"Cthulhu Saves the World"is a bit of an homage to old school Final Fantasy-ish games. It's a 2D pixel-art style turn-based RPG. The story goes, Cthulhu awakens with aims to destroy all things, as he's Cthulhu and that's kind of his thing. Before he can get started on the destruction though, he is stripped of his powers, and the only way for him to reclaim them is to become a hero. Once he's a hero, he'll have his powers back and theeeeeen he can destroy the world.
He meets various characters along the way who will accompany him on his quest, who have various skills in magic and ass kickery. Your merry little band travels from town to town picking up quests to prove your hero status, fighting baddies along the way. The combat is not too easy but not too hard. There are certain boss battles that I had to try multiple times, so there was some sense of satisfaction in besting them.
I'm not going to lie, I got somewhat annoyed by the whole surprise battle thing. I much prefer Chrono Trigger style battles where you actually run into monsters that you see rather than just randomly being thrown into battle when walking throughout a dungeon. However, I did like that they implemented this system where you would only have to fight X number of battles for each location. If a dungeon has a max of 25 battles, once you have won 25 battles, no more random battles will occur in that dungeon, and you can explore it with impunity. The dungeons are kind of long, not that visually interesting, and therefore start dragging after a little while, so infinite battling would have driven me insane, me thinks.
Don't get me wrong, it's still quite enjoyable overall. The humorous writing was a big strong point of the game. I just wish there was more of it. I wish there were more NPCs to interact with, more cutscenes, more objects that can be interacted with, etc. One little extra nugget is a commentary option that populates question marks around the game world that you can click on to read developer notes on some behind the scenes things about that particular section of the game. They're interesting, but word of warning...if you've got the commentary on during your first playthrough, it often has some spoilers for what's coming up in that zone.
Overall, I enjoyed "Cthulhu Saves the World". I got it on Steam for like two dollars, and I got about 11 hours of entertainment out of it. Seems like a good deal to me.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Tiny Bang Story
"The Tiny Bang Story" is an interesting little puzzle game. I enjoyed it, but it's not going to get a rave reaction from most. I'm not gonna lie, the reason I chose this as my next game was because I had so much to watch on my DVR, and I wanted a game that wasn't going to require my complete attention. Half attention on TV, half on the computer...it worked.
Each screen displays hand drawn backgrounds with puzzle pieces and various hidden objects throughout. The puzzle pieces depict the world, which has been blown apart (in convenient puzzle shapes). Assembling these puzzle pieces is how you reconstruct the world. You unlock new portions of the game world by solving mini-games/puzzles. These puzzles become available when you find a number of specific items to unlock each puzzle.
As I feel like my words may not have made any damn sense, look at this picture, and I'll attempt to make more of the sense.
The puzzle pieces are hidden in plain sight. See the green arrows. The top arrow shows one of these hidden bastards, and the bottom green arrow shows the count indicator. You'll need 22 more puzzle pieces according to this. Find all the puzzle pieces for a given level, and you get to put them in the world puzzle that looks like-a so.
To unlock the various mini-game puzzles, you need to find the number of objects for that particular puzzle, indicated to the right. In this example, looking at pink arrows in the first image, you see that you need 5 valves. There's one over there on whatever the hell that sphere is. It will unlock the valve puzzle seen below. Get it now?
Find the things, unlock the puzzles, solve the puzzles, advance to new rooms, repeat... After the end of the level, you'll be able to put together the puzzle pieces you've found. At the end of the fifth level, the puzzle of the world will be complete, and you win...I guess. I say I guess because it's not abundantly clear it's over. It turns out I'm a fan of credits. It pissed me off in Skyrim, and it pisses me off here. Just roll the credits. It gives me a sense of satisfaction. Humor me...
But instead of credits, you're in a new room where all the characters seen throughout the game are now gathered together. There's a wall of all the mini-games/puzzles you've completed, which can be replayed if you're into that sort of thing...or you can just call it a day.
I'm done. Onto the next game...
Each screen displays hand drawn backgrounds with puzzle pieces and various hidden objects throughout. The puzzle pieces depict the world, which has been blown apart (in convenient puzzle shapes). Assembling these puzzle pieces is how you reconstruct the world. You unlock new portions of the game world by solving mini-games/puzzles. These puzzles become available when you find a number of specific items to unlock each puzzle.
As I feel like my words may not have made any damn sense, look at this picture, and I'll attempt to make more of the sense.
The puzzle pieces are hidden in plain sight. See the green arrows. The top arrow shows one of these hidden bastards, and the bottom green arrow shows the count indicator. You'll need 22 more puzzle pieces according to this. Find all the puzzle pieces for a given level, and you get to put them in the world puzzle that looks like-a so.
To unlock the various mini-game puzzles, you need to find the number of objects for that particular puzzle, indicated to the right. In this example, looking at pink arrows in the first image, you see that you need 5 valves. There's one over there on whatever the hell that sphere is. It will unlock the valve puzzle seen below. Get it now?
Find the things, unlock the puzzles, solve the puzzles, advance to new rooms, repeat... After the end of the level, you'll be able to put together the puzzle pieces you've found. At the end of the fifth level, the puzzle of the world will be complete, and you win...I guess. I say I guess because it's not abundantly clear it's over. It turns out I'm a fan of credits. It pissed me off in Skyrim, and it pisses me off here. Just roll the credits. It gives me a sense of satisfaction. Humor me...
But instead of credits, you're in a new room where all the characters seen throughout the game are now gathered together. There's a wall of all the mini-games/puzzles you've completed, which can be replayed if you're into that sort of thing...or you can just call it a day.
I'm done. Onto the next game...
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
LIMBO
Well, I finished LIMBO. How can I describe LIMBO? It's a critically acclaimed platformer that I'd call enjoyable with a side of confusion. We'll start with the enjoyable...
I really like the sparse black and white art style they've gone with throughout the game. All the foreground elements were black silhouettes with multiple hazy background layers moving at different speeds to give a sense of depth. It's like that multiplane camera technique you see in old Popeye cartoons. It looks great.
Something you learn early on in this game is that death is around every turn, it's varied, and it's brutal. Pits with spikes, bear traps, a spider the size of Shelob, giant saws, machine guns, or...a mere three feet of water...all perilous. (Yeah, drowning is hella easy in this game.) The point is, there are lots of ways to die, and unlike a lot of games, when it happens, it had a tendency to make me recoil a bit. You'll be flung like a ragdoll, chopped into tiny pieces and violently strewn about, smashed, electrocuted, and probably impaled by a giant spider leg.
Part of this feeling of brutality comes from the excellent sound design in this game. I keep mentioning the spider because I think this thing was the cause of my first death, and it was memorable. The tremendous thud as its leg went through me and into the ground seemed to have a lot of force due to the sounds associated. Plus, the spider just walks away, my lifeless corpse still impaled on those pointy legs. What an asshole... The sound design is just very good. It's believable, and there's an economy of sound that causes anything out of the ordinary to make your ears perk up. You'll pause momentarily and perhaps proceed with a little more caution. In most games you won't notice the sound design at all unless it's so poor it calls attention to itself. It's nice when sound is used effectively to enrich the experience.
Regarding controls, you're limited to your arrow keys for directional movement and the control key for interacting with the world. (Pull a crate, flip a lever, etc.) It's not very complex, but it doesn't need to be. In a way, I felt like the limited amount of actions I could perform made the world all the more foreboding and scary. If something's attacking me, there is a relatively small number of things I can do. There are no weapons, so I can't fight it head on, which is unusual in the game realm. It seemed to make you feel a little more helpless in this dangerous world.
As you navigate through the world, the world evolves, bringing new challenges and perils. You start in a forested area and as you progress, the locations gradually becomes more industrialized. This evolution and variety of scenery made it very enjoyable to explore the world and as a result, nothing ever got too familiar. I wasn't sure where I was going or what I was looking for, but I was enjoying looking for it.
And that brings me to the perplexing bit... While I was playing, I didn't know what I was looking for, and after a time, there I sat, done with the game, and I still wasn't all that sure what I had been looking for. If you look at the tagline of the game, it reads, "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO". Ah...I was looking for my sister. There was a person there at the end. A lady person... I suppose that was her...which means I win. Yay? I'm unsure how I was supposed to draw that conclusion by the content of the game alone, but I'll take that as a given since you bothered writing it and all.
There are a lot of theories about the meaning and symbolism present throughout the entire game and especially regarding the ending. A lot of them seem to be reaching a bit and others sound like total bullshit. I've never been one for symbolism and such though. *shrug* The developers keep the theorizing going by saying that it's up to the user's own interpretation. You smug bastards... I know you had a certain intent when you made the game. Nothing you did was on accident.
I won't go into the various theories because there are A LOT of them. Besides, LIMBO is definitely worth a play and going into it with preconceived notions about the meaning is going to alter your own interpretation, which will give the devs sad feels.
So yes, it was an enjoyable game, and they made me ponder on symbolism, which I hate. That's quite a success. I'm still pondering it, in fact, so my hat goes off to them. Well done, devs. Well done.
I really like the sparse black and white art style they've gone with throughout the game. All the foreground elements were black silhouettes with multiple hazy background layers moving at different speeds to give a sense of depth. It's like that multiplane camera technique you see in old Popeye cartoons. It looks great.
Something you learn early on in this game is that death is around every turn, it's varied, and it's brutal. Pits with spikes, bear traps, a spider the size of Shelob, giant saws, machine guns, or...a mere three feet of water...all perilous. (Yeah, drowning is hella easy in this game.) The point is, there are lots of ways to die, and unlike a lot of games, when it happens, it had a tendency to make me recoil a bit. You'll be flung like a ragdoll, chopped into tiny pieces and violently strewn about, smashed, electrocuted, and probably impaled by a giant spider leg.
Part of this feeling of brutality comes from the excellent sound design in this game. I keep mentioning the spider because I think this thing was the cause of my first death, and it was memorable. The tremendous thud as its leg went through me and into the ground seemed to have a lot of force due to the sounds associated. Plus, the spider just walks away, my lifeless corpse still impaled on those pointy legs. What an asshole... The sound design is just very good. It's believable, and there's an economy of sound that causes anything out of the ordinary to make your ears perk up. You'll pause momentarily and perhaps proceed with a little more caution. In most games you won't notice the sound design at all unless it's so poor it calls attention to itself. It's nice when sound is used effectively to enrich the experience.
Regarding controls, you're limited to your arrow keys for directional movement and the control key for interacting with the world. (Pull a crate, flip a lever, etc.) It's not very complex, but it doesn't need to be. In a way, I felt like the limited amount of actions I could perform made the world all the more foreboding and scary. If something's attacking me, there is a relatively small number of things I can do. There are no weapons, so I can't fight it head on, which is unusual in the game realm. It seemed to make you feel a little more helpless in this dangerous world.
As you navigate through the world, the world evolves, bringing new challenges and perils. You start in a forested area and as you progress, the locations gradually becomes more industrialized. This evolution and variety of scenery made it very enjoyable to explore the world and as a result, nothing ever got too familiar. I wasn't sure where I was going or what I was looking for, but I was enjoying looking for it.
And that brings me to the perplexing bit... While I was playing, I didn't know what I was looking for, and after a time, there I sat, done with the game, and I still wasn't all that sure what I had been looking for. If you look at the tagline of the game, it reads, "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO". Ah...I was looking for my sister. There was a person there at the end. A lady person... I suppose that was her...which means I win. Yay? I'm unsure how I was supposed to draw that conclusion by the content of the game alone, but I'll take that as a given since you bothered writing it and all.
There are a lot of theories about the meaning and symbolism present throughout the entire game and especially regarding the ending. A lot of them seem to be reaching a bit and others sound like total bullshit. I've never been one for symbolism and such though. *shrug* The developers keep the theorizing going by saying that it's up to the user's own interpretation. You smug bastards... I know you had a certain intent when you made the game. Nothing you did was on accident.
I won't go into the various theories because there are A LOT of them. Besides, LIMBO is definitely worth a play and going into it with preconceived notions about the meaning is going to alter your own interpretation, which will give the devs sad feels.
So yes, it was an enjoyable game, and they made me ponder on symbolism, which I hate. That's quite a success. I'm still pondering it, in fact, so my hat goes off to them. Well done, devs. Well done.
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