Category: Recommendations

Authority

  10/15/2016       Farla      1 Comment

authority

The second book of the Southern Reach trilogy! Go read the first one.

This one is much less traditionally horror. (Though the moments it has are quite effective. I particularly hope someone makes a short movie out of the first expedition snippets.) When I began reading it, I was wondering if it’d actually make more sense to read this one first, since there’s a lot about the character trying to figure out what happened in the previous book so you already know and it’s harder to be anxious about. As things went on, though, that dramatic irony expanded to include that precious horror staple, the slow disaster that the main character is unaware of.

Also, after Dresden, it’s just so nice to have a main character who is a nice, pleasant person.

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   Books, Recommendations, Southern Reach Trilogy      ,

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor

  06/05/2017       St. Elmo's Fire      85 Comments

Firstly, can we all just collectively boggle at how the localizers decided translation is for chumps? Customers should not have to flock to translation sites to know what the title of the series means.

Anyway. Devil Survivor is a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series, and the first in the series I’ve played all the way through. (I tried the first game once and couldn’t get into it.) I’d say it’s very good for the most part, but in the end it kind of goes to Hell. It definitely tries really hard, but it fails to follow through on its ideas properly.

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   Monster Collector, Recommendations, RPGs, Shin Megami Tensei Series, Video Games      ,

Night in the Woods

  06/21/2017       St. Elmo's Fire      15 Comments

This game is really good and you should play it. I cried so many times. It’s a bit small for a $20 game, but definitely pick it up if there’s a sale.

I briefly mentioned Night in the Woods during my review of Always Sometimes Monsters, and I think it’s time to go a bit more in-depth on that. Night in the Woods is an amazing example of how to do realistic right. It doesn’t just have realism, it has verisimilitude. The whole story, from beginning to end, is amazingly, painfully real, not because of cynicism and darkness, but because of sentimentality and hope. I saw myself and the people I know in these characters and their relationships over and over again. This is a story about finding something to cling to in a world that’s falling apart, which I think is something a lot of people need right now — and the ending is eerily topical for something that started development in 2013.

Also, Demontower is super fun and the central mechanic is really clever.

Only thing you need to know that the game isn’t very clear about: whoever you hang out with on the first day, stick with them through the rest of the game.

Feel free to use this as a discussion post.

   Recommendations, Video Games, Walking Sims      , ,

Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong

  02/07/2018       illhousen      22 Comments

You know how long-running horror franchises would inevitably have an installment set IN SPACE in a desperate attempt to cling to life by introducing a superficial new element that doesn’t actually fit the genre? Well, Shadowrun is an old TRPG that can be accurately described as cyberpunk but WITH MAGIC. In 2012 magic came back, a large percentage of people turned into various fantasy races, many animals mutated into mythological beasts, people learned to summon and bind spirits of nature, dragons awoke from their millennia-long slumber and decided that running corporations is a good substitute for hoarding gold. Meanwhile, technology advanced in a classic cyberpunk fashion: prosthetics enhancing your abilities beyond human limits, cybernetic implants allowing full-immersion link to cyberspace inventively called the Matrix, etc.

These events resulted in a weakening and sometimes outright collapse of governments, with corporations essentially taking their place and running the world in an orgy of wild capitalism.

The game takes its name after shadowrunners, the presumed PCs, who are essentially freelance black books operatives hired by various corporations, organized crime syndicates and individual clients as deniable assets to do various shady jobs.

Honestly, my knowledge of the setting is rather limited, and I would appreciate someone chiming in on it. From what I’ve seen of it, it feels that sometimes Shadowrun strikes gold in its design (like how it has literal lizard people dragons – a classic metaphor for greed and malice – essentially running the world through corporate proxies) and other times it’s content to just throw “awesome” concepts together (Magic! Cyberware! Matrix! Samurai!) with little regard to creating a thematically-coherent whole.

But anyway, apparently there are three relatively new RPGs set in this setting, and I’ve decided to check them out. They are… pretty solid, actually.

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   Recommendations, RPGs, Video Games      , , , , , ,

Hellbound

  04/18/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      18 Comments

My experience with this game can be pretty aptly summed up as “pleasantly surprised”. The game’s official description implies it to be a tedious 2edgy4me thing about how God is evil and high school students need to use the power of SATAN to beat him!!! What I actually found was a surprisingly well-done story about mental illness and self-actualization. The tone of the overall plot is still extremely tongue-in-cheek, but when real issues come up it addresses them with astounding sensitivity and depth. The characters initially appear to be one-dimensional archetypes, but they are eventually revealed to come from places of deep pain and trauma, and their loyalty to one another is truly genuine and inspiring.

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   Recommendations, RPGmaker, RPGs, Video Games      ,

Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis

  05/02/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      2 Comments

A grungy soft sci-fi post-apocalyptic RPG! That’s… really the best description I can give of this, as the particulars of the plot and setting aren’t anything particularly noteworthy. The story is a bit cliched and has a lot of weird animesque characters and twists, but I overall found it to be really enjoyable even if it wasn’t anything spectacular. The most notable thing about this game is that it bucks a lot of RPG Maker trends in terms of presentation and gameplay. Exploration is done in sidescrolling platformer-like maps, and cutscenes are shown through comic-like panels. I found both of these things to be really original and well-done — exploration was sleek and straightforward without being simplistic, and there are in fact many fun puzzles to be had. The cutscene style was also really well-executed and made scenes feel much more vivid and dynamic than I’m used to in RPG Maker games. The gameplay, too, is honestly one of the best and most elegant RPG battle systems I’ve ever seen. It has a lot of rough patches (an engine goof apparently led to enemy defense being completely useless, completely wrecking the balance of weak speedsters vs. big hitters) but also provides a lot of fresh new ideas and produced some really snappy, enjoyable battles.

It’s also a great example of how to make a self-contained story while also providing an enticing sequel hook. As so often happens the promised sequel went up in smoke, but unlike SOME GAMES I don’t mind, because the main conflict and mysteries are adequately resolved and I don’t feel like I need to know the answers to the remaining threads for emotional satisfaction.

In general, I recommend this to aspiring game devs in particular — while it’s not the greatest at everything, it forwards a lot of clever and original ideas I’d love to see gain wider use.

(This is also a remake of an earlier game, just titled “Alter A.I.L.A.”, that contains the same characters and similar plot elements but is ultimately very different. If you liked Genesis and have time to spare I’d say it’s worth checking out for its alternate take on several characters, though I would say it’s a less enjoyable experience overall.)

   Recommendations, RPGmaker, RPGs, Video Games      , , ,

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, and Open-Ended Stories

  08/30/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      9 Comments

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is an RPG by Kasey Ozymy, the developer of A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky and The God of Crawling Eyes, two games we previously reviewed. It’s clear that the developer learned a lot about game design in the intervening time; Jimmy is actually fun to play, with challenging battles that never feel like brick walls or games of roulette, as well as a tight and intuitive set of tools and mechanics for you to play with. It also just doesn’t bother with elemental effects, which I thought was a nice bit of streamlining. There’s a ton of content and it’s honestly a steal at $15, so definitely pick it up if you’re in the mood for a jRPG.

(Don’t bother with the postgame, though. It just throws you against the exact same enemies and bosses from the main game with literally no difference except bigger numbers, then caps it off with a really tedious battle that’s a total crapshoot followed by you effectively winning halfway through but having to continue punching your way through mountains of HP anyway. Save yourself the time and just look it up on YouTube.)

Unfortunately, story-wise, the author decided to dive into a completely different genre, and his inexperience in that area is very stark. The premise of the game is that it all takes place in the imagination of Jimmy, a young boy — and because it’s a world of his dreams, it’s also a world of his nightmares. To the developer’s credit, this is not your typical “looks cutesy but is secretly SUPER EDGY!!!” affair: the story does genuinely oscillate between horror and truly lighthearted segments, and most of the horror elements are relegated to the edges, which I thought was very fitting — to confront Jimmy’s repressed fears, you have to go searching for them. It does a really good job of making it feel like the horror is intruding on Jimmy’s fantasy, and that he’s actively trying to push it back.

My issue is that none of it really goes anywhere. The horror elements are all flash and no substance — or if there is substance, it’s so vague and opaque I can’t find it. Individual areas are very well-designed, but they don’t seem to add up into any coherent whole. Supposedly, the horror levels are meant to give us a psychological profile of Jimmy via his worst fears, but I couldn’t find any consistent thread that paints any meaningful picture beyond the most banal, superficial, and obvious reading. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the horror levels were just window dressing, but they’re not. The main story is one of those infuriatingly obtuse plots where everything is ~up to your interpretation~, right down to the ending itself, which explains absolutely nothing, not even what the Pulsating Mass is. The horror dungeons feel like they’re supposed to be vital pieces of the puzzle, but trying to use them to read into the main plot feels like grasping at straws.

More details under the cut, with major spoilers, obviously, but I will say that I don’t think the spoilers will ruin the game for you — the plot’s strength is in the characters and areas, and like I said, there’s not even a big ending reveal to spoil in the first place.

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   Horror, On Writing, Recommendations, RPGs, Video Games      , ,

Fullmetal Alchemist

  11/08/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      11 Comments

Oh hey so I did a liveblog comparing the two Fullmetal Alchemist animes. You can read it over on Archive of Our Own because they will apparently let you post anything there.

For those not in the know, it’s common for anime adaptations of manga to be commissioned during the manga’s early run. Because manga is released much more slowly than anime episodes, these early animes often have to come up with their own plots and endings once they overtake what’s currently published.

Fullmetal Alchemist is rather infamous for taking major divergences from the source material, not just in content but in tone. It’s basically straight-up the showrunners’ AU fanfic. The manga proved popular enough to get a faithful adaptation commissioned when it was finished, and now there’s a lot of squabbling over which one is better. Usually, this consists of manga fans screaming that the original anime is objectively terrible and no one should ever watch it and original anime fans are dumb idiots with no taste. I rather strongly disagree, so I made this liveblog to see how the original anime holds up and examine the differences between the two.

I knew from the start that comparing them would be rather futile, as they’re so completely different it’s like comparing apples and oranges. That said, my god the new anime is terrible. I ended up bailing on it about a third of the way through because it was so terrible, but I don’t really care, because it’s terrible and I’m not wasting more hours of my life just to confirm that it’s terrible.

   Anime, Recommendations, TV Shows      , ,

Pierced Heart, by Robert Laws

  01/01/2019       illhousen      Add Comment

Over the Edge is a classic TRPG that’s getting a new edition soon. The game revolves around Al Amarja, a fictional tiny island nation that survives by virtue of basically having zero regulations on anything and being able to provide tourists with what they cannot find elsewhere in the world as easily: drugs, experimental medical treatments, exotic sex, etc., etc.

It’s also infested with various conspiracies, remnants of prehistoric human races, aliens, real mages and other things They don’t want you to know about.

Basically, think Naked Lunch (more the movie than the book since it’s actually coherent).

Recently, I’ve decided to revisit the game, maybe pick up some stuff I didn’t have. While doing that, I’ve learned about the existence of Pierced Heart, a novel set in the world of Over the Edge.

It’s reasonably good.

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   Books, Recommendations, Tabletop RPGs      , ,