Prison Architect

I've just sat here for the past 5 hours, building a prison. I guess I was having fun. I'm still not quite sure.

"Prison Architect" is not the kind of game I play too much anymore, a build it and watch what happens/design on the fly type game. You build a prison, prisoners arrive at regular intervals, and you have to make room for them and fulfill their various needs or you'll have riots on your hands. It kind of reminded me of the game "Theme Park" that I used to play as a kid. There's no real end or way to win, you just keep accommodating more and more people and upgrading your facility until you get sick of it, which I have.

You have to build spaces for the prisoners to sleep, eat, exercise, visit family, etc. And as you research and unlock new abilities in your...it's not technology, but it's like a technology tree...you can build rooms in which to give medical attention, do laundry, press license plates, etc.

The game is still technically in alpha, so some of the tech tree options don't work 100% quite yet. There were some issues I ran into that I wasn't sure if it was a bug or if I just did something wrong. For example, I could never get people into my workshop to do the license plate pressing thing. I couldn't assign people to work there for some reason. Also, I could only assign 2 workers to the kitchen and laundry room when I needed to have three to fulfill the objective of one of my grants. Not sure if I needed a bigger room...or if shit was just broke.

Speaking of grants... The grants system is probably what kept me playing as long as I did. You can have two grants active at a time, and to get all the grant money, you have to fulfill the objectives outlined within it. For example, the Health and Wellbeing grant required you to build an infirmary, hire at least two doctors, and hire a psychologist. An infirmary requires medical beds and a psychologist requires an office to work out of, which has to be at least 4x4 and contain a filing cabinet, office desk, and chair. Grants kept me busy building new things.

Keeping with this example, having a psychologist opens up one of the reports tabs that was previously empty. With a psychologist, you can see what the prisoners are generally pissed about and do something about it. In my prison, everybody was pissed and fighting each other at one point, and it turned out it was because all the guys I was keeping together in a holding cell weren't getting any sleep. I was building individual cells for them, but that was taking a while. Dudes were getting cranky because the only requirements of a holding cell is a bench and a toilet. They were getting "Deadliest Catch" style sleep debt rage. I threw some beds in there, and they were happy as little clams.

Trying to complete the grant requirements keeps you moving forward and building all the various specialty rooms, and the constant inflow of prisoners keeps you building more and more cells. Kept me busy for about 8 and a half hours total.

I finally called it quits when I encountered problems with one of my grants. I had unlocked most of my research options, built most of the different types of rooms, and this grant required me to research mealtime preferences by serving a meal in which the quantity and quality of the meal both were set to low. Meal time came and went, and the objective didn't complete. I wasn't sure if it was because all the prisoners didn't get to eat it... If that was the reason, I wasn't sure if it was because my dining hall was too small and had too few tables to sit at to accommodate everyone, or if there needed to be more serving tables, or if I needed more cooks in the kitchen, or if the cooks needed more stoves, or if I needed to make the scheduled mealtime longer... There were just too many potential reasons why that mechanic was fucking up, and I had experienced enough of the game that I felt done.

"Prison Architect" is worth giving a try if you like that management/simulator style of game, but I'd probably wait until they're out of alpha to give them a chance to iron out all the kinks.

The Last of Us

Daaaamn, Naughty Dog... You're rull good at making games. "Last of Us" puts story first and accompanies it with great gameplay, excellent sound design, and it's a very pretty game for a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Like the "Uncharted" series, which Naughty Dog also makes, this game has excellent characters, writing, and voice acting. You become immediately invested in these characters and their plight.

In Last of Us, the world has basically gone to shit. Most of the population has fallen victim to infection. And those victims are creepy as fuck. They come in three flavors: Runners, Clickers, and Bloaters. Runners are the newly infected. They're quick, scream like banshee's, and if you call attention to yourself, you're likely going to get 5 of them in your face. Clickers are...well, horrible. They've been infected for a while, and as a result, they've got these crazy growths that cover up their eyes. So, good news, they can't see you, but bad news, they can hear you, and they make this awful clicking/gurgling noise to echolocate your sneaky self. It's kind of terrifying to hear a bunch of Clickers in a dark room. Fabulous sound design...I give this game so much credit for this. Stressed. Me. Out.

The third member of this creepy family are Bloaters. Giant motherfuckers...fat ass infected that huck spore bombs at you and will rip the top of your head from your jaw if they get a hold of you. It's quite unsettling.

The manner at which you deal with these baddies can be via beating the hell out of them with crowbars and such, shooting em in the face with shotguns and such, or stealth killing them via choke out or a shiv to the neck. Melee doesn't work so good against Clickers, and nothing but fire works all that well against a Bloater, so they all require different tactics, and their concentration in one area becomes a major factor with how you deal with them. Alerting any of them to your presence is generally ill advised, as they'll call all their buddies to have a go at you. So..sometimes guns are kind of a bad idea. You don't want to go wasting your ammo if you don't have to either.

Resource management is very important in this game, with ammo and with the crafting system. You can craft med kits, shivs, molotov cocktails, nail bombs, and smoke bombs to give you an added edge. You make these items by finding their components throughout the environment, and boy...do they come in handy. Molotov cocktails are my jam.

In addition to infected, you're also going to have to deal with regular folks trying to murder you too because people can be dicks. The game is very good about balancing the encounters and changing up the scenarios so you're not just constantly hiding and wetting your pants trying to evade infected. There's sneaky combat sections, there's running and gunning, there's puzzle sections, there's perfectly safe areas that you'll probably sneak around in the entire time all stressed out because paranoia, and cutscenes interspersed with some damn fine voice acting and animation. These feel like real characters going through real shit. I'm not going to go into the plot at all because spoilers, but this game will probably make you have some feels.

But the feels are worth it. Go pick it up. You will like.