MirrorMoon EP

Genre: Adventure, Indie

Developer: Santa Ragione

Publisher: Santa Ragione

System: Linux, Mac, Windows

  

 When I first opened my eyes the console stood silent. Glowing pink buttons begged to be pressed, switches to be flipped. I was just following orders. Soon the console hummed. The screen came to life. I inserted the eight-track. In a flash of light I found myself on the planet surface. My planetary array arm fidgeted, waiting to drag and rotate the celestial object above. It would have to wait. It needed more strength. There was a pyramid ahead. A blue prism that stood out against the red waste. I approached it, ever wary of the black moon above watching me like some sort of eye or something. On a pedestal sat one of the crucial components for my arm. A small orange-red pyramid floating with magical power. As I drew close it flew up and snapped into place on my arm. I wandered.

Not too far off in the distance, to the east, I think, was another blue shrine. Many pillars, in two rows, leading to an ethereal monolith. Another pedestal waited inside with my next arm upgrade, a series of blue bars that revolved around the orange-red pyramid. I looked again at the black sphere in the sky. Upon it I saw a white arrow, like a mouse cursor. And the most peculiar thing happened. When I moved, it moved. And when I stopped, it stopped. And when I went toward the blue pillars...dear God. It's as though the moon mirrored the very rock upon which I stood!

I resolved to discover just what was going on. I scoured the surface of the planet, looking for signs of a story, but could find nothing. I did, however, discover that my planetary array arm could indeed roll the moon above me so that I could discover other landmarks of note. And my arm could also shoot light beams to the moon, which, as you might expect, appeared upon my planet as well. I could use these to navigate the dark and seemingly endless red terrain.

With this discovery, I made my way to the small, round temple that held the final piece of my arm, a blue disc that fit into the back of the arm and allowed me, if you believe it, to drag the moon above to a different location. I latched on to the moon and pulled it away, revealing the sun behind. The planet became bright and tall, shadowy rocks appeared that turned white when I glided through them. Above, the rocks turned white as well and were given names: Pillars of Yuri, Pillars of Neil, and so on in that fashion. When all of the pillars had been turned white, the planet began to send out a strange wave.

Several moments of experimentation followed. I dragged the planet to the epicenter of the wave, hoping it would do something, but it did not. I rotated the planet so that the waves mirrored each other, but nothing happened. I rotated so that the waves would be on opposite sides, but to no avail.

What dystopian hell is this?! Cursed to forever wander this barren rock, a lonely child lost to his people? Who the hell are my people anyway? Who am I?!

Happy Thoughts: I don't know if this game was meant to be existential, but it brought me to that line of thought.

Sad Thoughts: I just want to know what's going on.

The Bottom Line: This game is very strange, but also fascinating. It does a fantastic job by giving you just a tiny push and then encouraging you to explore. I still have no friggin' clue how to go beyond where I stopped, but I can't say I wasn't sort of sucked into the puzzle-like aspect of the game. Enjoy, if you can.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Genre: Action, RPG

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Publisher: Ubisoft

System: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows

We all know how I felt about Assassin’s Creed III or, at least, we can all find out by reading it here. But when I found out they were making a fourth game I felt I had to suck it up and play through the rest of ACIII. Guess what. My initial prediction of what to expect from Assassin’s Creed III was actually pretty accurate! You climb buildings, you assassinate people, etc. But what really made the game stick out of the series were the ship battles. Well, guess what again. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is entirely ship battles! Apparently, Ubisoft read my review of ACIII and decided to pack more action into the beginning of ACIV. The game opens with the main character, Edward the shiny, in the midst of an epic skirmish the likes of Horatio Hornblower. The decks splintering beneath his feat, the cannon smoke still hanging in the thunderous air, shipmates yelling pirate-y phrases, “Y’aarr, the bar wench be loose from the rigging. Tack the main anchor and weigh the sail!”

And you’re told the helmsman has been killed.

It is time.

With a take-charge attitude fueled by adrenaline and rum, Edward grabs the helm and charters a course of destruction through choppy waves and broadsides. Vessels explode when they so much as glance at your ship. It’s almost as though the fight is supposed to be easy. But when the last ship sinks, you realize it was all for naught. The ship’s magazine has caught fire and with no Penthouse a crew of murderous pirates cannot go on. A fiery explosion ensues and we cut to Edward talking to his…wife...? Well, “lady-friend” anyway. Here we learn that his plan is to become a privateer (pirate!) to make his fortune. Plot set.

Meanwhile, back in the present day 18^th century Caribbean, Edward awakens beneath the surface of the water surrounded by debris (pronounced deh-briss). As it turns out he is one of only two people to survive the naval battle. The other is a quickly dying assassin, who, by the way, showed up earlier aboard the ship. I didn’t mean to leave that out. They exchange pirate pleasantries before the assassin suggests they play a hardcore game of hide and seek using the island on which they washed up as their boundaries (Desmond’s room is off limits). Edward counts to twenty and they bound off into the jungle completely forsaking the rules of the game.

And that is where I called it quits.

Happy Thoughts: It seems that they’ve finally dropped the whole Desmond Miles story line. Thank god. I am so tired of jumping into the future for an alternate story line that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Sad Thoughts: So help me if my character suddenly wakes up as his future self I am going to lose it.

The Bottom Line: Did you like Assassin’s Creed Whatever? Do you like pirates? I think this is going to be fun.

Images provided by the internet.

Hammerwatch

Genre: Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG

Developer: Crackshell

Publisher: Crackshell

System: Windows, Mac, Linux

If I judged every game I played based on the first ten minutes starting with the moment I opened the program I would probably review half of them as shit. I wanted to jump right into Hammerwatch’s multiplayer, because I felt it would lead to a more interesting review of the game, but, like many gamers, I have a friend that uses a Mac. And Apple and Hammerwatch do not get along very well. In fact, you need to install an additional program that Mac users seem not to trust, which sounds silly since Macs are impenetrable fortresses.

Anyway, about an hour of fiddling around with this problem and we were good to go. We logged in and chose our classes. I went with the Warlock, a robed figure with a staff and a penchant for stabbing creatures with a short, poisoned, dagger. The warlock is best known for having the most health of the four classes and his ability to cast a lightning ball of doom that electrocutes everything in its path and does massive amounts of damage. In other words I took the overpowered class. OK, that’s probably not fair, because the ranger shoots arrows endlessly and poops bombs that make it easy to run away from enemies while dealing a lot of damage. Not fair.

The game begins in a dungeon – or a castle, I guess – and you are told that the bridge you just crossed has been destroyed and, well, that’s it, good luck. No tutorial explains the controls, no popup lets you know how to fight. This may be different in single player mode, and I suppose you can look at the keybindings, but if it weren’t for my good pal Sean I would have died in about ten seconds. I know this, because that’s about the time a cloud of bats came flying at me. I had to think fast, LIGHTNING BALL! The bats fried like a shattered egg on a sidewalk on a steamy summer day. It felt good.

 

Next came a wave of beetles, LIGHTNING BALL! Guess we’re serving up toasted bug-flesh for breakfast. Beyond those were the larval spawn of venom-spitting worms, LIGHTNING BALL! Piece of cake. I’m getting hungry. Then came more bats, LIGHTN- out of juice. RUN! So you can’t just spam your special ability, which makes sense, I guess. Instead, you have to get good at using your main ability (stabby stabby poison dagger) until your energy recharges or you eat some energy crystals, but once you get that energy back…LIGHTNING BALL! AH HAHAHAHAHA! BURN! BURN!

Happy Thoughts: Hammerwatch is very rewarding in that it is not easy. The controls are stupidly simple, but getting good at the individual classes can be difficult. That poison dagger work takes finesse.

Sad Thoughts: I never thought I’d ever hear myself say this, but the Mac version needs to be fixed. The least they could do is mention the need for an additional program on Steam.

The Bottom Line: If Hammerwatch posted itself on a dating site it would probably look like this: Fun, pixelated, dungeon crawler seeks nerd for a magical night. Friends welcome.

Pokemon Y

Genre: RPG

Developer: Game Freak

Publisher: Nintendo

System: Nintendo 3DS

According to this scientist guy, I live in a world filled with Pokemon. They come in every shape and size and it is my job to catch them and train them to fight so that I can prove I am the best Pokemon trainer in the world. We also love Pokemon and cherish the bond we share with them.

The scientist asks me my name. I tell him it’s Ash, which is actually more of an unfortunate coincidence than anything else. He asks me if I’m a boy or a girl. This is an odd question since he’s looking right at me, but I do have a sort of androgynous haircut and name so I spell it out for him. Then he asks me what I look like. Apparently he is also blind so I give him a brief description, letting him know I’m white, with darker hair in the style that all the boys wear these days. On my head is a red hat whether I like it or not and on that hat is a pair of sunglasses and that pair of sunglasses is a tree and that tree’s in a hole and that hole’s in the ground and the green grass grows all around.

And so begins my adventure. I try to leave home, but mom says I need to change out of my pajamas. Ugh, she just doesn’t understand that we kids don’t care how the world perceives us. I get changed and then I head out. One thing I notice almost immediately is that no one seems to mind if I just open up their front door, waltz into their house, and begin rummaging through their belongings. In fact, these locals seem to be more than willing to give me good advice on how to become a good Pokemon trainer. I must be in Canada.

So I head to the next town over, cuz that’s where I’m s’posed to go, which is about five feet away on a straight path and meet some new friends at the nearby coffee shop/Panini grill. They nickname me A-Meister. I don’t argue. That one big guy looks like he could just sit on me and it would all be over. “A-Meister is cool, guys. It’s cool.” They ask me if I’m into Pokemon, and I’m all like, well duh, that’s why I’m about to take my 13 year old ass and wander around the world. One of them offers to give me one to get me started. I’m a little nervous, but I take the fiery fox thing and start to head back home to say one last goodbye to my mother who I suspect I will never see again.

On my way out of town, one of my new friends stops me and says she wants to battle. Foolish little girl, you have a grass-type pokemon and I a fire-type. Game over.

Happy Thoughts: The graphics in Pokemon Y are really pretty. They finally stepped away from the original look and I love it!

Sad Thoughts: Pokemon has come a long way graphically, but the new controls can be a little fidgety since you can use the joystick thingie to move around. Sometimes I find myself getting stuck on walls. Also, since when does your first rival-like person use a pokemon with a type that’s weak compared to yours. I miss the good ol’ days when your rival’s main pokemon was literally designed to kick your ass.

The Bottom Line: Pokemon Y is a game about creating a character with limited options so you can wander into people’s houses. If you’re into that, you’re going to have fun.

 

The Stanley Parable

Genre: Adventure, Indie

Developer: Galactic Cafe

Publisher: Galactic Cafe

System: Windows

I find that most video games aren't particularly invested in their story lines or, if they are, they tend to be pretty basic plotlines: the rise of a hero, the journey to find oneself, etc. The Stanley Parable is not like this. The Stanley Parable is, in fact, entirely story. To be honest there is barely any game to be played. All you can do is walk around and, occasionally, interact with some objects. One has to ponder if this should qualify as a video game at all or some kind of interactive art piece to be displayed in a gallery with a tiny plaque that that reads, "The Stanley Parable, Interactive Media," followed by a brief description of what the work is meant to represent and the overzealous use of the word "juxtaposition."

In The Stanley Parable we play the character Stanley, a man who works in a cubicle performing a tedious job where he follows the instructions on his computer to type various keys at specific times. He likes this job. Then one day he wakes up to discover everyone in his office has disappeared. We know this because the narrator tells us. Also, everyone has disappeared. The narrator then proceeds to tell us what Stanley does in order to try to locate his vanished comrades. This is where the game gets interesting.

OK, well, at first we're just wandering around a bland office building filled with desks, computers, coffee mugs, and papers. There are many doors, but they are always closed and locked with the exception of one in every room that is open and beckoning us to enter. But then we come to a room where there are two open doors, DUH DUH DUUUUUUUH! This is where the game gets interesting.

The narrator tells us that Stanley walks through the door to the left, because he knows that's where the conference room is and that happens to be where he's heading. This is where the true game begins. What if we don't want to go through the door to the left? Well, then I guess we're going to take the door to the right, which will lead us somewhere else and make the narrator a liar. This is where the game gets interesting.

I think I had to restart the game about five times before the ten minutes were up. Eventually, no matter which path we take, the narrator gives up and demands we start over again. This is where the game gets interesting.

You see, now we start over, but the story is slightly different. This time when we come to the room with two open doors, there are several open doors. And next time there will be no open doors, and the time after that there will be two open doors, but they may lead us to different places! I have never in my life felt more intrigued to wander around an empty office building listening to a pleasant British narrator, except for that one weekend I spent wandering around my office building listening to Steven Fry read books on tape and that never even happened.

The Stanley Parable is undoubtedly strange, but it does something I have never before witnessed in a videogame. It gives you the illusion of choice, but it is, in fact, allowing you to truly change the outcome of the game with your choices. So when you choose that other path, you are actively choosing to allow the game to bring you to an alternate ending as opposed to following what the narrator says every time, which I assume brings you to the "boring" ending. And even if you try to follow the same steps every time you restart, the game may force you to do something else, which makes you have to ponder if you are playing the game or, wait for it, if the game is playing you... Huh? Interesting, right?

Happy Thoughts: The Stanley Parable is lighthearted and has a good sense of humor.

Sad Thoughts: The graphics are pretty low-quality (though this doesn't really take away from the game) and if you're like me and have problems with motion sickness you may need to step away occasionally.

The Bottom Line: I actually bought this game by accident while trying to purchase it for a friend to whom I owed money. That same friend told me that I had made a good accidental purchase and, to give me an idea of what I was in for, mentioned that there is an achievement for not playing the game for four years. I think I was hooked before I even booted the game up for the first time. Unfortunately, I find the game so interesting that it may be a lot longer than four years before I get that achievement. But I am willing to bet that the game goes through an interesting change if you actually manage to wait that long to play it. It's just that kind of game.

Fetch

Genre: Finger-Tapping Adventure

Developer: Big Fish Games, Inc.

Publisher: Big Fish Games, Inc.

System: iWhatever

 

In a post-apocalyptic world of robots and trash a boy and his dog are constantly pestered by advertisements. Whether it’s a billboard for the local gas company or a nagging little button demanding that you buy the full version of the game you must press on through the muck to rescue man’s best friend from the evil fire hydrant that ate him. The first eight minutes are filled with intense finger-tapping, interactive environment, where you may click as many as five objects per screen! At the end of this trial run you can watch the intro all over again or replay the game. Don’t forget to buy the fullversion!

Zap aliens, move garbage, lose your dog, rate the game that you’ve only been playing for three minutes! It’s all here!

Happy Thoughts: This could probably be a fun game if I was willing to buy the full version. Also, the art is pretty neat!

Sad Thoughts: I don’t feel like the demo is quite enough to give me a strong grasp on the first ten minutes of the game. I feel like there are a whole two more minutes that will reveal the whole concept to me.

The Bottom Line: This is the kind of game that makes you realize how some children have racked up tens of thousands of dollars on their parent’s credit card using their iPhone. What’s worse is the game looks like it’s going to be free. It doesn’t really tell you it’s a demo. I dunno. Play it if you like this kind of game.