EPTOnce a year, gamers enter into a frenzy of discussion and their wallets quickly shrink as the Steam Summer Sale commences. While we may complain, this is on the whole a measure of jovial posturing regarding the joke that is our vanishing money, and our lives being enriched by a passion and industry that we all love.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/L5Vo76I.jpg)
Obligatory image
Like many, this summer I was enticed by a number of offerings, but - and I don't know how similar I am in this regard - I don't often spend a lot of money on games. I have in the past tended to be very picky and cautious on what I like to play and what I might purchase as I am an artist, and don't' often have lots of disposable cash (this year being a very rare exception). Some things for me are a given (say the next Ricochet, or the new Thief game in 2014 which I will buy no matter what), but what's left from my general modus operandi are then the games that I have been mildly interested in, but either didn't have a good reason to try these games earlier, compounded by the sale prices which become too lucrative in my estimation to pass up.
With that in mind I wanted to write a series of shorter reviews (1200 words or less) sharing my experiences with each game that I purchased during this period. Some of these games I've had for a while and never finished. Some I've had and never played and I felt that I wanted to include them as well as this was a good time to rifle through all of my games (ok ok, I absolutely loathe the fact that I had a backlog of games not played and wanted to remedy this). But mostly these games are those that I purchased during the 2013 sale. These are the following games that I purchased during the sale:
- Bastion
- Metro 2033
- Metro: Last Light
- Tomb Raider
- Dark Souls
- Legend of Grimrock
- Mark of the Ninja
- FTL
* Bioshock Infinite won't be found here as I already wrote up some smaller thoughts on it in my last blog.
<h1>Braid</h1> Soundtrack
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KbEzc4H.jpg)
This game is pretty short, but it's definitely worth the money, sale or not (or gift
). I initially resisted playing this for a good while because I just hadn't played any 'new' side-scroller games (console ports of old famicom favorites however...). Even with the glowing reviews of this game I was a little hesitant, and even played the first level only to put it down for almost a year. Well I finally came back to it, and I'm glad I did. It certainly was a fun experience and tasked my brain to try to figure out the puzzles that this game presented. There was one thing that kind of stuck out for me however.Overall I either felt that the solutions to the puzzles were either very obvious, or so obtuse that I got super frustrated with them. There seemed to be no middle ground. This was especially clear with the puzzle that involved the actual painting, as this is the only time that this ever is a thing and it is never explicitly stated to you that it's a mechanic. There's definitely a tell, but it's not really obviated. I eventually got tired of banging my head against a wall and just asked my brother, who had gifted the game to me, and his words were "yea the solution to that is kind of, unfair", and he's definitely right on that one. He only stumbled upon the solution in trying every possible combination or bizarre thing, and I just didn't have the patience. I should probably also mention that I used to be pretty bad at deducing puzzles in games when I was younger (one reason Myst was so infuriating for me, good, but really frustrating). Even with that frustration however, I still enjoyed the game quite a bit. It has a cool art style, great music, and forces you to think in creative ways. I did kind of feel that the margin of error might have been a little too tight overall (reminded me of Portal: Prelude in this way), but that's a minor quip. Would definitely recommend others to play it if they haven't experienced it.
Total Playtime: 6hrs
Will I Play Again: Honestly, idk. Maybe years down the road.
<h1>Bioshock 2</h1> Soundtrack
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4RUeGZY.jpg)
The third game that I played in this endeavor. I had just played Bioshock Infinite and probably should have varied it a little as overall I felt that my experience with Bioshock 2 was somewhat stale for a good while. Most of this was because I in a short time played System Shock 2, and Two Bioshock games (within the last year). Similar mechanics, storylines, ideas, and I am getting somewhat tired of this type of game. I know my bad on this one. Anyway Wot I Think:
First, Games for Windows Live can die a fiery and painful death. Seriously, I fought with GFWL for more than 20 minutes before the game would even load up properly. I used a dummy email for this crap because, well, the DRM shit is stupid, and as I mentioned before, fuck GFWL. Seriously, if a Microsoft employee sees this, please let them know that GFWL completely soured my experience of this game for being a pompous jackass. Thank god I have a profile, and can just set up an offline one from now on, but man, this is the kind of idiocy that spawns more piracy more than it ever deters. Can we agree that you can't stop piracy (ahem, Adobe CC...), and therefore shouldn't try to? Maybe you'd garner a better relationship with your constituency? Sorry I've gotten a little off track at this point, now where was I? Oh yes...
I'm back in Rapture, but TWIST, I'm a big daddy now! My first apprehension was, "well how do they make things difficult or challenging now that you're one of the hardest boss creatures from the original?" Well, the answer is the oft and might I add lazy, "well we'll just make everyone scale to your level!" Ok ok, so I'm being a little hard here, let me explain why.
I simply hate the use of vita-chambers, or quantum entanglement chambers, or the "we got rid of vita-chambers, but we really didn't cause we have a mechanic that does the same thing" from Bioshock Infinite. What this does is supposedly make dying not a bad or putative thing, but what it really does is that it undermines the entire difficulty of the game. At least in SS2 and BI you had to pay to use this feature in some measurable way, but even then it's still this crutch from which all of the gameplay has to limp on with. It does so much to harm your sense of "danger", and the thing it's supposed to help with I find silly. I dislike this "everyone is a winner" or "we have to coddle you" attitude because it just entirely undermines difficulties.
With that in mind one of my best decisions was to A. turn off vita chambers, and B. try to not die ever. Did I succeed? No. But I died very little, and while I was playing on a lower difficulty setting, I felt so much more impacted by the battles. I had to constantly manage attacks from multiple angles, and not have to worry about getting sniped in a few seconds, but rather trying to figure out how to survive a protracted fight with using as little resources as possible. Now that is a challenge! :D Anyway I had some issues with the combat but overall my choices did help a lot with mitigating my original frustrations with the game.
One thing that bothered the crap out of me was the movement. I edited the .ini file because I am a low sens fps/ no accel gamer, and too many games do the exact opposite as defaults these days. So anyway, I found from this decision that whomever wrote the code for this did a bad job. Whenever I had to navigate through a in-game menu, or access a pressurization chamber, or many other things, the sensitivity of the mouse would immediately reset to their defaults and I would go from about 650cpi to 2500 instantly. God was this annoying. Picking up a little sister, or getting her back into here hole was often times fraught with me not being able to control it...Oi.
What took me a long while to actually like was Rapture itself. The original really invited me in, but I'm not sure exactly why, but this return was a little colder than my previous excursion, and I didn't find that I was really enjoying my time here until very late in the game (and then I was reminded of some of my fondness of Bioshock). Some of the set pieces were cool, such as the big sister and the breaking of glass, but there overall weren't many really great excursions into different places and ideas. When they happened they were great but I just often wished they were more plentiful. Again, probably an issue of Bioshock 1 being a lot more compelling and fresh of an experience.
I did like the choice to use Sarah Bolger as Eleanor, as she fit into the role pretty well, even though I wasn't as enamored of the plot overall (felt more like an addition rather than something organically driven from the world (e.g. ooo it did well, let's do a sequel? any ideas?)). Overall it was okay as an experience. If you liked Bioshock, then this is more of the same, but with a perhaps less-good plot and maybe more enjoyable combat? idk. Gary Schyman is still amazing though. Oh also, fuck GFWL.
Total Playtime: 12hrs
Will I Play Again: Probably not, considering the other two Bioshock entries I own.
<h1>The Witcher 2</h1> Soundtrack
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GxydFgj.jpg)
Takh? Nie? Should you even need to ask? Oczywiście. I'd like to first start of my thoughts about what I found very compelling about The Witcher 2. This definitely applies to both games, but in my first time playing them I got a strong and distinctly European penchant about the story, the characterizations, and the environment we were in. Even though I played the original in English, this sensibility shone through all of the bad voice acting to create a very unique and compelling experience. The same can be said about this sequel, but what I did this time around - at the suggestion of my brother - was I decided that I wanted to play this game in its original language, and what a decision!
He used to laugh when talking about how bad the voice actors for certain characters were (Geralt, Dandelion, others) and now that I've heard both I can wholeheartedly agree with him. Playing in Polish is just so far superior to playing in English that I won't ever go back. I may have had some small problems with the subtitles, and while English Geralt had his own characterization, Polish Geralt is far more nuanced of a character and even has a subtle witty sense of sarcasm to him that I thoroughly enjoyed. A big thanks to Jacek Rozenek for doing a great job with Geralt, because this really was like night and day as characterization goes.
Another thing that I enjoyed a lot was the score. It was just enough different from a more streamlined and hollywood-esque approach that it simultaneously did its job well while providing a more interesting palette. In some places I felt it might have been too obvious or direct in its choices, but it would then offset them again, with other settings, or small orchestrational choices that were nice. The use of a lot of folk instruments helped a lot in this measure of having fresh sounds.
Of course, there were things that I didn't like, or felt were getting in the way of my enjoyment, so I'd like to mention a few of these now.
The first, and most obvious are how quests are set up. It's really unfortunate that all you need these days in a game is a minimap and a quest marker to provide information for quests, because it's so entirely vapid of any deduction or thought that it really does bother me. "Go here!" is what they say, but that's not me questing or role playing, that's me playing fetch....ew. Skyrim has it, The Witcher has it, many other games do to, but I can't help but think that we've lost something in this process. What is really unfortunate about this is that often times quests aren't entirely thought out, and so we need some sort of breadcrumb, or clues to help us deduce what to do or where to go, and all we get is a quest marker. I mean, can I make a plea with all the developers in the world? Could you please start to "Create quests as if you had no map, no external guide, nor quest markers/indicators?" Maybe then you'd realize that there are important conversations you might want to log, or symbols to draw in our codex, or bits of info to help deduce out riddles or puzzles, or find locales. This sort of meanders towards brute forcing of puzzles like I often did, rather than having a discernible clue to go off of, though again, TW2 would sometimes try to offset this idiocy by implementing the forgery papers thing, which was pretty good as clues go. Mostly this was just really uneven, and needs more care in the future, but please, create quests as if there wasn't ever such a damnable thing as "quest markers" in existence.
Returning to the plot, there was a point in Act I where I thought I was going to be making a big choice that could possibly diverge into an entirely different series of events. This is when I talked to Triss about leaving the hunt for the Kingslayer and search for Yennefer and Geralts past. Turns out, this diverging path would lead right back into the middle again which was somewhat disheartening, but then after finishing the game, my brother let me in on a interesting tidbit. Apparently there is a large path-diverging choice to be had in this game, and it wasn't the one I chose. In my next play though I'll have to take that route as it intrigues me, and also I liked Saskia much better as a character than the pompous and hegemonic Henselt (thank god Roach got to kill him later).
If I were to talk about combat, I would say that I have no idea how to 'best' fight in TW2. I also had some problems... I originally started with FCR on, but it was super freaking hard, so I turned it to low so I could better get used to it. Well this turned out to be a problem because I only had 1.0 and there was a major bug due to how FCR works in that I could not get the recipe for Gadwall in Act II. Shit... I spent hours trying to troubleshoot and research the problem. I tried to disable the mod, no help. Remove it entirely? Nie. Update to 1.1a? Nothing. I had entirely broken my game, like Morrowind levels of broken. Thank god my brother had a save near where I was, so we just took his and plopped it in. Having to start over entirely would have sucked badly. Wait, wasn't I talking about combat?
The one thing I wasn't as enamored with regarding combat, is that I had no idea how to manage 1vX fights. What's the correct level of combinations? Rely more on signs and traps? More swordplay and blocking? Dodging? It's not really easy to understand, and I don't know if I get it even after playing the whole thing. Maybe that's why they came up with this official/unofficial mod.
Another thing that irked me, but only really in Act II was having invisible barriers corralling me in directions I didn't want to go. I probably am jumping the gun as I've played three Elder Scrolls games and so I've been trained to look for the path less traveled, but it was a minor annoyance when trying to traverse the landscape. It does make me kind of excited about Wild Hunt though.
I'm really glad I finally had the time to play this, because It was pretty enjoyable (admittedly, this was after having to watch the entire Witcher 1 as I didn't finish that game and was often confused as to what the idea of the game was supposed to be imparting to me as the player). I will go back and play at least one more time to explore some different options (Iorveth, more alchemy), but that will also help my understanding of the world better, as TW1+2 can be pretty dense at times.
Total Playtime: 30hrs
Will I Play Again: Definitely. And if you do, play it in Polish. Seriously.
<h1>Legend of Grimrock</h1> Soundtrack
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NB17U2I.jpg)
Ok ok, so the main reason I bought this game is because Eye of The Beholder, a game released in 1990 and a DOS based game, is one of the first RPGs that I played all the way through and finished. Granted I was 8 when I played that game and was incredibly excited about the graphics and the gameplay especially having watched my siblings and played Ultima I-III and a few Forgotten Realms games on the Commodore 64 (Pool of Radiance, Champions of Krynn). So, Grimrock looked like a modernized version of this game and I finally stopped window shopping and got it. Also my younger brother has a pretty good sense of taste, and recommended the game as well (along with Braid, The Witcher, and others I've purchased over the years).
Anyway, so I was very curious as to how this game would keep to the originals (Dungeon Master, EotB), but also how it would play with the mechanics that I already knew very well. I must admit however that I also had some trepidation as I hadn't played a game like this since 386 processors the size of a hard drive were an actual thing, so I was worried a little that I had perhaps too much nostalgia or clouded vision of the original. Thankfully I my fears were unwarranted, and found that much of what I loved about EotB was right here in Grimrock.
The puzzles and labyrinth navigation was a wonderful return to something I enjoyed a lot, and I particularly liked how each puzzle wasn't immediately obvious. You had to use your brain - even if just a little - to progress forward. Far down the road on that one, I thought at one point that they had gone and done something that I was so excited to see them have the balls to do that eotb did all the time. There was a puzzle on the 12th level or so where you needed a specific set of items to traverse the room, but I thought that - due to the description - that I would be forced to backtrack about 4-5 levels in order to grab the right item to pass. Well, my hunch wasn't exactly on the mark, and being a hoarder of things I passed that room without even having to leave the level, but I did later find out from my brother that when he got to that area and did not have one of the necessary items and did have to backtrack quite a bit in order to continue. This is such an old school way to make a puzzle, and I gotta say I was tickled by it. I also did enjoy the variety and some of the creativity within the puzzles and how they work, however with that being said I would have liked to see a multi-level puzzle a few more times. This sort of gets me to talk about eotb and level design features.
One of the most amazing things about Eye of the Beholder was its level design. As an example, while you traversed levels 1-7 (arbitrary number) normally, along the way you would encounter locked doors or areas that you could not activate or pass (or didn't know they were there). Only when you got to level 8 and things were made clear (or got a special key or piece of knowledge), all of a sudden you could start back tracking and exploring previously locked/hidden areas for a number of things. This added secondary levels of intrigue into the level design, but also, the developers used this to make you go backtrack because some keys or quest items would be in these areas that you needed on say level 9, but the item is on level 3. I can understand that they might have shied away from that idea because it adds a crazy level of complexity to your exploration (especially remembering that we used graph paper back then to map our levels), but that was one of the things I loved about that game, along with how interconnected the whole dungeon was.
As another example, sometimes you need to use the holes in the floor to help solve the puzzle or get out of danger quickly in Grimrock, and this was for the most part related to the level's puzzle, or in a self contained space. In eotb, when you got to level 3 there were those holes, but you did not want to fall in them. Ever. The reason was that you would then fall to the level below, but level 4 was full of spiders (to which you would just straight up die because you didn't have antidotes to poison, also poison didn't wear off), and was just part of the whole level, not a safe or contained area. Grimrock does this on a smaller scale, but I never quite got the same "oshittt" feeling and perhaps it's the scale that made me feel this way. This isn't really a fault, but something I noticed in my own reception.
The last thing I wanted to mention was perhaps my biggest annoyance with Grimrock. Combat abuse and Death. It's funny because I had no idea that you could get revived if one of your characters died. I'll need to explain why. In eotb you could actually visit a priest who would revive fallen comrades, or random piles of bones from other heroes. Not having this and knowing this wouldn't be likely to make an appearance, I just assumed that death meant permanent death. Oops, one of your team died? Well now you are stuck with 3 for the rest of the game. Lol, what do I know. So apparently the crystals will just straight up revive fallen party members, so it's somewhat amusing that I was entirely oblivious to this, due to my past experiences. This sort of informed how I approached combat too.
In not wanting to die, I very quickly found out that you could abuse the shit out of doors, or grates. You could easily open them, swipe at your enemy, and then close the door before it has time to attack you. I didn't do this maybe %50 of the time, but when faced with harder enemies I began to do this quite regularly. And this sort of was the only thing that really irked me about the game. In order to combat enemies efficiently, I had to abuse the terrain. Sure you could just move around and try to avoid the enemies stealthily - which I did sometimes - but why bother when something else is easier, and more effective? It kinda put a hamper if in some small sense of my enjoyment of the game. Maybe it could have been better handled (I did like how the illithids were able to open doors though)...
Really, that is about the only thing that I didn't like overall. Sure I wished it had done some more exploritory things, but even with my small quips on these items, I thoroughly enjoyed myself with this game. This would be a definite recommendation in my book. It brings back a fun and old style of gameplay, and presents itself quite well. The marked lack of music and eventual slow accretion is especially great within the totality of the game. It also amused me that the music, once it started becoming more apparent, reminded me of Black Mesa.
Total Playtime: 13hrs
Will I Play Again: Probably, especially considering the workshop dungeons that I can explore.
<h1>Batman: Arkham Asylum</h1> Soundtrack
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MctFGdq.jpg)
So, why is this game here? I've already played this and have fond memories of it, but considering that I've only played it once and that I have a lot of RPG's that I wanted to play I figured I needed some breathing room between them, especially between two old school games such as Grimrock and Planescape: Torment.
I forgot how annoying some things were, such as Poison Ivy's boss battle, but it was an again fun experience. Funny enough it took me about 10 minutes before I got used to the combat again, but once I did, was able to play on hard with very few issues. I don't however remember encountering so many bugs, glitches, or errors from the game last time I played. I had camera errors at Ivy (using explosive gel broke the camera), sound issues where only the environmental sounds would just disappear, framerate issues (lol wat, I have a windfrorce gtx 770) because of PhysX crashing my system, and a whole slew of other oddities. Despite those bizarre things, and this being another GFWL title (again, fuck gfwl), I still had a lot of fun again. Easily the best Batman game I've played.
Total Playtime: 13hrs
Will I Play Again: Yea, I haven't entirely exhausted my playthroughs of this yet.
<h1>Closing Thoughts</h1>
I wasn't sure when I first embarked on this fun endeavor how to structure it, what games to play when (so as to vary as much as possible my experiences and keep them fresh), but I think I've got a good handle on how I want the rest of this three part series to go now that I've figured that stuff out. Despite my concerns with certain things in each game I've had a lot of fun with all of these experiences, especially with Grimrock and The Witcher 2. Additionally, finishing today is somewhat fortuitous because TI3 proper will begin very soon so I can put down these games and enjoy the top echelons of competitive dota as an interim break. That should really help me get back into this series, as Part II will be an excursion in to the following games:
- Planescape: Torment
- FTL
- Dark Souls: PTDE
- Bastion
), and looking forward to talking about them.
I dunno what it was, but I just didn't feel nearly as excited about the open world aspect of it so I've been really hesitant to touch it. I may eventually rescind and get it, but idk. As for Dark Souls I already downloaded some mods in preparation as I heard a few things about the somewhat rushed PC port, they are:
