MEMBER PROFILE FOR Allya-XBA
Average Overall Score Given: 8.42500 / 10
Total Forum Posts: 0
Reviews
Outlast 2
I don’t like this game. No, that’s not it. I hate this game. I hate it for the fact that it compelled me to complete it in spite of it being a wholly uncomfortable and oft-times frightening experience. Why did I put myself through this? I can handle horror films, both of the jump-scare and of the horror-porn variety, so why is it that this game had my stomach in knots and my hands trembling. Well, there’s something to be said for playing completely in the dark with headphones on. It definitely helps with the immersion factor and I highly recommend it for the complete Outlast 2 experience, but there’s more to it than that.The difference between Outlast 2 and other horror genre game is that it takes away any sense of control; this is something of an irony in a game where you’re physically in control of your character’s actions. Do you stay hidden in a rusty barrel for several minutes or push on towards the gloom and total darkness of a creepy wooded area? The choice is just an illusion. If you want to finish the game you must eventually steel your courage and move forward. The difference between this game though and any other horror-genre one? You’re missing your shotgun, you’re missing your 9mm, you’re missing your flamethrower. Heck, you don’t even get a wrench! If you encounter an enemy the only choice you have is this one: Do you run and hide? Or do you die?
This is where Outlast diverges from anything else I’ve played. You are completely helpless. Helpless to do anything but watch in horror, hide in terror, sneak around with the constant feeling of needing to wet yourself, or run away in blind panic. And these feelings, the horror, terror, and moments of sheer panic, are all palpable. It took me so long to play through the campaign only because things would get so tense. Suspense between enemy encounters is built up so well because, by the time you get used to the mechanics and play style of the game, you are proceeding methodically slow. Always crouched. always slowly peaking around corners. You’re trying your hardest to open doors slowly so as not to make them creak in an otherwise silent environment.
Your only resource is your video camera, which you use in night vision to make your way around in the dark. It’s only useful as long as you are able to find batteries to power it. This in and of itself means that you cannot use it all the time. It’s just not possible. So you have to choose your moments and decide when you can see just enough on your own to make it through an area of near darkness enabling you to conserve your camera’s energy for the sequences you know will be in total darkness.
One sequence that sticks out to me came early on in the game. It occurred when my path forced me to travel through a cornfield. A few seconds after starting down the path, beams of light appeared behind me from the area I had just vacated. Proceeding forward, more flashlights clicked on ahead of me. I can’t go back and I can’t move forward. Into the cornfield I go, crouched all the way. The music cues raise the tension and my character’s breathing grows shallow and agitated, mirroring my own heightened level of anxiety. I have goosebumps. Flashlight beams cut through the stalks around me moving this way and that. I move in a zigzag pattern through the field as I try to avoid the beams of light hearing snatches of strange conversations and whispers all around me. Its at this moment when I realize that not all of these enemies have flashlights as I almost crawl headlong into one of them, muttering strange and horrific threats as it continues on its random search pattern. I decide to switch on my night vision. Now I can see my enemy. Their eyes glow in night vision giving them an even scarier other-worldly quality - just what I needed! At least now I can see though! A New problem arises: every time a flashlight beam crosses my path the camera is blinded - too much light. It is a frustratingly realistic conundrum. Do I rely on my own poor vision and sense of echo location to navigate these threats or do I utilize precious battery power to reveal potential hidden threats???
When I fail to maintain stealth and am spotted, an enemy calls out my location to others and my adrenaline is ratcheted up to 11. The music cue changes signalling a chase. Flashlights bare down on me. I run headlong through cornstalks not sure of my direction just trying to make it to the edge of the field so I can regain my bearings. I search for a landmark over the cornstalks - anything! The whole time I’m fatiguing. Run long and hard enough and eventually you will slow to a crawl. A sharp noise - twisted metal scraping and rending bone. A wet squelch of cartilage and soft tissue being torn asunder. A sharp cry of shock and pain - my cry. Followed by the guttural, choking moan of a dying man bereft of hope as I look down at the blade protruding from my chest. Welcome to Outlast 2. Get used to dying. A lot.
The game takes place over the course of one long, horrific night in an isolated town that doesn’t exist on any map - love those places! I won’t spoil any plot points here, but suffice it to say the writers play with some familiar horror tropes such as cults and sadists, but they are so well executed that I didn’t care that anything felt familiar. Hearing the insane mutterings of devil worshippers as they meander about whilst you try to avoid crapping your pants while hiding in tall grass is truly disturbing and really helped sell me on the sheer creep-factor of this game.
There’s a great deal of detail in Outlast 2. Skinned bodies strung up and posed, animal skull displays, and bundles of sticks and antlers used to make shrines all make liberal appearances. Did I mention these cultists love a good lynching? Pretty sure they use people instead of Christmas ornaments over the holidays. Suffice it to say that the setting is the star of this game more than anything. As much as the game Firewatch was a well-plotted, beautiful-to-look-at “walking simulator”, I could make the case that Outlast 2 is a freaky “running-away simulator”.
The only aspect of this game that I think will be a bit divisive to players is how the writer’s tackle the topic of religion. Religion, in this case some perverted form of Christianity, is what causes these heretic factions to commit the atrocities that you will bare witness to if you continue to play through the campaign - and they do not shy away from showing you, or at least heavily implying, that these acts have occurred. Lynchings? Check. Torture racks? Check. Live crucifixions? They’ve got us covered! There’s more to look forward to, but don’t worry I won’t spoil it. There’s also a subplot that revolves around your character flashing back to his time as a boy in Catholic school. It is presented and played through out of sequence so it starts off a bit jarringly and confusing, but needless to say, it gets downright disturbing by the end when the whole story finally comes together. It’s definitely an interesting story element and I personally found it compelling, but doubtless some may find it disturbing. If you’re a hardcore Catholic who loves his or her church, you may even be outraged. Just remember it’s only a game!
As already touched on, the music cues are amazing. I couldn’t even place all the strange instrumentation that was used to such great effect in creating different moods of heightened fear, anticipation, adrenaline, and so on. The sound design is also top notch in setting the room tone in various spaces, both claustrophobic interior and expansive exterior. The sound is especially good in those instances where metal meets flesh. Where the game fairs less well though is in its sound-mixing. There are some great acting performances in this game, but they are often lost. I tried tweaking the balance between sound effects and dialogue, but to no avail, so I feel as though I lost out on some of the plot.
All other aspects of the game are technically good. I only clipped through a wall once in my play through so the game is polished enough. Textures are decent, the world is richly detailed, and the maps are populated with enough natural feeling barriers that I never felt like I was on rails and being forced to an area of the maps.
A few stages begin to feel like re-skinned versions of the same situation. A boss-type enemy arrives so you must stealth your way about a map only to find the way blocked. Then you must backtrack to retrieve an item of importance so that you can clear the area, all the while avoiding your stalker. A door needs a key, a machine is missing a gear, an elevator needs the generator switched on, and so on. This is a minor gripe overall though and does not detract from the game’s enjoyment.
Normally, I’d speak at length about the combat mechanics, but there aren’t any! Let me speak about the enemy types though! Over the course of the game you’ll encounter relentlessly searching, bloodhound-like hillbilly types, static cultists in the midst of reverie who only attack if you travel too near, strange forest dwelling Lepers, and a plethora of masochists wielding blades. Interspersed with these run-of-the-mill threats are a few pervasive over-arching nemesis that will hunt you from area-to-area. Just when you’ve forgotten about them, one will come crashing through a wall to say hello and begin the fox hunt anew. There is one enemy who is quite memorable in both look and manner. I’ll leave it at that as saying more would spoil the surprise when they get their different sized paws on you.
The frustrating part is that, no matter how hard you want to kill one of these villains, you can’t. It’s such a realistic and maddeningly simple mechanic of this game. Where other horror genre games eventually turn you into an over-powered superhero able to hack and slash their way through legions of foes, you can be felled here by a single blow and you have no recourse but to run, hide, or die.
Outlast 2 successfully places you in the boots of an average Joe. As much as we all would like to think that we’d rise to the occasion and be a hero with great evil-killing potential, I think this game most accurately portrays how we’d actually have to cope with such incredible and horrific situations. In this regard the game succeeds one hundred percent - and its infuriating, but in a strangely captivating and "want to play more" manner! Well done.
Overall Score: 8.0 / 10
Batman: Return to Arkham
What can be said about these games that hasn’t already been said in the slew of positive reviews written at the time’s of their respective releases? Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City can inarguably be counted as instant classics on last gen consoles, and the nostalgia factor was high as I dove back into the Caped Crusader’s world. Everything we loved about the franchise is still here: the amazing voice work by Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamill’s classic and perfectly nuanced performance as the Joker, the richly detailed maps rife with blinthem references to Batman’s rich history, and of course the deeply satisfying combat system that rewards advanced players for timing, variation, and strategy over simple button mashing. All these factors and so much more coalesce into making these experiences so much fun...and they are. Still....So much fun.All this stated, if you’ve already played through Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, there’s really nothing new here for you. Okay, maybe there is: all the DLC is here, so if you never bothered to play through the challenge maps for either installment, or missed out on the additional story content for Arkham City, including a Catwoman-playable campaign and the post-main story Harley Quinn’s Revenge, then this is your opportunity to do so. If you’re feeling nostalgic and fancy a return to the Arkham-verse, then this is also your ticket and perhaps a remaster will be just the excuse you need to silently glide back in!
Admittedly, Arkham City fairs much better here in the HD remaster department, but this has more to do with it being a newer base game than it’s predecessor. The models, assets, and AI are already an improvement over those of Arkham Asylum. As such, the first game in the series doesn’t feel like it gets the same visual upgrade even though both are essentially ports to the same Unreal 4 engine. Character models in ‘Asylum feel a bit rougher, animations aren’t quite as smooth, and physics occasionally defy, well...physics.
Where ‘Asylum suffers the most in the graphical upgrade area is in the animation of Batman’s cape as you free-run through the halls of Arkham. While it makes an attempt at fluttering in the breeze behind, it feels stiff and stilted in its performance. I almost feel bad complaining about this as I read that it took two years for the game’s physics engineers to get the cape animated to the point of realism they achieved upon release in 2009. Again, all the assets are original here so this is to be expected, but it still stands out as a missed opportunity. Would it have been prohibitively expensive to give the World’s Greatest Detective an upgrade by overhauling some of his animations? He is the character whose back we have to see through a 10 hour campaign after all.
While we’re on the subject of graphic issues (which I’ll keep coming back to by the way as this is a remaster), there are frame-rate issues! Most notably on ‘Asylum, but also occasionally in ‘City, as the visuals come to a stand-still for a few seconds as the game would fervently try to keep up with my high rate of travel across the map or between sections of the island. To me, this is inexcusable for a touted remaster of an older title. This is not during an encounter with 20+ enemies on screen either; you can be simply running from one area to another...and the game has trouble rendering??
Lastly, and I should add somewhat strangely, the porting to the Unreal 4 engine appears to have saturated the color palette used in the original games; once more, this is most apparent in ‘Asylum. Blacks are no longer as black. Even at its darkest setting light seems less defused. This may at first sound like a very minor thing, but think of it like 1989’s Batman film versus its tonally different sequel, Batman Forever: goodbye gothic Tim Burton feel, hello Joel Schumacher’s neon nightmare. Batman is supposed to be a creature of the night shrouded in darkness who strikes fear into the heart of his enemies. A fair chunk of the game’s enemy encounters revolve around clearing rooms whilst remaining unseen. These stealth sections become a lot less immersive when anybody with eyes would clearly see a grey and blue clad armored individual conspicuously hanging from a gargoyle inches above one’s head. The entire mood of the encounters suffer from the over-saturation of colour. I found myself playing the game almost entirely in Detective Mode in order to avoid this issue.
Speaking of mood however, the music is still top-notch and exemplifies how a Batman game should be scored. Nick Arundel and Ron Fish do a fine job of creating key themes for our winged protagonist, our main villains, and enemy encounters. Hans Zimmerman would be proud of what these gentlemen have managed to do for the games like what he did for Christopher Nolan’s film trilogy.
Dialogue is another story however. Understand first that the dialogue itself is well-written, the performances are top-notch, and the sound-mixing is spot-on. My gripe however, more-so with ‘City where there is much more NPC background conversation in the world, and you'll find that the dialogue lines run over each other, thus competing for your attention. Many a time during a scripted sequence you will be having a conversation with another character, or communicating with an off-screen Alfred Pennyworth, only to stray too close to a group of NPCs. They will begin their own proximity-activated scripted conversations in earnest while you’re still having another conversation. Every bit of dialogue is so richly crafted and lovingly performed that it becomes a shame to lose some of these bits in a cacophony of voices. You'll end up hearing word-salad, potentially missing dialogue that deepens the experience of inhabiting Gotham City or, more worrisome, missing dialogue that moves the plot forward.
These are relatively minor gripes however. I really had to reach to find something to comment on in regards to these games. That’s because they are still great entries in an all-around excellent franchise that deserves respect.
As with all sequels ‘City seeks to improve on its predecessor in every way and manages to succeed every time. It is graphically superior, the story is more compelling, the combat system more nuanced, the boss encounters more varied, and the world larger and more lived in. There is also a ton more to do across the map with side quests requiring the use of Batman’s Detective mode to track down killers from his vast Rogue’s Gallery, and flight checkpoint missions required to unlock some of the Dark Knight’s more advanced capabilities. The various Riddler Trophies from the first installment return this time with more variations requiring the use of yet more of Batman’s arsenal of gizmos, gadgets, and acrobatic skills. There is also a far more compelling, and eventual, encounter with the Riddler (call it a reward!) than in ‘Asylum, where completing all 240 challenges simply gave you a few extra morsels of story dialogue.
All-in-all Arkham City is the better of the two games on offer here, but both games are wonderful to play-through for nostalgic reasons. However, if you’ve never played either of them before, you owe it to yourself to do so now! Before the Arkham games, Batman lacked a proper, respectful, well-crafted translation from comic book to console (or PC) gaming, but these are the definitive Batman games. These two games, here in one package, can be seen as required gaming for even casual fans of Batman, as they remain love-letters to the Bat’s rich history and his endearing legacy as a superhero for the ages.
Suggestions: - Remaster needed more attention to models as could've used an upgrade for the remaster
- Discoloration issues needed to be addressed to preserve mood
- Still great games though!
Overall Score: 8.7 / 10
Firewatch
Firewatch is one of those rare Indie titles where you stop and pause every once in a while and think “this is an Indie?” "It doesn’t feel like one". In regards to Firewatch, it is a polished and attentively executed experience that also acts as a great palette cleanser between the abundance of same-same titles that purvey our game libraries. While not a lengthy story, it feels complete, and the fact that you can play through it in a few hours means that you can completely immerse yourself in it and see it to its conclusion, which I highly recommend.While the story is interesting and keeps you guessing, the real star of this piece is the setting and the way it is translated through the game’s unique art style. Colours are bright and bold with many hues of orange, red, and pink used to amazing effect in conveying gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, highlighting the beauty of the national park your character calls home for the summer.
My one gripe in this area is that while most of the world feels hyper-realistic, the characters and critters who inhabit it do not. For example, when you pick up a photograph the characters in the picture read and look as cartoonish characters might; the same is true of your protagonist’s animations: squared-off, fat fingers that look animated against a background that seems to be going for photo-realism with a pastel colour scheme. Aside from this dissonance however, the art direction is solid and no enjoyment is lost in the play-through of the game.
This ties in to my gripe about your character’s appearance. Early on in the game you’re asked by your off-screen companion to describe yourself physically. It would have been nice to be able to affect the appearance of your character through dialogue choices at this point. One thing that can take a player out of a game is an inability to identify with the protagonist at the center of the experience and I found myself experiencing cognitive disassociation every time I picked up a photo of “me” as I supposedly appeared.
Early on in the game I was a bit surprised to find that there was very little actual wildlife to be found. It felt out of place that a national park should not have more indigenous creatures roaming about. However, as I played through the game I came to believe more and more that this was a conscious decision on the part of the designers. This is not a Far Cry game where you’re meant to kill and skin half a dozen Komodo Dragons to make yourself a new ammo belt. This game is an entirely different animal, if you’ll pardon the pun. The lack of living, breathing creatures did something fantastic, it increased the sense of loneliness and isolation. So much so, that when you hear a rustling in the bushes behind you, you swing around to look.
This is an experience that truly makes you feel alone at times. Your only companion is a voice over the radio named Delilah and sometimes even she is out of reach. Your relationship with this disembodied voice moves the story along in strange and wonderful directions with innocent, simple problems becoming matters of life, death, and deepening mystery. Stakes are suitably raised and your sense of paranoia ramps up considerably in the game’s final act. These feelings of foreboding or intensity are further heightened by the occasional and effective use of well-written music cues.
In order to get the game into gear there is quite a bit of text based exposition required to flesh out who “you”, a middle-aged man named Henry, are when you first begin your experience, but it’s all rather necessary to understand what makes Henry tick and what has motivated him to take on this lonely job in the wilderness. The ending does leave some niggling questions unanswered, but it would be disingenuous for this style of story to tie everything neatly up with a bow. The truth here is subjective and is a product of the facts you bothered to learn and investigate through out the course of your play-thru. I did experience occasional frame rate issues while running across the map, but nothing terrible. There were no real glaring bugs that I could find either.
A few functionalities in the game puzzled me. First and foremost, the “examine” button which allows you to pick up some objects in the world and turn them over in your hand. While a cool interaction, it was never really useful for anything specific. I was expecting at some point to turn a book over to find a code for a hidden cache or directions to a secret location, but no dice...and there are no such locations in the game. Areas that you’re not required to visit or investigate during the course of the story are just there. Or, in some cases just there...being creepy.
The second wasted functionality was the camera you take virtual pictures with. Yes, the images you capture show up during the credits and that’s fine, but I was hoping it would tie into some sort of achievement. A few times over the course of the game Delilah hints for you to take a picture of something in the world, but unfortunately there’s no pay-off. Both of the above are minor gripes however and none of them detract from the enjoyment found in playing through this game.
Overall, what we have here in Firewatch is an immersive, and at times eerie, experience. It is the video game equivalent of reading a mystery, suspense, or thriller novel - one that you won’t wish to put down until you reach its' conclusion.
Suggestions: - Earning achievements for taking specific photos.
- Having clues contained in the text based items you frequently find in the game.
- The ability to alter the appearance of your in-game character.
Overall Score: 9.0 / 10
Monochroma
Let me preface this review by saying that I’m not a big fan of side-scrolling platformers. My generation grew up on them, but when the advent of games that allowed traveling in three dimensions came about I latched on to that concept and never looked back. Now that my own prejudices are out of the way, I will say this: Monochroma is a game with heart. It acknowledges what it is at its roots and remains engaging in spite of this.There is very little preamble; no backstory, no introduction to your protagonist...but even so, once I began it in earnest I was hooked. It could have been the monochromatic color palette, the carefully crafted world laid before me, the strangely fitting soundtrack, or all three, but the point being is that this game works. You don’t need to know your protagonist’s name or his character’s history. He’s just there being a big brother and doing what big brothers do, or rather ought to do, taking care of his younger sibling.
What’s starts off as a jaunt through the countryside with a red kite in tow turns into horror as seen from a child’s eyes. Your brother becomes injured and you must find a way to get him through the rest of the game's levels by solving a myriad of puzzles, all the while being pursued by an ominous and ever-present man. When you successfully evade this stranger you’re never quite sure where or when he’ll re-emerge to begin his relentless pursuit anew. This sense of paranoia and urgency is successful in propelling you through the later stages of the game. You never pause to think why he’s chasing you at all. He just is...and that’s enough to make you want to run. No further explanation necessary. Your have to protect your brother your brother.
At no point in the game did I ever look at 'my brother' as my 'companion cube' a la Portal; even though at firs, it may seem like an easy comparison to make. If you don’t progress with him you don’t progress at all. Carrying him on your back limits your mobility and the ability to jump as high as can when you are unencumbered, but even in a game with a limited amount of expression as this, its makers were still able to imbue some sense of character and life into this silent little creature. When you attempt to put baby brother down in a dark area he will fervently shake his head and cling to your back for dear life. Small touches like this ring true and I was able to feel something for this NPC beyond just looking at him as the proverbial weight around my neck.
As you and your brother progress through the stages, things get weirder. At some point on your initial play-through you will think to yourself, “is this the same game?” It starts off in the countryside, you are chased through a lumberyard, you traipse through a closed mall, traverse across an industrial factory...and then stumble upon your pursuer’s lair, which to say the least, is not the home of your run-of-the-mill kidnapper. It begs the question, how much of this game is ‘real’ and how much of it is the world as seen through a traumatized child’s limited ability to process external stimuli? It has officially gotten weird in a “this is not happening” sort of way. The stakes feel suitably raised and your mission to escort your brother becomes that much more paramount.
One thing I found most distracting from my experience were the load times in between stages. The game is very linear; the following stages begin almost exactly where the previous stages end, but I assume one of the limitations of this game was that it had to be created as individual levels. It would’ve been wonderful to be able to play through this experience uninterrupted as it really would play as one cohesive story of descent from reality to what a child’s mind might perceive as horror or madness.
My second problem with the game is in regards to the jumping and platforming mechanics. I lost track of the number of times I miscalculated a jump, or somehow missed what should have been a simple ledge grab. I found myself thinking back to the original Assassins Creed, when the game mechanics hadn’t quite gotten to the level they needed to be to avoid a lot of hair-pulling and yelling at one’s console. For Monochroma this became very frustrating in later stages where the puzzle difficulty ramps up a few degrees and a mistake equals death and the inevitable checkpoint restart. That being said, I will say that the checkpoint system is very forgiving, in that they come often so there is little need to repeat platforming or evade hazards you’ve already successfully circumnavigated.
Now a bit of a spoiler here. My final gripe with the game is that during the last 30 minutes of playing a bait-and-switch occurs. The antagonist you have been evading through the whole game is replaced by another foe. This story choice didn’t feel earned. After living in ‘fear’ of the man following you all game, your desire to defeat him and no one else is strong, so to have another character pop up seemingly out of nowhere in the last act of the game feels a bit odd. The ending is also somewhat abrupt and your brother sort of disappears from the narrative, so the conclusion feels a bit underwhelming. There’s never any satisfying reunification between you and the NPC you’ve worked so hard to get from start to finish. In short, a ‘boss’ is defeated and the credits roll.
Aside from the few stumbles however, Monochroma has a solid narrative and is engaging. This is despite its simplicity and lack of any true characterization outside of how the characters are animated or the mood provided by the game’s excellent soundtrack, a collection of jazz-inspired tracks and ambient electronica imbued with stabs of metal guitars when the action or pursuit ramps up. It’s also the perfect length. A seasoned gamer can get through it in two hours, making it a nice break from more serious gaming fare.
Would I play Monochroma again? Most likely, but not right away. Am I happy I played it? Most definitely yes. Monochroma successfully does what few two-dimensional platformers can do in today’s marketplace, it tells an interesting and moody story that sucks you in. In short, it’s a beautifully rendered, wonderful bit of escapism.
Suggestions: 1. Tighter controls and a more forgiving ledge grab system would be beneficial.
2. Secrets that actually add something to the game when you find them.
3. Perhaps a hint system for difficult puzzles to flash an indicator over which button one should press next. That last puzzle with the soul-sucking eye at the end was a nuisance as was the final octopus-man fight.
Overall Score: 8.0 / 10
