Ulasan terkini oleh Rusty

Bioshock was groundbreaking in the way it introduced many gamers to an obscure art style and a niché political philosophy; namely art deco and objectivism. Both of these are weaved into the games DNA and helped to create its iconic look, deeply immersive and memorable world, and its well written story and characters.

The opening few minutes are also iconic and almost perfect in the way they introduce the player to these two concepts, as well as to one of the game's antagonists, Andrew Ryan. It is mostly on the rails and involves lots of delightful visual storytelling as well as a recorded speech from Ryan. As the haunting music sores your 'ride' culminates in a sudden reveal of Bioshock's underwater city, Rapture, a place founded by Ryan in the hopes it would become an objectivist utopia.

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture"

On arriving in the city it quickly becomes clear that Rapture is far from a utopia and that something has gone very, very wrong.

Now I'm no political expert, but it's obvious from Andrew Ryan's opening monologue that this is a world built on objectivism. As I understand it, objectivism, a philosophy cooked up by Ayn Rand, is a form of right wing, hyper libertarianism, married to extreme capitalism. If selfish greed were a political philosophy, it would be objectivism. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, as a mirror universe version of Spock might say.

Bioshock isn't a celebration of Rand's politics though; as you explore Rapture you'll quickly realise through the narrative that this is a critique of Ayn Rand's political philosophy. It turns out that in an underwater city where everyone is working for themselves, nothing useful or necessary gets done and there's no-one to do the menial, less 'creative and fulfilling' jobs; those jobs that are vital to maintaining and running a vast underwater city. There is also no money to pay the people who are needed to do those jobs, and no supervision.

The citizens of Rapture also discovered a substance called Adam. When refined into a Plasmid, Adam rewrites a person's genetic material, giving them superhuman abilities. One of the downsides of plasmids use is their addictive qualities and they can also cause mental and physical degradation when over used. The second 'person' you see in Rapture is a victim of Adam abuse and has lost their mind, becoming a murder happy Splicer. You see them through a small window, gutting the first person you see. So Plasmid use isn't healthy; luckily as the player you will inject yourself with many many plasmids!

In a democratic society, regulation, ethical considerations and/or law enforcement of some kind could have led to better safeguards and more thorough testing of Adam. But in Rapture that would be hampering creative genius.

Then some sort of conflict began on new years eve 1958, between factions loyal to Ryan and those loyal to somebody named Atlas. With plasmids added to the mix things clearly didn't go so well, and this becomes apparent soon after you 'land'. Things are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥, to put it mildly.

You piece a lot of this together within the first hour or so through the visuals alone. Rapture's beautiful, clean, simple, symmetrical 1920's art deco face is cracking. The imposing bronze sculptures are tarnished and some are toppled; the gold plaques are grimy, and the green marble and ceramic tiles are pitted, shattered and broken. There are leaks everywhere too; maintenance having been largely abandoned. The city is flooding and large parts of it are without power. Machinery is malfunctioning and there are there are bodies all over the place. Many of the dead are in evening wear that is age worn and tattered. Some are wearing masks, like they died during a masked ball. The Splicers are similarly attired but those without masks are horrifyingly deformed. Mutated.

The atmosphere is unsettling and meloncholic, and sometimes, when the lights are flickering, casting strange shadows and the faint, nonsensical noises of one of Rapture's mad citizens are getting ever louder, and closer, the game is outright frightening.

This would be a decent way to tell a story but there are also audiologs made by the citizens before things went to ♥♥♥♥, and NPCs that aren't currently trying to kill you. When taken together this is world building at its finest. Later on you'll start learning about the player character and their connection to Rapture, the two philosophies of Ryan and Atlas and the ultimate fate of the city. This is the game's story and it's wonderfully paced and told, and incredibly immersive.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the gameplay, but it's only important as a part of the whole, nothing about the FPS mechanics is outstanding. None of the guns are particularly memorable but they sound meaty enough and can be upgraded, as well as fitted out with different ammo types. You can also hack cameras and sentry bots to help you in combat, and these skills, along with heath and energy can be levelled up. You need the energy to use plasmids. There are a large number of plasmids, some of which you find and others you have to buy. They too can be levelled up and range from basic magical attacks like incinerate, winter blast and electrobolt, which are pretty self explanatory, to more tactical ones such as telekinesis, a decoy and one that charms enemies to fight for you.

Enemy variety is a rather limited, there are only a few different types of Splicer, but each benefits from a slightly different approach to takedown, and there are generally plasmids that are better at countering certain Splicers. Encounters can be hectic if there are multiple Splicer types and then there are the big baddies. Not Splicers themselves, these armoured giants stomp around Rapture often in the footsteps of small girls. These little sisters are Adam gatherers* and you need Adam to buy plasmids, but before you can deal with the little sisters you have to get rid of daddy. Now you can just leave these pairings be when you encounter them, and as long as you don't get too close to the child the big daddy won't attack. It's always worth it though, and these fights can be some of the best, and worst when they're messy, in the game, requiring lots of ammo and plasmid use.

This is where the game's morality system comes into play, you can 'harvest' the little sisters for a large amount of Adam, killing them, or release them from their drugged servitude, saving them for little material gain. It's one of those ♥♥♥♥ good/evil binary choices that video games do, that are never really choices because the good option is obviously the one to go, especially if it effects the ending. You're not even really punished for choosing the good option because after you've saved enough little sisters they'll drop off presents stuffed with Adam. It's definitely one of the most poorly thought out aspects of BioShock, along with the hacking mini game. Nothings perfect though.

I've wasted enough of your time. Bioshock is a fantastic game worthy of its iconic status; it's beautiful, dark, deep,, smart, engrossing and unforgettable. Get it.

Now. Would you kindly give me all your points.

*They get it from the dead

Bioshock was groundbreaking in the way it introduced many gamers to an obscure art style and a niché political philosophy; namely art deco and objectivism. Both of these are weaved into the games DNA and helped to create its iconic look, deeply immersive and memorable world, and its well written story and characters.

The opening few minutes are also iconic and almost perfect in the way they introduce the player to these two concepts, as well as to one of the game's antagonists, Andrew Ryan. It is mostly on the rails and involves lots of delightful visual storytelling as well as a recorded speech from Ryan. As the haunting music sores your 'ride' culminates in a sudden reveal of Bioshock's underwater city, Rapture, a place founded by Ryan in the hopes it would become an objectivist utopia.

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture"

On arriving in the city it quickly becomes clear that Rapture is far from a utopia and that something has gone very, very wrong.

Now I'm no political expert, but it's obvious from Andrew Ryan's opening monologue that this is a world built on objectivism. As I understand it, objectivism, a philosophy cooked up by Ayn Rand, is a form of right wing, hyper libertarianism, married to extreme capitalism. If selfish greed were a political philosophy, it would be objectivism. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many, as a mirror universe version of Spock might say.

Bioshock isn't a celebration of Rand's politics though; as you explore Rapture you'll quickly realise through the narrative that this is a critique of Ayn Rand's political philosophy. It turns out that in an underwater city where everyone is working for themselves, nothing useful or necessary gets done and there's no-one to do the menial, less 'creative and fulfilling' jobs; those jobs that are vital to maintaining and running a vast underwater city. There is also no money to pay the people who are needed to do those jobs, and no supervision.

The citizens of Rapture also discovered a substance called Adam. When refined into a Plasmid, Adam rewrites a person's genetic material, giving them superhuman abilities. One of the downsides of plasmids use is their addictive qualities and they can also cause mental and physical degradation when over used. The second 'person' you see in Rapture is a victim of Adam abuse and has lost their mind, becoming a murder happy Splicer. You see them through a small window, gutting the first person you see. So Plasmid use isn't healthy; luckily as the player you will inject yourself with many many plasmids!

In a none objectivist society, regulation, ethical considerations and/or law enforcement of some kind could have led to better safeguards and more thorough testing of Adam. But in Rapture that would be hampering creative genius.

Then some sort of conflict began on new years eve 1958, between factions loyal to Ryan and those loyal to somebody named Atlas. With plasmids added to the mix things clearly didn't go so well, and this becomes apparent soon after you 'land'. Things are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥, to put it mildly.

You piece a lot of this together within the first hour or so through the visuals alone. Rapture's beautiful, clean, simple, symmetrical 1920's art deco face is cracking. The imposing bronze sculptures are tarnished and some are toppled; the gold plaques are grimy, and the green marble and ceramic tiles are pitted, shattered and broken. There are leaks everywhere too; maintenance having been largely abandoned. The city is flooding and large parts of it are without power. Machinery is malfunctioning and there are there are bodies all over the place. Many of the dead are in evening wear that is age worn and tattered. Some are wearing masks, like they died during a masked ball. The Splicers are similarly attired but those without masks are horrifyingly deformed. Mutated.

The atmosphere is unsettling and meloncholic, and sometimes, when the lights are flickering, casting strange shadows and the faint, nonsensical noises of one of Rapture's mad citizens are getting ever louder, and closer, the game is outright frightening.

This would be a decent way to tell a story but there are also audiologs made by the citizens before things went to ♥♥♥♥, and NPCs that aren't currently trying to kill you. When taken together this is world building at its finest. Later on you'll start learning about the player character and their connection to Rapture, the two philosophies of Ryan and Atlas and the ultimate fate of the city. This is the game's story and it's wonderfully paced and told, and incredibly immersive.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the gameplay, but it's only important as a part of the whole, nothing about the FPS mechanics is outstanding. None of the guns are particularly memorable but they sound meaty enough and can be upgraded, as well as fitted out with different ammo types. You can also hack cameras and sentry bots to help you in combat, and these skills, along with heath and energy can be levelled up. You need the energy to use plasmids. There are a large number of plasmids, some of which you find and others you have to buy. They too can be levelled up and range from basic magical attacks like incinerate, winter blast and electrobolt, which are pretty self explanatory, to more tactical ones such as telekinesis, a decoy and one that charms enemies to fight for you.

Enemy variety is a rather limited, there are only a few different types of Splicer, but each benefits from a slightly different approach to take down, and there are generally plasmids that are better at countering certain Splicers. Encounters can be hectic if there are multiple Splicer types and then there are the big baddies. Not Splicers themselves, these armoured giants stomp around Rapture often in the footsteps of small girls. These little sisters are Adam gatherers* and you need Adam to buy plasmids, but before you can deal with the little sisters you have to get rid of daddy. Now you can just leave these pairings be when you encounter them, and as long as you don't get too close to the child the big daddy won't attack. It's always worth it though, and these fights can be some of the best, and worst when they're messy, in the game, requiring lots of ammo and plasmid use.

This is where the game's morality system comes into play; you can 'harvest' the little sisters for a large amount of Adam, killing them, or release them from their drugged servitude, saving them but for very little material gain. It's one of those ♥♥♥♥ good/evil binary choices that video games do, that are never really choices because the good option is obviously the one to go for, especially if it effects the ending. You're not even really punished for choosing the good option because after you've saved enough little sisters they'll drop off presents stuffed with Adam. It's definitely one of the most poorly thought out aspects of Bioshock, along with the hacking mini game. Nothing's perfect though.

As to the remaster, the best thing it does is let you dual wield a plasmid and a single handed weapon. Otherwise it's rather poor, performing worse for me than the original release. The graphical improvements are basic but fortunately the art style was already a winner.

I've wasted enough of your time. Bioshock is a fantastic game worthy of its iconic status; it's beautiful, dark, deep,, smart, engrossing and unforgettable. Get it.


*They get it from the dead

A homage to the survival horror games of the 90s and Resident Evil in particular, Tormented Souls will feel instantly familiar to anyone who's played an early title in that series. That means there's a spooky mansion to explore, some simplistic combat, fixed camera angles, limited saves, lots of locked doors requiring keys or solved puzzles to open, and a convoluted story full of poorly written dialogue read badly*.

Visually the game more closely resembles the RE1 remaster from 2002, with it's rather nice pre-rendered backgrounds; and that's a good thing because those early 3D games do not hold up well, especially if you're going for moody and atmospheric. The 3D character models in TS are not nearly as nice as the environmental art and the rather basic animation is a little disappointing, if understandable coming from a small team. It's serviceable enough though, and the enemy design whilst not particularly original is at least more interesting than zombies. They're rather limited in variety but mostly consist of fleshy looking humanoids with various bits of jagged metal grafted on. Think Silent Hill meets Hellraiser.

Atmosphere is important in a horror game and TS is certainly atmospheric with some nice lighting and ambient sound effects. The game uses darkness very effectively and it's one of the main ways the game builds tension. I often found myself entering a new room that was bathed in black, only a small lighter initially to light the way, taking my time to explore because I was a little in edge and wanted to avoid startling some of the noise sensitive enemies.

As to the enemy vocalisations, the suitably creepy sounds they emit can be kind of helpful in locating them, as can the music which gets louder and more aggressive once you've been spotted . The music in general is very reminiscent of the RE series, with save rooms and general exploration music being more calming and quiet in the nicer areas of the mansion. Voice acting is fairly abysmal, stilted and robotic sounding, to an almost charming degree, especially when you combine it with the terrible script. I laughed out loud quite a bit listening to the main character state the obvious in her American ai voice.

I think maybe an ai wrote the games story as well because it doesn't make much sense and is full of plot holes, especially when time travel is introduced. It basically starts with the main character receiving an invitation to a spooky old mansion to find a couple of young girls she kind of recognises*. On arriving she is knocked out by an unseen assailant and on awakening, ♥♥♥♥♥ in a bath tub, finds out one of her eyes has been removed. Shock, and indeed horror! Rather than smash the nearest window and get the ♥♥♥♥ out like a normal person, she decides to stay and unravel the mysterious mystery of the mansion. And also look for those girls. Who could they be?!

The player character is also a moron who constantly states the obvious and seems to be a few steps behind the player (unless the player is also a moron). With the voice actors robotic delivery perhaps this is also a homage to RE?

Gameplay wise there's nothing innovative here. You explore the mansion, quickly filling up your linked inventory with puzzle items, weapons, ammo and health. Combat is very basic; if you hear an enemy heading towards you, or spot one, readying your weapon will automatically lock on, and then you pull the trigger. There's a back-step dodge that's hard to guage and so it's best to kill the enemies before they can reach you. Running past the enemy should be a viable option in these games, and thankfully they haven't gone with tank controls, but the areas are often too narrow, almost as if they were designed that way. Then there are the fixed camera angles which should have been left in the past. They artificially raise the difficulty by making it impossible to see certain enemies because they're out of frame, whilst disorientating you if you decide to run away by switching the camera angle, and therefore the direction you happen to be running in.

Feedback is also pretty poor. Are your bullets doing much of anything to the enemy? You won't know until they drop dead. I'd recommend practicing with enemies you can see clearl and counting exactly how many hits it takes for each enemy to drop. Make sure you save first, but only once because this game has limited saves! Another off-putting feature early on, and that coupled with the initial difficulty meant I nearly quit.

Fortunately as you progress and get better weapons and more resources, things do improve, and by the end of the game I had an abundance of health and save items. Bullets remain limited throughout though, and I barely had any by the end of the game so you really can't afford to miss.

Once you learn to basically kill every enemy (with one exception*) with the old ranged attack followed by crowbar when they fall down-combo, the game does become a lot more manageable, and possibly even trivial, which is a shame. It's certainly a reverse difficulty curve.

The game ends with a very lacklustre boss battle that highlights a lot of my main issues such as the fixed camera (which is at it's most confusing here), the simplistic combat and somewhat confusing puzzle design. It's worth seeing for the scene straight after though, which genuinely had me laughing out loud for how daft it is on top of the terrible acting and dialogue.

Puzzles are the other element of gameplay and they're a mixed bag. Some are simple, and a few are even a little tricky, but rewardingly so. There's even a mirror universe and a limited time travel mechanic, and both have some fairly neat puzzles built around those concepts. For every well designed puzzle though, there's one that's overly complicated or poorly designed. The worst always seem to have another layer of obfuscation, so much so that I had to look up solutions for a fair few because they became frustrating. Or there were puzzles where I knew what they wanted but the exact note or sequence was required, with no indication of whether you've got the first few in the sequence correct. Playing with a controller adds another layer of frustration as you have to use the analogue sticks to move a cursor and that's never much fun. I guess your mileage will vary depending on how easy you find them, but logically speaking they aren't the most well designed or thought out of puzzles, but are generally a step above the key finding of RE.

TS is better than the sum of its parts and works well enough as a survival l horror game and very well as a love letter to the RE series. If you're a fan of the genre, and don't go in expecting anything new, then I'd recommend checking TS out. If it doesn't make you scream in terror, it might make you laugh with glee, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

*although I'm pretty sure this was unintentional, at least I hope it was.

*When you discover who this is (well before the pc unless your brain is mostly mush, or type giving the writers too much credit) you may well have your mind blown by the shear stupidity and implausibility of the revelation.

*At one point a decrepit humanoid Slimer is introduced via a cutscene and will continue to appear in random rooms. Now you can avoid it by just exiting and re-entering the room, but like with so many other things in TS you aren't told this. What's more alarming is that you also aren't told that you can't beat Mr blobby and so might end up wasting some or all of your precious ammo on the encounter. This is bad design that could easily be fixed with a comment from the main character, or an obvious message before your first encounter.

Cathartic, pixelated violence with a thumping beat and the moreish-ness of a rogue-like. It's not perfect by any means, the ai is occasionally dense and your perfect, balletic violence often devolves into panicked flailing as you fight the imperfect aim controls and try to stay alive. But those moments are often the most exciting part of playing hotline Miami.

Difficulty wise HM is quite forgiving. Whilst it does increase as you progress and there are a few annoying spikes (bosses especially), HM is extremely doable and doesn't require perfect reflexes (unless you want an A grade on each level). Even the unlockable masks that give you a passive boost of some kind don't require you to score too highly on each level. This is all despite the fact that you die in one hit. On death you're only one button press away from restarting that section and the levels aren't large enough to make your many deaths frustrating. Dying is also the way you learn the levels and enemy movements, plus the locations of weapons.

Speaking of weapons, there are loads; both melee and ranged. Melee are better for the silent approach, but you have to be quick on the kill and careful where you aim. Guns are for drawing guys towards you, to then mow down, but miss, and you're pretty much ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Both are incredibly satisfying to use when you manage to chain some kills together. Plus it looks cool.

The story isn't anything to write home about but it breaks the frantic action up beautifully, giving you a breather despite being in game. There's a bit of visual storytelling going on too, which I liked. Basically think the film Drive with a little bit of Leaving Las Vegas weirdness.

I'm not overly keen on the warped pixelated graphical style but it fits the theme I guess, and there's an obnoxious bob effect that might put some people off. There's a little repetition at times too, but that's mainly down to me having to redo the levels again, and in a game as quick as this that's not necessarily a bad thing. Overall then I'd thoroughly recommend HM for those of you wishing to murder in style.

I'll start by saying that Unpacking, a game about taking objects out of a box and placing them in a room, wasn't for me. On paper it should've been, so for this review I'll try and explain the why of that, and the why of the other, and come to some kind of conclusion.

So I spend countless hours in Bethesda RPGs organising my inventory, and moving things from my inventory to various containers in the many designated houses you have in those games. I do this because I generally like order and probably have a little OCD. I also don't like to throw stuff away in games, in case I need it later, and Bethesda RPGs overload you, quite literally, with junk. I also tend to hang onto special weapons and armour, "in case I want to try them out later, or change my look", I say to myself. Or perhaps there'll be a situation where I'll need a particular gun or piece of armour, and because I've got all those items neatly placed in different containers (based on item type), it'll be a simple case of fast travelling back to base and picking them up.

Of course, in reality I tend to find a few guns I like and stick with them for the majority of the game, with most special weapons getting some cursory use before being placed into storage. Whilst armour is a little more flexible and situational early on, I'll eventually reach a point where I'll just use the best item, stats wise, for my particular character.

But if you enjoy all this item management then what's the problem? The thing is, I don't enjoy it. It's more like a compulsion; the act of moving items between various locations and containers is actually incredibly tedious, made even more of a chore thanks to Bethesda's cumbersome UIs. The process starts feeling like work and it's about as rewarding, and pointless, as working a 9-5 data entry job. And you get paid to do the data entry. You also get to go back to a real house. Why exactly am I making, and stocking, a house in a video game? I'm never going to go back there years later. If I play the game again I'll restart it and all that unpacking will have been pointless.

I also tend to hit a moment in these games where I notice I'm doing a lot of item management and at that point I tell myself, "either carry on with the main quest or stop playing the game, because you're wasting your time". This was even the case with my beloved Fallout: New Vegas, but once I forced myself to abandon the busy work I was completely absorbed by the game's world and story.

Perhaps this is why the only survival/crafting game I've ever been into is Subnautica; because the crafting has a purpose and it's tied to the narrative. I like to think there's a reason I'm doing something in a game.

In unpacking you are rearranging the belongings of a fictional person over the course of their life, in the various houses they 'lived' in. As should be apparent from my Bethesda compulsions, I like to arrange things, and so the books and nik-naks I own and collect are ordered. There is a satisfaction to this, and a purpose*. There is nothing satisfying about unpacking some digital items that aren't mine, for a faceless avatar, other than the little endorphin hit you get from ordering things. There is also no point to it and so all you're really left with is the compulsion.

I have seen people say that the items you unpack and the various houses you fill up, tell a story; but it's a superficial, paper thin narrative, relying on lots of input and interpretation from the player. There are no notes or voice acting, just stuff to unpack and repack.

Unpacking is obviously a casual game and has no pretensions of being something more. It's the kind of thing you can play whilst doing something else. For some people that's great, but I often find that if I'm doing two things at once, then one of them is getting far less attention. Unpacking doesn't have the replay value of a lot of those multitask games either.

So all that rambling has hopefully explained, in far too much detail, why I don't recommend Unpacking. I don't hate it, because it's not offensive and does what it says on the tin. But I'd still rather have left it packed.

*The collecting of ultimately worthless, material things, and the value we place on them, is a discussion for another time.

Growing up with Nintendo consoles I never got to play the original Resident Evil 3 as it was the only main sequence title that never got a re-release. For that reason I was pretty excited about the RE3 remake, especially after playing through the rather excellent RE2 remake.

Having now finished RE3 I'm underwhelmed to say the least. RE2 was everything you'd want from a remake; it greatly improved the visuals and updated the gameplay in line with other contemporary 3rd person horror games. The fixed camera angles were gone in favour of RE4's over the shoulder style gunplay*, as were the tank controls and those loading screen doors. With more dynamic gameplay it almost felt like a new title*. Meanwhile RE3's big addition to the series is a finicky dodge button. So, yeah....

The thing is, I'd have been quite happy with another dose of RE2's gameplay in a new location, with new story and characters. Unfortunately RE3 takes a step backwards in a couple of areas, and I think it's best to start with the game's primary setting.

So RE3 begins with Jill Valentine in her apartment in racoon city, a few days before she's set to leave*. Before she can do that, or wake up to the fact that the city outside her window is becoming a zombie infested nightmare, a giant melted action man wearing a bin bag crashes through her wall and proceeds to chuck her about. This is the game's primary antagonist, nemesis, and he hounds you at various points throughout the game. He's basically a more scripted version of Mr X from RE2. So Jill's objective is to escape the city before it's destroyed, whilst avoiding being tongued to death by Nemesis. Early on she runs into Carlos, a man having a really bad hair day and the game's other playable character.

Now as far as settings go this doesn't sound too bad. A tense cat and mouse escape through a rapidly collapsing city full of zombies and other umbrella monstrosities sounds pretty exciting, but you've got to remember this is a remake of RE3 and the technology in those days couldn't handle expansive locations with multiple routes and large scale scenarios. So instead the RE3make is largely set in a collection of linear streets, alleyways and enclosed roads, as well as a few buildings. There's very little freedom and exploration is limited, even in the larger buildings, one of which is the racoon city police department. Now you only get to explore a little bit of the police station as those doors need to remain locked for Leon and Claire from RE2, who will be arriving in a few hours having never apparently watched a news programme, but being there highlights how much better the level design is. RE2's station is much more enjoyable to explore and poke around in, and it's far less linear. You also feel like you're uncovering the story of not only the police station, but of wider events. It is, dare I say it, a rather iconic location, and one RE3 doesn't come close to replicating. Even the part in the hospital still feels railroaded and the area you can explore isn't all that big.

Length is also an issue. I finished RE3 in around six and a half hours, and that was with my rather sedate gameplay style. Unlike RE2 there's only the one campaign, you just swap over to Carlos at various points, but I don't think I'd have wanted to play through the entire campaign again (albeit with slightly different events) with Carlos anyway. It just didn't grab me like RE2's campaign did. There's also no additional mini campaigns or trials like in RE2, it's barebones and I had very little desire to replay the story like I did when RE2.

It's also less of a horror game than RE2, possibly due to the open seeming environments, but there's very little in the way of building tension and it lacks RE2's atmosphere. A relentless killer chasing you down could have been tense, but all of nemesis's appearances are scripted to some degree, he's not free roaming like Mr X is. Due to the more cramped environments, nemesis encounters can actually be quite frustrating, especially outside his boss specific fights. This is probably why they added a dodge button, but as I've already mentioned it doesn't always work, sometimes throwing you right at the enemies you're trying to avoid. Other enemies in the game also have these annoying one hit kill attacks that can be tricky to avoid in such cramped environments, especially the fast moving hunters.

Overall I'm rather reluctant to recommend RE3, especially at full price, because what we have here seems more like DLC than a full game. It's short, linear and lacks replayability, and the story isn't anything to write home about. The gameplay, whilst more frustrating than RE2's is still pretty good however, so if you can pick it up cheaply in a sale and you're a fan of the series, I'd just about recommend it.

*But less clunky

*It has its problems to be sure. The story is still naff as are the boss battles, which feel like they're missing (ironically) a dodge button, or the option to strafe. The arenas for the bosses are also too cramped making them frustrating. I'd also have liked more cross over between Leon and Claire's campaigns, as they appear to exist in different dimensions.

*I don't know why she has a specific day set, it seems rather arbitrary and risky.

When people use the term walking simulator in negative way I imagine they're talking about games like this. Of all the walking-sims I've played*, Gone Home is the worst in terms of the gameplay on offer and the story being told. Considering the story is the main draw for titles such as this, that's not a good sign.

Similarly to What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home's story takes place in a rather large and old* looking house. You've just arrived back from a gap year in Europe only to enter an empty house, your parents and younger sister are absent. This is where GH's story begins to mislead you by ostensibly setting up a mystery; 'where are my family?'. This is the first of the game's red herrings and it continues to throw these out for almost all of GH's very short runtime. I sense that the developers did this because the actual story is so incredibly average, but it feels dishonest and ultimately makes the actual plot that much more disappointing.

The thing is, the misleading aspects of the plot and the game's atmosphere point towards GH being a horror game. The dark empty house, the storm outside, the minimalist ambient sounds all seemed geared towards making you think something darker is going on. The story even introduces secret passages and possible rituals carried out by the previous owner. The cheapest example of this dishonesty is when you find red stains in a bathtub. This is rather quickly explained away as something far less sinister but it is clearly set-up in a way to mislead the player. Even towards the end of the game as you head towards the attic I still felt there might be something horrible waiting up there. I'm actually glad the developers didn't go that route because it would have been rather insensitive and insulting, but that doesn't change the fact that you've been taken for a ride and that what you ultimately learn up in the attic is massively underwhelming.

Now, you might think it's clever to have the developers mislead the player and subvert expectations, and it might be if this was a proper mystery story or a horror game, but it's not. In fact, the initial setup of the missing family is a mystery that doesn't matter and isn't really resolved anyway. All this tells me about the writers is that they weren't confident in their actual story and wanted the players to think GH was something other than it actually is.

And what it is, is not good.

Before I get into that you might be wondering why I've yet to mention the gameplay, and that's because GH doesn't really have any. You wander around the house opening drawers and cupboards, looking for objects to click on that will trigger more story, and that's pretty much the extent of it. This could be a static hidden object game and it wouldn't lose much.

As to that story (SPOILERS AHEAD), some of it comes from the letters and pictures you stumble across*, but the meat of GH's story is delivered by narration. When you find the right object some narration will trigger from your sister, Sam, in the style of a letter or diary entry.

And the story Sam tells you isn't about some mystery involving the family, or about some dark secret, it's about a teenage girl's time at school and her first romance. With another girl. Now there's obviously nothing wrong with that, but I'd also like to add that having a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ romance doesn't elevate the story in any way. GH remains a bog standard coming of age drama about a first love. In fact, it's so safe and unimaginative that you could swap it to a heterosexual relationship and it would make little difference. The couple meet and bond playing video games, there's next to nothing about possible prejudice they might experience being ♥♥♥ in the eighties, or any internal struggles that Sam might have with her sexuality*. It's all a little safe and dare I say it, token, relatable to lesbians and straight people alike.

I'll stress again that there's obviously nothing wrong with having a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ romance in your game, that's not my point, and it's rather admirable how normalised GH makes their relationship. It is too safe though, and too broadly applicable. At its best I'd describe the story in GH as sweet, but it's mostly mundane and entirely forgettable, hiding behind red herrings and a decent atmosphere.

The atmosphere is actually the best thing about GH, from the slow way you plod about the house, which is all creaking wood and dark corners, to the raging storm outside. The minimalist, meloncholic, orchestral soundtrack* is pretty good too, along with the ambient noise. It's a shame the developers didn't go the horror route because they can certainly build some suspense, even if it's all just a trick. That's really all the positives I can muster unfortunately.

A final thing to consider when it comes to walking sims is the question; would I get the same experience and feel the same way about the game if I just watched someone else play it*? And I think the answer when it comes to Gone Home is mostly, yes. There's no failure state, or time limit and in playing it yourself you might miss a certain object that triggers a bit more narration. It's certainly not enjoyable opening drawers in that weird Amnesia way, and there's no challenge or choices to make. GH is simply telling you a story, and that story, well, it sucks.

*The Vanishing of Edith Carter, What Remains of Edith Finch and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs are the big ones, and I've also played a fair few Telltale games that might better be referred to as talking sims. All are better than Gone Home across the board.

*American old

*You can find things relating to the parents too, but they're so unremarkable it's barely worth mentioning.

*Unless I missed it all

*There are mix tapes dotted around that you can play because eighties but the music is this god awful, tuneless, garage band emo punk ♥♥♥♥♥ that actually ruins the atmosphere.

*Silently

The awkwardly titled Beyond: Two Souls is a poorly written interactive movie, with quicktime events and button prompts in the place of gameplay. It features characters who don't behave like actual people and lots and lots of melodrama. In other words it's a typical Quantic Dream game, 'directed' and written by David Cage*. It differs from QD's previous title, Heavy Rain in terms of the films Cage is ripping off* and in the fact that Cage has managed to bag some Hollywood talent (Ellen Page* & Willem Defoe) to voice and mo-cop his poorly written characters.

You'd think that having Page and Defoe in leading roles would bring a certain level of quality to even the very worst dialogue, but it mostly just draws attention to how beneath them this is and how awkward, and alien the writing is. They also both phone in their performances, especially Page, and that's an issue when they're the character you'll be playing as for most of the game. The rest of the time you play as her disembodied invisible ghost pal, because Cage has gone for more of a sci-fi thriller the time around. Said ghost is called Aiden and he is connected to Page's character, Jodie, by some kind of psychic link.

I couldn't really tell you the plot of B:TS because it has several different plot-lines that all seem to carry equal weight, although some are introduced and then dropped forever in the space of a single chapter*. I guess the backbone of the story is the relationship between Jodie and Aiden, but it also features Jodie joining the FBI (CIA?), Jodie working on a ranch with some hunky native Americans, Jodie going on an assassination mission for the CIA (or is it the FBI?), Jodie on the run from the law, Jodie spending some time with the homeless*, Jodie fighting demons from another dimension, Jodie being abandoned by her foster parents, Jodie searching for her real mother, Jodie being experimented on, Jodie being sexually assaulted, Jodie having a dinner date and Jodie going to a birthday party with some of the meanest kids since Carrie*.

What makes this all even more incoherent is the fact that Cage has decided to tell these stories in a none linear fashion, possibly because he saw that in a film once. So we go from Jodie on a mission with her hunky CIA handler, to Jodie as a six year old, then back to older Jodie on the run from the FBI/CIA. It's such an incoherent mess and a truly awful way to tell a story. The none linear structure also messes with the character relationships and the development of characters in general. As an example there's one chapter where you're pulled from your current home by a hunky CIA agent who treats you like total ♥♥♥♥ and behaves like an absolute prick, only for the next chapter with the both of them in it to be a date. In a way it's quite a clever move by Cage because it means he doesn't have to write naturally developing relationships between normal human beings. Oh, and you can't skip dialogue or cutscenes and this is a game where you might want to try a chapter again to see the different outcomes. This would be annoying in a game with good writing, so here it's a massive pain in the arse.

As to Jodie, a good chunk of the game she's in tears and when she's not crying she's looking sad, sweating and/or kissing hunky boys. There's this one 'scene' where page is being packed off to military camp and you have to control her sobbing body lurching around her room picking up things to take. The crying is presumably on a loop and it's very funny, made all the more so by the bad acting and piss poor controls.

Speaking of controls, the game dictates how you move when playing as Jodie. Mostly they walk incredibly slowly and sway and lurch about like they're drunk, no matter how much of a straight line you try to steer them in. If the camera remained steady and under your control then this would be fine, but B:TS likes to use it's own camera angles and ties movement controls to the camera. This just adds to the disorientation and frustration you get in the simple act of just trying to walk across a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ room. One of the camera's favourite tricks is to zoom right in so you can barely see to manuever. Playing as Aiden is first person and he moves at a much faster pace, which is a relief after controlling Jodie for any length of time.

As is typical of QD 'games' there's very little gameplay in this game. As Jodie you're mostly walking about and looking at things, or doing QTE action scenes, or doing button prompts for dialogue. There's also pseudo action and stealth gameplay in a couple of chapters but essentially you're just holding a button to move to cover or pressing a button to shoot someone. There's no aiming and the stealth is linear, it's all unengaging and feels like a wasted opportunity. As Aiden you can move things (usually to distract people or scare them), murder people and also possess some, either to have them open doors or murder their friends and themselves*. This again is very linear with the game deciding who you can kill or possess, and so playing as Aiden is mostly tedious busy work. I will say that occasionally flinging stuff around to scare people can be entertaining initially, but you're limited in what objects you can interact with and it's an done with a few control gestures. There's less 'complex' control gestures in B:TS, and they all tend to work, in contrast to Heavy Rain where it could take half an hour of frustrating controller jiggling just to open a cupboard.

Overall though I think this is even worse than HR. The writing and story are a step down and player choice seems to only really effect what ending you get. There's nothing like the harrowing limb removal scene in B:TS and it's mostly just melodrama and dumb, clichéd dialogue. Gameplay feels less involving too, despite the addition of a controllable ghost, and what with all the crying and the faux serious tone it's less fun to laugh at*. Ultimately I think I'm just getting tired with Quantic Dream's ♥♥♥♥. It certainly doesn't succeed as a work of cinema and it utterly fails as a video game. To call it an interactive story would be fairer but there's so much better out there in terms of writing and gameplay. Avoid.

*Presumably other writers were involved but I don't think I'd want a writing credit on BTS

*Carrie and Poltergeist are obvious ones but he's obviously a fan of the training scene from Silence of the Lambs, and any number of 90s thrillers

*Now Elliot

*Of course this pretentious drivel has chapters

*Cage's rather patronising view of the homeless is similar to mother Theresa's. A sort of dignity and goodness in being poor.

*Morally the game is all over the place

*The daft assassination chapter and subsequent helicopter argument between Page and her hunky CIA bf is pretty funny though, and ends with page leaping out of the moving helicopter.

Remnant: From the Ashes isn't the first Soulslike with guns game, but it's arguably the most successful. A few hours in though, and I wasn't enjoying myself. The game begins with a brief, but cliché riddled and incredibly vague cutscene, after which your player character is dumped into a drab, grey, post-apocalyptic environment to fight some drab, black and grey enemies with a sword*. This tutorial section ends with you being overwhelmed and then waking up in the game's hub area. Things don't improve much as you find it's populated by boring, static NPCs. It's not the best of starts, being underwhelming and not really preparing you for the game to come. Dark Soul's Asylum was much better at introducing you to the game's mechanics and it's world, and culminated in a manageable but still impressive looking boss fight. Similarly that game's hub helped flesh out the wider world and its history through conversation with its varied and changing NPCs. In Remnant the hub become little more than a place for quests givers and vendors.

So on arriving in this forgettable hub you have to seek out the commander who gives you your first proper mission; to help deal with the base's power problems. It's here that you're properly introduced to those enemies from the tutorial, as you fight off a wave of them. They're known as the Root, possibly due to them looking a bit tree-ish, but regardless, they appear to be the reason the earth is in such a ♥♥♥♥ state. The game also introduces Remnant's version of bonfires here, again in the vaguest possibly way. All you really need to know is that the big red floating crystals act as teleport stones and save points.

After this little interlude you set off on your true quest, to find the founder. The reasons why are unclear and not at all interesting but whatever, I guess it's a motivation of sorts. You're finally given a computer code that lets you activate the big teleport crystal in the hub and it transports you to Earth.... Hang on, I thought I was on Earth? The newly arrived at location certainly looks the same as the tutorial section, keeping up that monotonously depressing 50 shades of grey vibe, only now with the occasional flashes of red, like we're playing a Schindler's List Soulslike.

Earth is where I'd say the game truly begins if I was talking about Dark Souls. Or I might say "opens up" instead, but Remnant's levels are procedurally generated so there's none of that wonderful Soulsy level design. Instead you have fairly linear corridor like levels that might have multiple paths, but only one of the paths tends to lead to proper progress. Other routes generally lead to optional boss fights at the end of linear dungeons, although the game won't tell you that the boss you just fought was an optional one and it's certainly not clear. There's no fanfare or build-up to the mandatory bosses and you may well fight them at the end of a samey looking dungeon.

As to the boss fights, they don't make a good first impression either, and while they do improve later on a large majority of them seem to be designed with co-op in mind. Story specific bosses tend to summon additional enemies (adds) and this is where a lot of the difficulty arises when fighting them solo. I was often killed by bosses whilst distracted by the regularly spawning adds. If playing in co-op, to balance out the fact that you've got help the bosses are given more heath, becoming bullet spongey. In some ways it makes them even harder to win, especially if your co-op partners aren't up to much.

I can't begin to describe how unfair this all feels and how frustrating it is to play, and I almost gave up on the game at this point. I am glad I persevered though because once you've ground your way through Earth's blandly crumbling vistas and overcome a big ent boss, the game does in fact start to open up to some degree when you gain access to Stargates™. This is also where the game starts to get more creative visually and even trickles out a bit of story as you find out that the Root have attempted to conquer multiple worlds.

The area with the Stargates is essentially a secondary hub and you'll eventually gain access to a few more gates that lead all lead to different worlds, your ultimate goal still being to find the founder. The first gate takes you to a desert planet with which has a nice mixture of futuristic and primative architecture and enemy types. Not only is this more interesting to look at and fight in, but it also manages to do a bit of visual storytelling that was completely lacking on Earth. It's still not up to Dark Soul's standard as the procedural generation limits tightly designed world building, but it's an improvement. The fact that this world underwent some kind of cataclysm to stop the Root invasion certainly comes across and was more engaging than any snatches of the story so far. There are even a few NPCs scattered about, and an undying king to find!

It's also here that I really started to appreciate the game mechanics. Remnant has a really enjoyable gameplay loop, similar in some ways to a looter shooter, but 3rd person and with a dodge roll. It's also pretty fast and enemies are surprisingly fragile, it feels arcadey at times and you can almost zone out while playing. It's certainly at the positive end of that scale though, don't get me wrong.

There are a wide selection of guns to choose across two categories; handguns and rifles. These can be anything from a sniper rifle and a sub machine gun, to an acid pistol and an energy rifle. I found myself experimenting with a lot of weapons throughout and some were more situational than others. You only start off with the two guns but you'll rapidly unlock more by finding them in dungeons or crafting them from boss resources. You can also level up guns although I found this made me use the levelled ones more often, perhaps hampered experimentation. Weapon mods add more depth the the gunplay. These activated abilities are also crafted from bits of defeated bosses and you can slot one into the particular gun you're using. The abilities they give range from summons, to healing, to bonus damage, and again they're situational.

You find and upgrade armour in the same way as you do guns, and getting a set gives specific bonuses. Each set is generally resistant to different types of damage and so will work better or worse in different worlds. Remnant also has rings and amulets but these are a little lackluster and a lot of them were pretty much useless.

Levelling also works differently in Remnant. Rather than putting points into stats like strength and dexterity, Remnant has traits. While these traits do include ones for stamina and health, you can unlock ones that decrease ranged damage, speed up reloading, increase scrap collection and xp earned, resist elemental damage, increase critical damage rates and many more. You unlock more as you play by, in a variety of ways. It's a nice change to the more traditional stats based levelling, allowing you to build a character based on preferred traits.

You won't unlock all these items, mods and traits in one play-through because the bosses and encounters are unique to each run. This adds some replay-ability and goes towards explaining the procedural generation. You can essentially reset each world and hope to get some new bosses and encounters but I'd save this until you've completed the main story.

Ultimately, I'd still recommend Remnant despite the pretty mediocre and frustrating first few hours. It might not be as deep, engaging or atmospheric as Dark Souls, but it's certainly enjoyable with its moreish gameplay and has a decent amount of replay value. I haven't really thought about it much since finishing though, it just didn't get under my skin like the best Soulslike can.

*Incidentally the games tutorial section deals with melee combat; the last resort combat in a game primarily geared towards being a 3rd person shooter. It's not ideal.

Like Limbo before it, Little Nightmares is a puzzle platformer about a fragile child trapped in a horrible world. Its style could loosely be described as moody eastern-european cinema. I'll get my positives out the way first but don't worry, this won't take long.

The game is gorgeous to look at, equivalent to the best stop motion films at times but even more twisted in it's visual design, with some of the enemies being particularly creepy and memorable. It certainly goes towards creating a moody and oppressive atmosphere.

The main character's yellow jacket against grey and often muted backgrounds is even reminiscent of Schindler's List, and the section with all the decaying shoes also invoked the Jewish holocaust. I've no idea if this was intentional but I guess that at best they thought, "hey, that Spielberg film was striking to look at and the holocaust was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ miserable, let's shoehorn that into our Limbo ripoff in the vaguest most superficial way possible" (I guess that's my positives out of the way).

As to why the world is the way it is, or why it's populated by monstrosities who appear to be trying their hardest to kill or eat a small child, I've no idea, because the game doesn't tell me. There is no story to speak of and what can be read from the visuals is entirely speculative. Even Limbo, as vague and lacking in traditional storytelling as it was, had enough going on in the visuals and scripted encounters that I could hazard a guess as to what was happening. The title also helped. So I felt no connection to the world of little nightmares, nor the child I was playing as. Speaking of playing, let's talk about the gameplay.

So that nightmare part is on the nose because little nightmares sure is a nightmare to play. Whereas Limbo had the good sense to keep its platforming to two dimensions, Little Nightmares has more of a 2.5D aspect as you can move up and down. This makes platforming a massive pain in the arse because you can't really gauge distance in either plane and the pov messes with your depth perception. This leads to lots of trial and error when attempting what should be simple jumping puzzles and it's not fun to play.

There are also lots of set pieces and escape type scenes in which you have to do the exact right thing or die, and it can get trying as you have to repeat the same bit of the game again and again. Luckily it's quite a short game, but I shudder to think how short it would be if I didn't have to trial run so many sections of the game multiple times.

So, nice to look at but it's all style over substance and utterly fails as a puzzle platformer. I'm so done with these pretentious, artsy, indie games, with stories so abstract and vague they'd make David Lynch shake his head in disgust. More like Little ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.