Ben There, Dan That

"Ben There, Dan That" is a point and click adventure game from a couple of guys who clearly have a love for old school LucasArts point and click adventure games. There's little references to the classics throughout the game. Ben and Dan's apartment, for instances, has posters up from "Day of the Tentacle", "Sam & Max", and "Full Throttle". Looking at the Day of the Tentacle poster elicits a Bernard quote of "Ooh baby, what a man.", while looking at the Sam & Max poster, Ben will talk about the "cheesy retro ambience", a la Max. I particularly liked when you looked in the mouse hole in their apartment, the character mentions that he doesn't keep money in there because that would be ridiculous. (Sam & Max reference) A bunch of little things like that stuck out to me as enjoyable just because you know you've had a shared experience with the game's creators.

I enjoyed their humor for the most part. They may have crossed a couple lines from time to time, but it was all in good fun. I will say that I don't agree on their stance that American Football sucks or that museums are boring, but they may be right on about American beer being akin to horse piss... These dudes are British, if you hadn't noticed. I guess my point is here, fuck soccer. Go 'Murica. Haha!

Regarding the visuals of the game, they appear simply drawn in a scribbly, couple steps above stickman kind of style. I don't mean this as a criticism as it was definitely distinct. I believe they made this game using Adventure Game Studio, which was of interest to me. I've wanted to create an adventure game myself, and this was a fun, enjoyable experience that was fashioned using this tool, so I will probably look into it further to potentially use it for my own purposes. Most excellent.

With gameplay, it's mostly what you would expect from a point and click adventure game but slightly paired down. You can LOOK at things, USE things, and TALK to people. That's it. There was no PICK UP, GIVE, OPEN, etc. to complicate things. USE did the job just fine. The inventory system is kind of clunky though. The object you just picked up would remain out to use rather than simply being put away in the inventory. It made it seem like you had to put it away yourself, which wasn't the case. Also, when you had several items, you had to page through your inventory because only one small line of them could be displayed at a time. This got cumbersome when you were trying to figure out which items to try to combine with each other. There were also some extra clicks necessary when trying to unselect inventory items when your combining of objects didn't work. This is all rather nitpicky though. It could have been improved, but none of this detracted from the game.

The only real technical issue I had involved the dialogue text. Each character was assigned a different color for their dialogue, and in some instances, this text blended in with the background or was some shade that made it difficult to read. For the most part, it wasn't a huge problem, but there were several characters that were slightly troublesome to read. The text speed was also iffy. I would read faster than they expected at times and click the spacebar to continue. If you pressed the spacebar too close to when the next block of text was going to appear though, it would cycle past the new text, and you'd miss it completely. Once again...being fairly nitpicky here.

"Ben There, Dan That" was a quick game, only 2 or 3 hours, but it's certainly worth giving it a go if you're a fan of the genre.

Mirror's Edge

Another backlogged game bites the dust. This time it's Mirror's Edge. This one would have likely languished in my backlog for ages if not for E3. Apparently there's a Mirror's Edge 2 coming out, which means hurry up and finish the first one, so I can pretend I've been looking forward to the sequel all along. I pulled that sneaky shit with Portal/Portal 2. Swish.

Mirror's Edge is set in a futuristic society in which the big bad government controls everything, eavesdrops on all your communications in the name of safety, and wants to put a bullet in you and your buddies' heads because you're "runners". Runners are couriers. Their job is to deliver messages and whatnot, circumventing the oppressive government surveillance that exists. The gubment don't like this, hence the bullets. You evade the baddies by running from rooftop to rooftop, climbing on scafolding, or whatever ledges, pipes, etc. you can get your hands around. You basically parkour around the environments, evading all the shooty bad people while trying not to fall to your death. ...but you will...a lot. Like most games where your character can fall to their death, it's best to have a cool head. Don't freak out. Calm your tits. Remember, spazzing results in splat. Lots of trial and error is the end result, which I didn't really mind. It would load back up quick, and you'd have another go at it.

I've never really seen a game like this in which your main goal is to run the hell away and gunplay is kind of secondary. There are guns, and you can use them, but it's not really a shooter. It's all about the running, which is enjoyable and a nice change of pace. Running the hell away was always my favorite part of Assassin's Creed, so I was digging this pretty quick. Jumping, sliding, and wall running around felt intuitive, and you needed to use a variety of combos and skills to make your way through each chapter. They don't hold your hand and tell you absolutely everything you can do, which had its pros and cons.

For the pro side, I liked that there was a bit of a sense of exploration and learning that occurred by not telling me everything. For example, I didn't know that some glass could be broke out by punching/jump kicking it. I learned this while trying to flee, and the only way out was to jump from one level to the other while busting out the glass of that second level while I was in midair. It was a nice aha moment that happened organically when I was spazzing out while being shot at and took a leap of faith. The fact that it worked surprised me and gave me a tiny sense of triumph.

On the other side of the coin, some things pissed me off because they didn't bother to tell me about important gameplay mechanics until it was absolutely necessary. For example, they didn't bother telling me that I could use "F" to zoom in and aim while holding a sniper rifle. I had taken sniper rifles from enemies before, and it bizarrely made the reticle disappear when I had one in hand. You couldn't aim accurately without it, and they failed to tell me the handy zoom hotkey. They kept this bit of information from me until I had a section that required me to pick up a sniper rifle from the ground and use it to shoot at a baddie convoy. This was also the first time that I realized I could even pick up weapons off the ground. It was never explicitly mentioned, and the only time I had a weapon in hand previously was when I disarmed a guy. I'm thinking this was an elaborate conspiracy to keep me running and jumping and getting shot rather than blowing the baddies away with my boomstick. I just assumed, okay this isn't a shooty shooty bang bang game. I was okay with this, but it was partially a lie.

Moving on. I was happy the gameplay itself was entertaining because, quite frankly, I didn't know what the hell was going on with the story at times. It wasn't the strongest element of the game, but I was enjoying myself enough that I gave it a pass. It was generic, kinda rambley, and didn't really come to any kind of satisfying conclusion. Despite the shortcomings of story, Mirror's Edge was still highly enjoyable. There weren't that many bugs that I encountered, the movement was smooth, fluid, and there were plenty of action packed segments. It was a good game, and I'll likely pick up the second one after it comes out.

Thanks E3 for forcing this game to the top of my backlog pile. What else you got?