terrifying Action... forget it. This is the only comment I will make about the punctuation. It's pointless, and silly.

 I first played Shadow of Chernobyl about two years ago. Hearing that it was very glitchy, and the graphics were getting dated, I asked around about any sort of patches.

The recommendation I was given, was to install Complete 2009. It made the graphics brilliant and immersive. Even if not as realistic as newer games, the mood is set perfectly. There were some small gameplay changes, notably the inclusion of a sleeping bag, but I'm surprisingly not going to be talking much about specific gameplay.

After playing for about 12 hours, something happened. My hard disk crashed, and I lost my saved game.

It was a year until I came back to Chernobyl, having fond memories of it. I just hadn't wanted to start again from scratch, so soon after losing my last game. However, I did start again, and I found The Zone's call was just as strong as ever.

I guess, for those uninitiated, I should explain what sort of game STALKER is. It's... a survival tactical FPS with horror elements. I guess. What's hard to explain about STALKER is that it's not trying to craft a niche; it's trying to craft an experience.

This is ultimately what makes the game so good in my mind. STALKER is about being a lone soldier, in a hostile environment where even the air sometimes wants to kill you, and the people are less than friendly. It's not about emotion, or about drama, or about people. It's about the lack of humanity in a place like this.

That lack of humanity is further represented in the factions and mutants that exist in the game. Loners travel in small groups, just friends hanging out together and trying to scrounge up a meal. Sometimes you see them playing guitar together around a camp fire. Maybe they're sitting alone in the bar, drowning away their depression. Nobody is happy, everyone is just alive. They're the most human, but the loneliness of their humanity helps further emphasize the lack of humanity in the environment.

There are no recognizable songs; the guitars aren't there because the men are musicians; it's because they have no other way of expressing themselves in this land, and a guitar is the only thing that will hold their hand.

 And the factions? They're crazy. Freedom wants the military to leave the Zone, the Military wants you to leave. The STALKERS are mercenaries and bounty hunters willing to kill anyone and anything, but the Mercs are mercenaries willing to eradicate even the most just of groups, just for a paycheck. Duty are militaristic and somewhat paranoid, and the Ecologists are... somewhere between bonkers and insane. They're interested in science. They want to take apart Snorks and figure out what makes them tick.

Which leads to the ultimate desolation of humanity: The mutants. Snorks crawl along the ground like some sort of wild cat, leaping at you and clawing. Invisible bloodsuckers run at you and tear you apart, drinking your blood after they've killed you. Shambling zombies aimlessly fire guns as they moan.

Not even your death is given any humanized glory. Upon your death, it simply says "Lost in the zone" and zooms out a bit, to show the world around your lifeless body. If a bloodsucker killed you, it will kneel down and start drinking the blood from your remains. A Snork? It begins to eat your corpse.

 It doesn't even tell you to reload and try again. It just tells you to press space and go back to the menu. It's not mocking, it's just brutally honest. You can try again, or you can quit. The world doesn't care. Only you do.

Living is not easy, in this game. The enemies are brutal, and weaponry all has difficult balances. Powerful weaponry is more expensive, and aiming is very realistic; you will not be able to effectively hit someone more than 30 ft away with a pistol, likely. Weapons all use specific types of ammo, and all ammo and guns have weight. All types of armour have weight. All artifacts have weight. Medkits, bandages, food, alchohol, everything in the game has weight. And you can only carry so much. You can't take everything with you.

The game is a careful balancing act. I played on the hardest difficulty, and survival was dictated by walking the line between being overburdened and able to move. Upset the balance too much, and you'll have to save scum to get through your mission. You'll have to fairly often, even when playing utterly correctly.

Quick save and quick load make this easier, though the lengthily loading times will make you start to question if it's worth it. Still, after some time, you get used to the game, and stop needing to save scum. And as you start to get better, something happens; you start becoming a legend.

You start wondering if the whispered talks around the campfire are about you.

 You start getting factions, people, and small groups who are friends. You piss off a faction or two. You start paying off the bounties on your own head, just to avoid being hassled. As you play the game, you start telling your friends about the crazy things that happened. How you fought off a pack of wild dogs with only a pistol and a grenade. How you totally took out three bloodsuckers without reloading your shotgun. (It held 8 shots, so hey, it worked!)

But still, nobody really cares about you. A friendly will aid you in battle, but they're far and few between. Mostly, people just want to stay on their own. Why travel with someone when they could stab you in the back?

The Zone itself isn't safe. I mentioned even the air wanting to kill you, and that's no lie. Pockets of radiation will slowly kill you, if you enter them. And even worse, strange anomalies exist throughout the Zone. Some will crush you, others erupt with fire or electricity... some pick you up in the air and tear you apart.

This all contributes to both a power fantasy, and a desolately lonely experience. When you triumph, it is the best feeling in the world. When you fail, it's dark and dreary. All you can do is keep trying, and eventually you succeed so much you feel great.

 A pack of dogs is no match for me! I am a STALKER!

 And this is where I got cocky.

The last mission of the game was the absolute hardest. I had been playing on the hardest difficulty, and just wanted to finish the game. I had played about 47 hours of this game. I knew what I was doing. I had sufficient ammo. I was a bit low on medpacks and the like, but it would be fine.

I followed the checkpoints. I ran to the next target. I assaulted the power plant. The ruined reactor. I got past swarms of armored enemies, past military copters firing rockets, and got inside the reactor before a blowout would've eradicated me where I stood.

And when I was inside, I heard the chanting. A deep voice, calling from far below. I crawled through the halls, my health halfway. Radiation levels slowly crept up, and my health slowly down.

I should've turned back then, but I pressed forward. "It will be fine" I said. "I'm good at this game."

I forgot everything the game had taught me. That it didn't care about me. I found an exoskeleton deep in a heavily radiated room. I got out just in time, with a few rations and anti-rads. I could've left, survived, restocked, and came back, probably.

I pressed on. Rounded a couple corners. I went through a hole in a wall. I went around another corner. I fought fifteen or so heavily armoured men. I nearly ran out of ammo. Just as I thought I couldn't kill them, I started getting ammo.

I should've listened to the tiny voice inside my head. The one that said "Go back!" I didn't. I made a quick save. The only quick save on that level, I overwrote each time I pressed that button.

I walked around a couple corners. The radiation was building up too much. I looked for something in my inventory to help. I had nothing. I checked again in disbelief. Looted corpses. Nothing. I walked a couple paces. A pair of soldiers saw me. I collapsed from radiation poisoning and died.

 I loaded my game. Tried again. I died before I could leave the room. I loaded my game, tried again, died. I kept reloading, I even dropped my difficulty setting to the lowest, but it only gave me a couple more seconds. Not enough to even kill one of the soldiers and loot the corpse.

I died. There was no way out of that level without starting from the very beginning of it, walking all the way back through two deadly levels (which was very probably impossible). I'd probably have to save scum even farther back, to the point that two hours would have been for naught.

I was left with a quandary. What should I do?

I stopped playing. I closed the game, and announced to my friends that I couldn't beat the last mission. 50 hours into STALKER, at the end of the game, and radiation poisoning had killed me. The game didn't care if I won or lost. It gave me rules, it trained me to be careful, and I let my cockiness get ahead of me.

Could I take a weekend off and finish the game? Yes. But this ending was already stuck in my mind. The ending where a bold and powerful STALKER thought he could throw caution to the wind and charge through danger, but was met with swift death.

This feels right to me. This feels like the ending with the most meaning. I didn't care about wish granting or the zone. I had already experienced this place. This environment. I had met The Zone and been enraptured by it. I had no regrets having played that far, and the tale felt right, to end on such a bitter note. It made the tale bittersweet, and unique.

I will not see The End of STALKER. Not because I couldn't beat it. Not because I got bored or didn't like it; it is still one of my most favourite games. No, The End is elusive because I lost, in the most thorough sense. The Zone won.

Rating:

 Lose yourself in The Zone

No I won't see The End: Dead Space (Review)

My opinion on this game is conflicting. It doesn't do horror well at all. But it works. It's terrible at building atmosphere, and litters the game with jump scares. It still gets to me. This has the atmosphere of Left 4 Dead and the gore of Gears of War, and somehow manages to creep me out nearly as much as STALKER.

And I'm not comfortable with that.

If for some reason you went into this game not expecting the undead, you gotta learn more about how titles work.

This game doesn't really get anything /wrong/ gameplay wise. The combat is very visceral. It definitely feels like all the weapons have a real effect on the enemies, when used right. The game's dismemberment works really well, both visually and gameplay-wise.

I would definitely like to take a moment here and talk about this. Dead Space has a really interesting mechanic: Enemies don't die unless you dismember them properly. You may think it's something simple, like cutting off the head, but no, that actually makes them /worse/, as they'll go mad and flail wildly and be harder to hit.

Also these buggers look like this:

There's a stomach arm, and blade hands, and demon legs, and blood everywhere. This is gonna be a problem in this review. I'm kind of a dick sometimes, and I'll show blood and zombies and stuff sometimes, but this game is just gruesome. I'm not gonna show that on here.

You're given this gun which pretty much shoots cutting lasers. So you sever the limbs and hope that you've killed them sufficiently.

And man, can I see the possibilities. So many different weird creatures, which could all have different anatomies with different points you have to sever. You could have tentacles which need to severed, large arteries, all sorts of crazy, alien anatomy. Imagine fighting the aliens from, well, Alien, but having to cut them into pieces to kill them. Holy crap!

I would play this.

And you know, it works. I played 4 hours of the game, and came across 3 unique enemy types, and several variations of TummyArms up there. It was cool. And when you get new weapons, they change up how you can kill these creatures, often in necessary ways. There's a new cutting laser that shoots out this slow-moving beam, that pretty much cuts right through everything it hits. Massively effective against a single enemy, but hard to aim and slow to use.

It's all balanced properly. Don't assume my problem with Dead Space is I didn't enjoy playing it. Well, I didn't, but not because of the gameplay. For the gameplay, I'd actually say it's worth checking out.

What killed it for me was the atmosphere. Or rather the lack of it.

You play Science McFiction, a guy who wears an actually pretty iconic and unique space suit. Seriously, I was impressed. The art design in this game is actually pretty good, if it weren't for a problem I'll talk about in a minute.

I want to say it's ripping something off, but it isn't really. The closest it comes to is Joey from Friends in the Lost In Space movie when he donned the battle suit.

You play maybe five, ten minutes, then are attacked by a TummyArms.

The game honestly doesn't care at all about building suspense. That's a foreign concept to it. This game has the same subtlety as an Eli Roth film, and the same understanding of horror as Resident Evil: Afterlife

Which is why it bugs me so much that it actually works on me. This isn't a case where I'm running around stomping heads, laughing away at bad dialogue and being pleased by an attractive and badass woman as the protagonist. There is no Jovovich to save me this time.

I didn't even see this one; I only saw Afterlife. It doesn't matter though, I'm fairly confident she's just as awesome and the movie is just as hilaribad.

 The game is built entirely upon jump scares. Go around a corner? JUMP SCARE. Enter an empty room? Just walk a few steps until JUMP SCARE. It's just JUMP JUMP JUMP COMBO BREAKER SCARE. And it really gets frustrating.

It would be pretty easy to solve, too. All they would have to do is take the time to build the tension, instead of immediately firing their gun. The game has a ton of scary concepts; the enemy designs are downright terrifying. There's a reason I'm not showing any of them. But the problem is that they throw them at you so constantly that they lose all effect.

Compare it to the beginning of BioShock, which starts with a plane crash. You're surrounded by burning wreckage, swimming in the middle of the ocean. You swim away, until all you see is a giant building, sticking out of the water. Odd. It's pretty creepy too. It's all you can go to, so you go in.

You aren't told the situation is going to be scary in advance, you just see bad stuff going down and follow course.

It helps that lighthouses are scary.

So you enter the building and [SPOILER] the door slams shut behind you, leaving you in pitch black.[/SPOILER]

The equivalent of this in Dead Space, is that you're exploring a little into the ship, and you go through a door. Suddenly it seals behind you, and the lights go out. Here's where the games differ.

BioShock then turns on the lights, wowing you with a hauntingly empty welcoming room, and a political speech given over a massive overlook of a breathtaking underwater city. It wows you, and then when you reach the end, when you've got all this emotional buildup, you're plunged into terror.

Dead Space throws a FlailyBladeArms at you immediately, and tells you to run for your life. Ahhhh, so scary, what do I do now?!

Run. The only "fear" here is from you suddenly not knowing what's happening. The second you figure it out, you aren't scared. Whereas in BioShock, you're so wowed and overwhelmed, that when the scares start hitting, you've already got emotional investment. That makes it all scarier, as you've already opened up your emotional side to the game.

Yet somehow, this game honestly scared me as much as BioShock, and possibly even as much as STALKER. And I don't think that's cause it was good horror. I think it's just that I scare easily.

What can I say? I crave this stuff, and it delivers. I can't exactly call it a bad game, but the horror is cheap. That's really what I can say. It's not fulfilling, the horror. The gameplay is good, I just can't bring myself to play it any more, as its effectively shattered any emotional involvement I had in it. I played it looking for a cheap scare, which I get, but afterwards I'm just left feeling empty.

Rating:

Empty like this long dead hallway.

No I won't see The End: F.E.A.R. (Review)

America comes up too much in my reviews. I honestly don't have a major problem with the US of A or anything, it just seems like they make a lot of bad choices. F.E.A.R. is one of those, in terms of story. I can summarize it in a simple cliche: The army has military contracts that go sour. Big surprise, yeah? It's funny, you never see Canadian military contracts get screwed up badly in these games. It always seems to be the Americans who summon demon-spawn ghost children with their psychic generals.

Uhm... that's pretty much the plot of F.E.A.R. from what I played. A psychic general who controls a bunch of drone army clones somehow also summons a demon-spawn ghost child, and you have to go kill them all.

This is actually a surprisingly boring one.

At least the anagram stands for something this time.

This game is honestly unnecessary. I wish I could say anything explicitly bad about it, but I guess it certainly is solid. That's not a defense of it, though. That just means I'm more disappointed than raging.

As I said, this game is about ghosts or psychics or soldiers or something. I can't really remember. The plot is there but you honestly can forget about it so easily. I don't even remember if the psychic terrorist captain guy is the same as the ghost guy. I think they mentioned projections at one point but it doesn't even matter.

His name is Paxton, apparently. His crimes include murder, arson, desecration of corpses, and conspiracy to apocalypse. I assume.

And then there's some creepy ghost girl which seems completely unrelated, but at the same time totally related. How does that make sense? Well, so far, she just coincidentally is everywhere I'm going, as I chase after Ghost Lord Paxton here. And there's been some flashbacks to like, an incredibly messed up hospital type thing with bleeding ceilings and all that.

I really don't know what her connection is. So how do I know that it must be connected? I dunno, maybe because she's the biggest thing on the box cover.

Rated M for May Contain Freaky Ghost Children

So we've got a vacant story involving a ghost, the army, a freaky box art girl, and a psychic cannibal. At least the gameplay is good, yeah?

Well, I guess it's not bad. It suffers greatly from a school of design following a mantra of "make sure it doesn't get too boring". Which, I would like to remind you, is very different from "make it fun and interesting." It more exists in the vapid void between "not boring" and "fun" which I like to refer to as "solitaire card games".

I guess it's cheaper than a riding lawnmower, at least.

Everything is decently designed, I guess. All the weapons are satisfying to use. But they're all minor tweaks of eachother, it feels like. The pistol has maybe a third of the fire rate of the rifle. But then you can pick up two pistols and double the rate, so now you've got a more accurate weapon with 2/3 of the fire rate. Or you can get the rifle which seems to peg people to walls, but that has maybe 3/4 of the fire rate of the normal rifle, and twice the damage. Ammo is scarcer though. And then you could get the shotgun, but that's situational. It does a lot of damage but firing it effectively is so hard.

I mean, in one level, I finally found a usage for it. It's incredibly good at shooting Snorks, so I just use it for that. And I mean, if a Snork gets close to you, it'll just one-two kick-punch you and you're dead. So you really can't let them do that. I guess they're better than Bloodsuckers at least, since-

Wait now I'm talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

What are you doing out of your game? :o

Okay I swear, they look so similar. In fact they're basically the same enemy. Just less annoying because the totally overpowered kick attack can instantly take them out.

So anyways, after that level of curbstomping Grunts with my melee attack, I finally got a sniper rifle. It's too bad it's really only good on that one level and doesn't really come back afterwards (From what I played). But it is pretty satisfying taking out guys at range. Maybe it's used more later? I still don't get why we have the pistols, though. They're actually pretty useless, when there's an abundance of rifles left by enemies that are just generally better.

The most annoying enemy is probably the Hunter though, which-

No not again!

Okay, okay, wait, now I'm talking about Halo. How the hell do I of all people end up talking about Halo? I mean I get that there's big brutish armored soldiers which act basically identical to the ones in Halo but... no wait, that would be how I wound up there.

Alright let's try and move on. Other things I can say about this game... The graphics are decent, at least. The water effects are absolutely fantastic. I was actually pretty impressed by them, and the opening shots with all the water are really great.

And then when you finally get into Rapture the water still-

OH GOD DAMN IT.

No... no that's BioShock. Okay so the water isn't really a selling point either. What about the horror? A game called F.E.A.R. has gotta be scary. There's those moments when...

Yeah no look, this is one of the least scary games I've played in a while. I can't tell if it's trying too hard, or not trying enough. But it's pretty damn bad at it. It runs out of material really fast, to the point where it starts repeating its scares. There's one scare, where Ghost Girl appears at the top of a ladder, as you climb down it. Okay, not really scary, just a little jumpy. So you get to the bottom and turn, and BAM it's Ghost Dad, which isn't really that scary, as it's just Cosby, and-

...

I haven't even seen Ghost Dad. What the hell. The ghost doesn't even resemble Cosby. I'm really grasping at straws now.

Look to summarize, F.E.A.R. is pretty much a dull void. It's pretty lifeless, and just not fun in general. And pretty much every part of it is better in some other game. Actually it feels sort of like a watered-down mismash of all these different, better games. I can't really recommend it because, well, I played about five hours and am not satisfied.

If only I hadn't bought it in that pack on Steam with the expansions and sequel. Maybe they'll be better?

Please?

Guys?

Rating:

The slow motion is actually kind of good, I guess, sort of.

No I won't see The End: Assassin's Creed II (Review)

So today I did something I've been meaning to do for a while. I got Steam working again. After a nasty bout of disagreement with my sound card, Steam decided to stop locking up my computer and let me play my games. I played Audiosurf for a while, then looked through my backlog to see what I should start next. I went to install F.E.A.R. and saw it was a large install, so I should free up some space. Clicking through my games, I decided what I wanted to keep installed cause I may play soon, and what I could do without.

And then, while F.E.A.R. began to download, I uninstalled Assassin's Creed II just for the hell of it.

Don't worry, I wasted less time with that story than this game would.

At least the title font is... readable.

The first game, I liked. Maybe it was because I was one of those people who waited till it became budget price and picked it up, or maybe it was because I still had far too much free time. (As opposed to just an annoying amount of free time.) And in terms of price point, for the ~20 dollars I paid for the Steam copy of ACII, I'm certainly not disappointed with what I got from it. I played about 15 hours and got through maybe a quarter of the storyline.

However I'm bored. Also the fanboys are annoying me. Let's deal with these one at a time.

First off, there's nothing objectively bad with ACII. The gameplay is very solid, making combat very smooth and somewhat exciting. The finishers are very slick, combining force and finesse quite well. The running is better than the first game, and you can actually jump more accurately between surfaces than in the first game. It's more like playing Prince of Persia than Prince of Persia.

Could I make this at all more clear?

And it's also nice that you can pick up enemy weapons and use them, now. It can be pretty badass to take a spear and impale a guy on it while you're fighting the four hundredth guard in the city.

I think that's one thing that sorta makes me wonder. I swear, 15 hours into this game and I think I've killed more people than in all of the Matrix movies combined. Well, minus that whole robot holocaust thing. So all the deaths onscreen. What's weird is that I can't really remember any of them being different. Or really what happened in any of them. I know what the finishers look like, but I can't really remember specific scenarios. Or those that I can, it's because I did the exact same thing over and over again.

Here's an example. There's guards in front of a bank housing a codex page. Three guards. I'm on a perch over top. I jump down, taking out two with the jump kill. As I get up, the third guy starts getting all worked up like I just did something unusual and alarming, and I promptly gut-stab him too. A job well done.

I think I did this on like ten seperate occasions. At some point you think the guards would put out a memo saying "Look UP occasionally." And it's not like I'm that fast either. I've stood over top groups of guards for several minutes and they never look up.

I dunno if I'm just weird, but I look up a fair amount in my daily life. And I spend most of that in front of a computer. I swear, I'm more aware of what exactly is above me than 95% of the mooks in video games. And it's not just cause I'm afraid of spiders.

I looked up "spider on ceiling" on Google Image and now regret it. Instead, have this picture of one of my coworkers.

Honestly the AI is a lot better than in the previous game, but it all still feels kinda hollow. There's so many guards and they never change their tactics. And they still have this sorta weird obsession of attacking one at a time.

Hollow is actually a good way to describe the whole thing. Like, ACII was worth 20 dollars, but... it's just not as good as a lot of fans say. Frankly nothing in the game is particularily memorable. Even the assassinations have little buildup (at least as early in the game as I was) and are over quickly. And it's still easier to run and tackle-kill the guy than sneak up.

It's sort of a problem of a current trend in game design. There's far too much emphasis in moment-to-moment entertainment. It's often a problem is large AAA games, where they developers put too much of an emphasis on providing a good product, as opposed to a good experience. Which would you rather have: Play through a game with high and low points, that climaxes at amazing plot twists and events but is not afraid to get mellow and almost boring; or play a game that is essentially the exact same slightly entertainment from moment to moment, ad nauseum for 40 hours? Apparently a lot of people choose the latter, but I'm a strong believer of the former.

The problem with designing games in this long way is that the games become easily replaceable. And much more easily fall out of the public mind. If you want to create a lasting experience, that actually-

Oh god damn it, America.

-okay so obviously nobody except me really cares about this whole "experience thing" and just wants some fun. Fine, you can have your fun, and it's certainly worth some brainless fun if that's what you wa-

Oh.

I guess this is the point where people say "but the story is so interesting, and so deep!" I'm pretty sure at this point you don't need me to facepalm in response because you probably already know I'm pretentious enough to find fault with AC's story.

Look, guys.... It's not that complex. It's incredibly obfuscated and hard to follow, but that's not because it's complex. Here, let me summarize the story from what I've played so far. I'd say "spoiler alert" but you really shouldn't care.

Altair's Story: Oh noes the Assassins turned out to be corrupt! I shall make a new order that isn't corrupt which will still be called the Assassins.

Ezio: The Assassins are good guys and oppose the templars. They are really old and my ancestor was involved! Path of lineage dictates I must stop a templar threat! Oh noes templars attacked and killed the men of my family! I must fight Templars!

Asshole in modern day/future (Desmond): Hurrdurr I never read even the slightest bit of genre fiction or watched indiana jones, so I don't know what templars or assassins are, and I'm utterly shocked that all this shit is going down but at the same time shall never move my face muscles more than a centimeter.

It's funny how Altair is all about making this honourable order after he discovers the corruption, then Ezio pretty much does whatever. Like, you can accept missions that pigeons will give you, to go beat up people who cheat on their wives or whatever. Okay, I'm sorry, but like, are pigeons just a commodity that only good people can use? Do they just sorta shrivel up and die when they smell evil, like the ones they used in mines?

Also come on, this is hardly an amazing plot. Ezio's story is really nothing more than a period soap opera, and about as convincing. It's really hard to feel for any of these characters when their facial animations are frankly just horrid.

Except for Ezio, who I will admit is definitely crush tier.

And most annoying is the fact that they keep treating old news like something revelatory. At the end of the first game it's revealed that the Pieces of Eden have god-given powers and that they're really old and have travelled between powerful hands throughout history, giving generals and leaders power.

In ACII, they pretty much tell us this over and over. Hey guys, oh my god, the Pieces of Eden are magic? What if... they're from god?! Oh wow, look, that saint had a PoE. Oh, so did that general. And that king, he had a PoE. And that emperor. And that captain. Everyone has PoE. And now I feel like I'm talking about Puzzle Pirates.

 

These are dubloons. I'll let you figure out the pun that involves the other form of currency.

And honestly, there's very little "conspiracy" going on. At least where I'm playing, it's very obvious who is a Templar and who is an Assassin. If they're an asshole, they're a Templar. If they're a playful scamp or honorable, they're an Assassin.

No, if you want to go play a game with a really good Templar vs Assassin story, that keeps you on your toes and actually has intrigue, go check out Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars. It recently got a great director's cut release on Wii and DS. Go get it. Now!

All in all, I just find ACII really lost it's flavour. It's just so boring now. It was fun for a while, but it doesn't leave any really strong memories. I've played 5-hour games that were more memorable. (Cough Portal cough.) And frankly, the series is just getting silly.

Look when I first started playing the series, they said trilogy. Okay. AC, ACII, ACIII, no problem. Now though, ACII is itself a trilogy? Why do we need this many games? I doubt the ending could truly surprise anyone. At this point it's painfully obvious that there's three possible culprits: 1) God did it. 2) Aliens did it. 3) Time travel.

And if it is time travel, I want there to be two more games, with even more weird titling than Brotherhood being a sequel to ACII. Let's call one of them Assassin's Space Creed, and then Assassin's Space Creed II. Why?

Because then any ASCII jokes in a review would seem a lot less forced.

Rating:

I HAVE A BROWN PONYTAIL AND AM EZIO'S BUILD, I REALLY WANTED TO COSPLAY HIM, AND AM BITTER ABOUT THAT, BECAUSE NOW IT'S TOO MAINSTREAM.

Hilariparenting #2: Programmer

As a programmer, it makes sense to raise one's kids on Linux. Not cause Linux is superior or anything. But because it's incredibly easy to screw with while they're away.

So they break a vase? Well I guess this Xorg package isn't really necessary.
Broke a window? Write a script that inverts their mouse movements randomly.
Cursed? Write a proxy that redirects all links to http://www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony/en_CA/

Fun part: Refuse to fix the problem, they have to themselves.
Fun part: Claim it's karma. Deny all involvement.
Fun part: They become paranoid of the karma fairy.
Fun part: They start antagonizing all computers.

Down side: At age 10, realizes it really is you.
Down side: At age 17, they're hacking NORAD.