Category: 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      ,

A Nightmare in Sunnydale

  04/26/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      9 Comments

Buffy the Vampire Slayer fangame! The game interprets the opening of the worlds in the season 5 finale as creating a hodge-podge dimension of characters and locations from other works, resulting in a massive crossover world. Unfortunately, I am culturally illiterate and Buffy was the only one I was familiar with. The opening involves a hotshot demon hunter dude trying to protect her from demons only to get oneshotted while she beats them herself, which amused me and was delightfully in keeping with canon. Unfortunately, Buffy gets outclassed by everyone else pretty quickly. I can understand the necessity of flattening the power levels for an RPG cast, and it’s stated that the purgatory world is giving people additional magic powers, but it’s still rather annoying that Buffy isn’t that special gameplay-wise. At first I thought she was meant to have a unique weapon type that was superior in some way… except there’s another party member who can use more weapon types than her including her specialty weapon, and her specialty weapon kinda sucks anyway, having a lot of skills with random targeting and high health costs.

Despite that, I did find the Buffy characters to be very in-character, and Buffy has the same degree of proactiveness I liked about her from canon. Cordelia also shows up and is basically the best party member, which is awesome.

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   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      , , ,

The Fall

  05/04/2018       St. Elmo's Fire      1 Comment

In The Fall you play as ARID, a combat suit’s operating AI. Your pilot is shot out of the sky and is knocked unconscious in the titular fall, thus activating your control of the suit. You have to navigate the facility in which you’ve crash-landed and find medical treatment for your injured pilot.

This review will be spoileriffic, as I’ll be going over the entire plot. If you want the cliff notes: don’t buy this, it’s one of those “to be continued!” scams and is essentially just the origin story for the real game. The controls are also awful and it’s full of bizarre frustrating adventure puzzles. Watch a playthrough on YouTube if you’re interested. The story does some interesting things with AIs, but I found the execution very lacking. It also does the “we’re going to force you to do something horrible and then insist you’re horrible for doing it” thing, which is just so lazy and trite and I am so numb to it at this point.

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   Adventure, 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      , ,

Dragon Age, Choices, and Railroading

  03/18/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      52 Comments

I’ve been getting into Dragon Age after Act and other friends recced it. I played Origins a little while ago, and recently finished Dragon Age 2. But for all the talk of the excellent writing and the meaningful choices the game offers, I found myself extremely disappointed and frustrated with just how little freedom I actually had, especially in DA2. There’s a really baffling disjunct between which characters you are and aren’t allowed to kill or save, and which choices are respected and which get quietly retconned or ignored.

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   On Writing, RPGs, Video Games      , , ,

Christmas Steam Games 2018: QuickRecs

  04/10/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      18 Comments

Our sacred holiday tradition continues! I got so many this year that we get to divide this into recs and pans. Most of these are puzzle games; I suppose those are the ones that go for cheap.

Inside: Hollow Knight, Recursed, Ittle Dew 2, The Dweller, Zasa: An AI Story, NO THING, Quell, Qbik, Reveal the Deep.

I also got Hue, which Act already reviewed. It is wonderful and I second her recommendation.

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   Action, Adventure, Horror, Platformers, Puzzle, Puzzle Platformer, Recommendations, Video Games      , , , , , , , ,

ERROR: Human Not Found

  06/12/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      3 Comments

ERROR: Human Not Found is a murder mystery visual novel about a murdered AI. You play as one of the researchers involved in the AI’s development, and team up with another AI to investigate the mystery. It’s free and you can pick it up on Steam here.

As I’ve said in previous reviews, this is right up my alley. I’m a huge fan of transhumanism and emergent humanity, and sapient AI is a great topic for that. Unfortunately, the story is just a bargain-bin of cliches that adds nothing interesting to the conversation. The AIs are all just humans wearing robot hats, and the plot has all the depth of a Saturday morning cartoon.

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   Video Games, Visual Novels      , , , ,

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2

  07/24/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      28 Comments

So, I decided to try out Devil Survivor 2. I reviewed the first game a while back; this one is a spiritual successor kind of sequel, with no direct relation to the first game’s events. I did not like it nearly as much. The characters are a pack of annoying anime cliches and the plot is virtually nonexistent outside of the final Big Choice, which is just more “the answer lies in the middle” propaganda. I couldn’t even be bothered to do a NG+ for this one.

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

Final Fantasy Tactics, or, What Are the Real Monsters?

  09/24/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      24 Comments

I just finished watching an LP of Final Fantasy Tactics. I had heard many good things about it, but could never get far in it when it came out, because the actual game is an overdesigned kudzu of a slot machine. But that’s besides the point.

The beginning lives up to the hype. Nothing else does. This is because it’s a bait-and-switch I have grown to become familiar with in fantasy video games, particularly Final Fantasy.

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   Final Fantasy, RPGs, Video Games      ,

Iconoclasts

  10/20/2019       St. Elmo's Fire      4 Comments

A Metroidvania recommended to me by a games rec Tumblr I follow. It main claim to fame is that it was all made by a single person, over the course of a decade.

This is not a Metroidvania by my definition. It is completely linear from beginning to end, upgrades are minimal, and using new abilities in old areas is exceedingly rare.

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   Metroidvania, Video Games     

Coromon Demo

  01/12/2020       St. Elmo's Fire      3 Comments

Hey everyone! A game I’ve been following for a while just got a demo release, so check it out maybe.

Coromon is a shameless Pokemon clone, warts and all. Random encounters? Yes. Glassy characters combined with lasting damage combined with those random encounters making every dungeon a grueling slog you have to level grind your way through? Yep. IVs? For some reason they made them not just a core gameplay mechanic but a central plot point as well. Does none of that bother you? Then you’ll like this.

I’d say this can best be described as “Pokemon lite” — the type system is severely flattened to a mere 7 types, only 5 of which are true elemental types, and there is no dual-typing. Only one of them has more than one weakness, so battles are almost always solved games with one possible counter to any opponent. I found this very disappointing, but I’m willing to see how it plays out in the full game.

Also, it has a non-silent protagonist! I know that is something that’s been discussed on this blog before, so you can see how that shakes out in practice.

   Pokemon, Recommendations, RPGs, Video Games      ,

Bonfire Demo

  02/11/2020       St. Elmo's Fire      Add Comment

Bonfire, which I reviewed years ago, is finally getting an expansion into a full game. The demo is out if you want to try it.

Bonfire is a tactical roguelike RPG. I greatly enjoyed the original alpha, though unfortunately, I have to say I’m finding the new demo less fun so far. In The alpha, there were no lasting consequences for failing a quest, but now, you’re severely punished with the loss of extremely scarce long-term resources for letting even a single character get defeated. This exacerbates the problem the alpha already had of locking you into very repetitive defensive strategies if you want to survive.

I do like the other changes, however. The alpha felt like a tech demo, but this feels like a full RPG, and some of the new mechanics address my other big criticisms of the original. Hopefully the rough edges can be sanded off by the time of the full release.

   Roguelike, RPGs, Video Games