Scratches: Director's Cut
Scratches is a MYST-style adventuregame (prerendered 3d puzzlegame, played in first person). All in all, the game is a nice horrorgame, if you just want some hours entertainment. The entire game is set within an old victorian house, as well as the surrounding garden. The main character is a horror-writer who came to the house to get some space to write his next masterpiece. Soon after entering the house, mysterious things begin to happen, such as a scratching noise coming from the basement.
Directors Cut is an updated version, with some fixes to the original story, as well as the addition of a very short second story that works like a bonus chapter with another main character.
I couldn't say that the bonus story did much to me though. The real surprises happened in the original story and nothing new was added in the bonus story.
I couldn't say that the bonus story did much to me though. The real surprises happened in the original story and nothing new was added in the bonus story.
At first, I thought it was great. Nice presentation, great atmosphere, and overall it was pretty creepy. Unfortunately, after hours of searching and re-searching the same areas for the exact pixel that's needed to progress, the creepiness became nonexistent. "shut the hell up" I barked more than once, when the titlular scratches.wav file played out as I scoured the place for the 27th time. I felt like I was just running around some dirty old house in the dark.
Maybe I'm just not an "adventure" gamer, but I didnt find too much adventure in hunting every pixel on every screen, trying every item in every possible combination until I got it. Gave me a f^%$# migraine.
Yes, I played the original. According to the date of my savefile I finished it 4th of May 2006. I played Director's Cut from the beginning to see if there were anything new added to it but couldn't see any new content, and since I already saw all the surprises, replaying it didn't give me much more than a reminder of the story. It's still a good game though and should be played by everyone who enjoys horrorgames.
The added "minigame" called "Last Visit" is very short and can be started without replaying the first story. They made several changes to the interior of the house but I think there's just like two puzzles to be solved in the entire story.
Maybe I'm just not an "adventure" gamer, but I didnt find too much adventure in hunting every pixel on every screen, trying every item in every possible combination until I got it. Gave me a f^%$# migraine.
Some are worse than others ... I played a *ton* over the last few years for a site I reviewed for, and in the end it was one of the reasons I parted ways with them - if I had to play another I was going to barf!
Adventuregames are either puzzlegames or interactive stories, or somewhere in between. If the story is bad, there's no reason for me to play it. I do not care much about the puzzles.
My fiancee just finished the Longest Journey tonight and absolutely loved it - she says she wasnt pixelled to death, and the puzzles made sense. She's starting dreamfall now, and I ordered her Darkfall.
As for me, I just finished TR:Underworld. Kinda short for a tomb raider game I suppose, they usually take me a while longer to finish. This one seemed a couple ruins shy of a classic TR length. Unlike the prior games where youre kinda magically transported to the next stage/lara's manor upon completion of the final task of a level, a good deal of time is spent backtracking thru the stages the way you came. Perhaps to make up for lack of mat'l, but it does make it a bit more realistic in a way, and little challenging at times.
A little anyway.. I cant recall one truly challenging bit of platforming or puzzling in the game. Usually there's a stinker or two that'll have me dying 50 times or banging my head against the wall - this was a kinder gentler tomb raider than it's predecessors.
The platforming seemed a little more "natural" in this installment too- there were more instances of rocks and edgy ruins jutting out and such, instead of the strangely conveniently placed bars everywhere for lara to pull her gymnastics off of. It wasnt always immediately evident where I needed to go, which made it not feel so contrived at times.
In all candor, the combat was pretty awful. That's sorta a given, combat is seldom one of TR's stonger attributes, but this outing seemed exceptionally lamentable. The enemies are dumb and take tons of bullets to drop, theyre just moving speedbumps in the progression of exploration and puzzle solving. Seeing another one of the knuckleheads pop up yet again was annoying. When i could, I'd just bolt past them - Just get out of the way, plz. Lara also has a motorcycle for quite a while in the game, and that's kind of fun to play with. Quite a few nice jumps and such, and it's a one-hit kill on the numskull enemies that get caught playing in the road.
The negatives in my opinion are pretty much assuaged by the awesome pseudo-archaeological setpieces that the series is known for. Sunken ruins, jungle temple ruins, icy nordic ruins - if you love exploring and bouncing lara off virtual ruins, this is the place to be, imho. I dont know of a game that does it better.
My fiancee just finished the Longest Journey tonight and absolutely loved it - she says she wasnt pixelled to death, and the puzzles made sense. She's starting dreamfall now, and I ordered her Darkfall.
Ive been finishing games left and right lately - this is a good thing. I dont like having half-finished games laying on my drive. I end up coming back to them a year or two later and there's just no way that I can get back into them from a mid-point.
Just finished Fallout III last night!
Falllout III was pretty fun. Of course like every open-ended, hunter/gatherer type of game that I play, I go thru totally economically using minimal ammunition and end up w/ an enormous personal armory in my backpack and thousands of units of currency bulging from my pockets! I sensed that the end was coming soon, so I started opening up a bit and mini-gunning and launching missiles at the little raider and mutant suburbs along the way instead of methodically going thru and picking them all off w/ my hunting rifle (always pretty much my fave type of weapon in shooters).
Overall I think it was a fun game, a great explorer title that kept popping new surprises out at me. Ive heard complaints that the quests sucked, and granted they arent all winners, but there were some clever ones. Like the ghoul that wanted revenge on non-ghoul bigots, but he demanded the vengeance be dealt by a shot to the head - poetic justice a la' traditional zombie lore. Had some fun w/ quests like that. I ripped the vats system initially, but by game end I was using it a lot. It just helped get combat over quickly, I didnt always feel like a knock-down-drag-out every time.
The finale was pretty cool too, tho it kinda felt like being a spectator along for the ride. But what a show!
Elvira 2: Jaws of Cerberus
Elvira 2 was originally released back in 1991, so this is an ancient game indeed. I played both Waxworks and Elvira back in 2007 and begun on Elvira 2 after that. After finishing the entrance and the first studio I was about to enter a catacomb for which I knew I had to draw a map. Not feeling for it back then I decided to wait for awhile, and I waited for one and a half year. I thought I was just about done when I started to play it again. I was wrong. Due to many bugs and mistakes I was forced to replay bits over and over again but even if I was frustrated I carried on. It's fun to have it finished since I wanted to play the game ever since I read about it in a magazine back in the 90'ies, but I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone now. It's just too old, too hardcore and too frustrating.
Horrorsoft as they were called then, eventually changed name to Adventuresoft.
They made a few horror games, including the Elvira series, Waxworks and Personal Nightmare. As adventuresoft they made Simon the Sorcerer 1, 2, the dreadful "3d" as well as Feeble Files.
Oh boy.. I never played Elvira, but I remember that back in the day, I saw a very pixelated picture of a Zombie covering a whole page of a games magazine (PowerPlay?). I found it so cool that I copied it pixel by pixel to Deluxe Paint. Literally.
Anyway, this thread is awesome. I really dig all those mini reviews. So I was wondering if you guys could post them as games comments too, if they happen to be about RPGs? That forum needs some love.
Oh boy.. I never played Elvira, but I remember that back in the day, I saw a very pixelated picture of a Zombie covering a whole page of a games magazine (PowerPlay?).
I always thought of Elvira as an adventure game but it is actually a light RPG. In the end of Elvira 2 I had reached level 10 with 9999 experience points.
You find weapons, armor and potions, just in a normal RPG, and the game have two large dungeons (Catacombs of 6 levels and the 4 level spider cave) in which you have to whack monsters standing in your path. At the end I was equipped with black motorcycle leather boots, helmet and gauntlets from an old plate mail, a large shield and a heavy axe.
You have eight stats and they do effect how good you are. Intelligence for example boosts the amount of spells you get when you "create them" (they are created by combining items) and if you use a specific spell called "Brainboost" your intelligence is boosted by a radical amount, meaning that also your spellgain is increased. Your inventory has weight, and if your strength is weak this means trouble, but if you cast "Magic Muscles" you can carry a lot more, and you also kill most monsters with a strike.
The game also have a locational hitpoint system. If you are struck in your arms, that means you cannot use it, with the result that you can carry less weight and not use weapon/shield at the same time. If your legs fall to 0HP you will begin to stagger and the game will pause for a bit after every step you take. If your head or chest fall to 0, that means instant death.
It's not amazing, but it's a really deep game for being produced in 1991. Not great enough to recommend to a modern gamer though, you have to be hardcore and have a very high tolerance level against frustration to get through it.
I worked it through with a failing PC due to a broken CPU and due to bugs I had to replay the entire Catacombs (a few hours) three times and the last bit four times.
Alone in the Dark (V)
The fifth "Alone in the Dark" is not a horrible game.
What? Reviews were wrong? 62.5% average on gamerankings?
Well, let me explain.
AitD have really strong flaws. That doesn't mean it's without strengths, nor does it mean the game cannot be enjoyed. AitD is a game that tries to be many things but do not have enough polish and quality assurance. This leads to a game that sometimes shines due to it's gallery of innovations, but sometimes make you wonder "what were they thinking?".
A mix of genrés
AitD gameplay is a case of mixed genrés, from GTAIV style free-roaming with carchases, to Tomb Raider style puzzlesolving in ancient underground architecture, to Resident Evil 4 style action with the option to go into first person. Maybe trying so many things at once is the reason that some of these ideas never came out as good as they sound on paper due to lack of testing and polishing.
The Graphics and Audio
Let's begin with the good stuff. AitD is a beauty both for the eyes and the ears. The game carry one of the best soundtrack in modern gaming history, which I believe many will grab on the side even if they hated the game. Visually the game have very few flaws and it borrows from moviemaking in how it build up what you see on screen, using great cameraangles and slowmo when it fits the scene. The game also have a DVD style "skip ahead" function which is kinda unique. You can skip right to the end if you like but then you miss out on the story. But you can also jump back in time to replay a sequence if you like.
The story
Ok. First a friendly spoiler for fans of the series.
The time-jump from 1920 to modern time is explained
The story is not bad. It's no oscar, but it isn't bad. It's better than the extremely silly RE4 for example. The dialogue can be bad at times and Carnby seems out of character but the voice acting is still ok. I would like to address the change of universe though. The first three games were inspired by Lovecrafts Cthulhu-Mythos and the 4th game dealt with indians. It's therefore quite odd that the fifth game subscribe to the judeo-christian mythology which is incompatible with the Cthulhu Mythos.
Controling Carnby
AitD controls is the most slammed aspect of the game. Even fans and the developers themselves agree that the controls are horrible.
When I begun to play the game through the first episodes and trying to understand it's controls, the game felt almost surreal. This is a game that have keymapping for functions like "Drop Rope" and "Fork Up/Down". Considering that "Drop Rope" can only be used when holding a rope, and "Fork Up/Down" only can be used when driving a forklift, one must ponder why one of the functions that can only be used when not doing so could be used for these functions. For example, since you cannot USE while holding a rope and you USE to hold a rope, why not being able to USE to drop the rope? Furthermore, as default "Drop Rope" is assigned to PrntScrn... The PC control issues made me almost imagine how the game was teared off the hands of the keymap designer during an early alpha stage of the PC controls. Another evidence for this is that all button help during the tutorial and in menus, show XBox 360 controller buttons, like showing you a green button when you should press the USE function and a red button when you should press the CANCEL function.
At least they bothered to code a proper mouseaim unlike Resident Evil 4.
Speaking of which, in AitD you can wave whatever you hold by using the mouse. This works in theory but not in practice, making fights unneccessary encumbersome. You swing your mouse back and forth, often off the mousepad, then you strike with left mousebutton. However, this unique controls also makes up for some cool puzzles that could only be done with this type of gameplay. Eventually, shooting enemies with firebullets is the preferred method simply due to the controls.
Not surprising for a half-coded console-port, left mousebutton is refered to as "Mouse 0". During the tutorial of the game you will learn how to use a fire extinguisher. The game is friendly enough to tell you to use Mouse 0 to do so, but it doesn't tell you that you need to be in first-person mode. Took me 15 minutes to figure that one out. Somewhat later you must drop the Fire Extinguisher. But you do not drop it by the function "Drop Item", you drop it by the function "Cancel". Took me another 5 minutes to figure that out. The lack of consistency and too many buttons is one of the greatest flaws of the game.
I could go on and on about issues with the controls alone but that would cover several pages.
The inventory
AitD tries a new inventory system and I actually believes that the PC version have an advantage here. Unlike previous games endless inventory, AitD5 makes your jacket your inventory. When opening your inventory screen you see Carnby looking down into his jacket, with pockets on the left side and the right side. From that screen you can combine items such as molotov coctails, homemade flamethrowers etc. The inventory is in realtime which lead to huge complaints by XBox 360 players, but I had no problems with this on PC since the mouse gave me very fast control over what I wanted to do. However, the vast majority of the combinations you can make is meaningless. I ended up throwing/shooting flasks instead of bothering with molotovs or sticky molotovs as it did the job well without the extra hassle. Out of the maybe 20 combinations I ended up using only a pair of them for puzzlesolving.
A comment should be made on how realistic some of the solutions are. You combine double-sided stickytape with a molotov to make a sticky molotov. That makes little sense. Even worse, you can pour flammable liquid on your gun to make flaming bullets. If you did that in reality the gun would blow up. Finally you have to carry batteries with you since batteries in your flashlight lasts for a couple of minutes. In reality, such batteries lasts through the night.
Driving
One of the most frustrating sequences in AitD is when you have to drive from point A to point B while being in hurry. There's three such episodes of which the first one is extremely difficult, so difficult that I believe the majority of the players who never finished the game gave up there. It's too bad because it's a really cool map in which you have to drive through a crumbling New York, which is spectacular at least visually. The problems isn't the controls, although in the PC version, without access to an analog stick, is pretty clunky. The problems is the physics engine, which really doesn't work as intended. Sometimes your car is launched like a catapult for driving over a tiny object on the street. Also the first sequence is extremely random. You might get hit out of the nowhere by meeting cars or falling debris and you have to finish the entire sequence in one shot. I took it on maybe 10-20 tries.
An MMO style grinding quest
Another important sequence to point out is the MMO-style grinding quest towards the end of the game. Although this is a spoiler it is a fair one. You have to find and burn roots, in an open free-roaming Central Park. This whole session felt like a waste of time really and it takes an hour or two. The greatest problem with it is finding the fire you need since you will be forced to scavenge for flameable stuff between roots.
Cracked gem
AitD is a case of a cracked gem. If you can ignore the crack the game still shines and can be enjoyable. If you cannot ignore the crack, the game wont make you satisfied. Anyone who are serious about horror games should try to at least get used to the controls as there's still some stuff shining beneath all the mud. You probably shouldn't play full price for it though.
I heard the PS3 version address most of these issues. It fix the controls and makes them far more fluid and it makes the car sequences less frustrating. It even allows you to kill roots earlier in the game which saves time later.
Tomb Raider: Underworld
When the original Tomb Raider came about, I had neither Playstation nor PC, but a friend was obsessed by the game. Like many I poked fun of the game due to it's female lead with an above average bust size that kept growing. As time passed and new titles came about I shunned them and the series ran into a halt. Then came Tomb Raider: Legends, a title that did not only earn praise by reviewers everywhere, but also claimed to "reboot the storyline" so you didn't need to play earlier titles (that was scrapped in the new canon). That was enough to make me check it out and so I did, and I was glad I did. TR:L was a really good game, good story and great gameplay. I was less hesistant to get to Tomb Raider: Anniversary but I was eventually pulled to it but it didn't quite live up to TR:L and it was mostly a frustrating experience.
And here's TR:U, a sequel to TR:L that also pay attention to the TR:A storyline. Was it worth it? Well, TR:U didn't really have the impact that TR:L have, but it's still a solid game. Exept for some issues with the keymapping (Right Mouse couldn't be remapped before the first patch, and I ended up running the game with gamepad anyway), and some questionable slowdowns when near water, the game ran rock solid. Lara was easier to move and control and there were less focus on timed challenges, which lead to less frustration. The story is primarily told through great cinematics, but I didn't find it as satisfying as it could have been.
