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[FairFriend]

Hi there GAF! A few months ago I made the decision of not buying any new game in order to focus on my backlog. Up until now my will has been strong but recently, in part due to the many sales, my determination has been wavering. So, in an effort to strengthen my volition, since I've always enjoyed writing, I decided to write down my impressions about the games that I complete as I go through my backlog.

In addition to that I thought that it would make for an interesting experiment to let you know the games that I still need to finish, so that you can vote on the next title that I should tackle (the votes appear in the brackets next to the titles). I hope that in this way you'll look forward to my updates!

The games that I have completed since I pledged not to buy any new game are:

Fear Effect (Review in this post)
Syberia (15/05/2017 post 4)
BloodRayne (29/05/2017 post 5)
Catherine (16/05/2017 post 8)
Doom II (02/09/2017 post 11)
Metro 2033 (04/09/2017 post 12)
Alice Madness Returns (05/10/2017 lttp thread)

The ones that I'm working on and whose reviews you should expect to read soon are (GROUP A):

Blood Omen
Blood Omen II
Doom II
Syberia II

The ones in which I've already made some progress but I'm not actively playing (GROUP B):

Blood
Final Fantasy VIII
Clive Barker's Undying
Alice: Madness Returns
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Quake II
Persona 3 Portable [1]
Zone of the Enders II
Catherine [1]
Final Fantasy XIII
Siren Blood Curse
Metro 2033
Valkyria Chronicles

The ones in the backlog are (GROUP C):

[PC]
Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee
Red Faction: Guerilla
Hitman: Blood Money
The Witcher 1
Max Payne
Max Payne II
Doom III
Aliens versus Predator 2000
Anachronox
Outcast
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Legacy of Kain: Defiance
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver II
Deus Ex II Invisible War
Thief: Deedly Shadows
Beyond Good & Evil
No One Lives Forever 2
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Painkiller
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
The Thing
Far Cry
Sherlock Holmes Mistery of the Mummy
Gothic II
Arcanum
Simon the Sorcerer 4

[PSVITA]
Stranger of Sword City
Toukiden Kiwami
Dokuro
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Sega MegaDrive Collection (has tons of old titles, for a list check the wikipedia page – please mention only one of said titles)

Finally there are games that I was gifted or that were given away for free for a limited time. As such these titles have lower precedence from my point of view, but you can vote them too! (GROUP D)

[PC]
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Opposing Force
DiRT 3
Galactic Civilizations I
Starcraft
Consortium
The Elder Scrolls: Arena
The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall
Little Big Adventure 2
Saints Row 2
System Shock 2
Beneath a Steel Sky
Dragonsphere
Lure of the Temptress
Teenagent
Tyrian 2000

You can vote every game from group B, C or D – but you can name only one title! It goes without saying that I'd personally start with the games in which I've already made some progress (group B), but I'll try to stick as close as possible to your recommendations. I will also update this post with the votes, which I'll put next to the titles, so that you can track which games are the more popular.

And now onto the first review!

Fear Effect

Fear Effect is a product of its time, from many different points of view. It came out in the late 90s for the PSONE and, as many other horror games of the era, it features tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds. Nonetheless Fear Effect is a game that manages to result very original thanks, at least in part, to the gorgeous art direction and the mature storyline (though keep in mind that these were the 90s and the adjective mature was to some degree inextricably linked with edgy).

In discussing the merits of Fear Effect I'd like to start with the two staples of the genre that I mentioned earlier: tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds.

In regards to the former it must be noticed that Fear Effect does make a few adjustments to the original formula pioneered by the first Resident Evil. Firstly we have a dedicated button for a 180 degrees turn, which was introduced only in Resident Evil III if memory serves. More over there's another button which, in conjunction with the directional cross, allows the player to make the protagonists roll in one of the four directions. Both these manoeuvres are of vital importance in order to win the most intense battles: rolling allows the characters to dodge every attack and later in the game a certain kind of enemy will be able to jump from one end of the stage to the other in an instant, thus forcing the player to make good use of the 180 degrees turn. Other minor betterments include the ability to target two enemies simultaneously – which again becomes very important when facing multiple foes – and a dedicated stealth mode button. In stealth mode the player's avatar can sneak behind most of the enemies and finish them using hand weapons. Killing the enemies silently has multiple benefits, apart from the obvious one of not being detected. Firstly ammunition is pretty scarce in the first three discs, therefore the player is encouraged to make use of the guns as little as possible. Secondly whenever the player scores a stealth kill the fear level decreases a little bit.

On the upper left the star of the show, so to say: the fear level.
The reticle appears whenever the playable character locks on an enemy. Useful not to waste ammo on out of reach targets.

This leads me to another peculiar mechanic, the aforementioned fear level. You see, in Fear Effect there is no life bar and as a consequence no medipacks nor plants that can cure the characters. Instead what we've got is the fear level which increases whenever the protagonists are hit or find themselves in perilous situations. Conversely the fear level decreases whenever something good happens to the characters: if the player manages to beat a boss, of if she finds additional ammunition hidden somewhere in the level or if she kills a guard stealthly, then the fear level decreases.
At first the fear level may seem like little more than an expedient to differentiate the game from Resident Evil and its many clones, but in reality its real purpose is that of tying together many different systems, which otherwise would make for a pretty jarring gameplay.

Take for instance the aforementioned stealth sequences: it goes without saying that Fear Effect lacks the depth of Metal Gear Solid. In addition to that the 2D environments and the static camera angles more often than not get in the way of the player, thus making the act of killing an unsuspecting enemy more challenging that it should be. Nonetheless the sequences manage to be enjoyable for the direct effect that they have on the fear level: killing an enemy using a fire weapon does not have the same beneficial consequence on the fear level than doing so without being noticed has. Thus the fear level mechanic forces the player to approach the level very carefully. Sometimes you'll find yourself scouting for enemies not necessarily because you're lacking ammunition, but because you're trying to lowering the fear level by assassinating them, in anticipation of a particularly intense gun fight that lays ahead.

One can't talk about Fear Effect without mentioning the beautiful, albeit technically dated, backgrounds. The one thing that distinguishes them is that they are fully animated. This means that every background will feature futuristic cars flying over the character's heads, light shafts casting ominous shadows on derelict walls and many more touches which give the game a very unique artistic flair. Nonetheless, even though the compression technology must have been very good at the time, artifacts abound and it is very easy to tell the exact moment when one of the animated backgrounds loops and starts again from the beginning. Finally I can't help but wondering why Kronos Studios didn't opt for a more selective approach: they could have had two different layers, one fully static and another one containing the animated elements, which would be relatively fewer that those static. In other words I think that they should have taken a look at how the same identical problem is solved in animation: it's well known that the animated part of the sceneries and the background proper are composed together only in the end, and the latter can receive more attention because it doesn't need to be modified every new frame.

Anyway, a part from the technical considerations, there'se no denying that the art direction of Fear Effect is nothing short of breathtaking, and I will concede that the animated backgrounds greatly help in bringing the artists' vision to life.

The nature of said backgrounds plays also a major role in the gameplay. Indeed, Fear Effect is infamous for the abundance of traps and segments which can be passed only by the application of the trial and error method. They are very reminiscent of the days of games such Dragon's Lair. As every other element of Fear Effect, their reason of being is justified by their interaction with the fear level. In fact, whenever the player manages to beat one of these segments, the fear level goes down a little bit, or is completely restored to its default value. Needless to say this reward parallels very well the sense of relief that the player experiences when avoiding a trap, just like the fear level system makes for a quite accurate detector of the player's stress when trying to figure out, for the n-th time, how to have the better hand of that certain boss. In other words everything in Fear Effect, from the scarcity of ammunition to the omnipresence of traps, has some kind of bearing of the fear level and reinforces the link between the player and the avatar, almost to the point of breaking the fourth wall.

In closing this little review I think it is important to note some of the most glaring problems that the game has. Puzzles, for instance, are of the inscrutable variety. The moment you realize the reasoning behind their workings you will solve them in no time: usually they are confined in one single room, which means that you won't have to backtrack all the way to the start of the level, like in many other adventure titles. The real problem lies in the fact that the logic of their solutions is oftentimes concealed by the presentation, that is to say too few visual and audio clues are given to the player in order to simply understand what the game is asking you too do. I will admit readily that more often than not I had to resolve to the reading of an online walkthrough, even though I'd consider myself a seasoned player, having finished many games that are in no shortage of intricate puzzles, like the old Tomb Raiders made by Core Design.

With that said I'm confident that many will find the control scheme to be antiquated, but objectively speaking Fear Effect doesn't fair any worse in this regard than your typical Resident Evil. Nonetheless there is one major criticism which needs to be mentioned, so much that the developers themselves felt the necessity of addressing it in Fear Effect 2: every time you die the game needs to be reloaded, and loading times are not particularly short, to put it mildly. This defect is acerbated but the trial and error approach that the game forces on the player in many different scenarios, from boss battles to the exploration of new areas.

Fear Effect is not for the faint of heart, and much of it charm comes from the wonderful art direction, which nonetheless suffers from the limitations of the technology employed to compress the pre-rendered backgrounds. The strength of the gameplay lies in how tightly its many systems are linked by the dynamics of the fear level, but the subtlety of it all may be lost on the modern player simply in search of some good old fun.

- - -

Whew! This review of sorts went on much longer than I had anticipated, therefore I'll post the other two (Syberia and BloodRayne) at a later time. I must confess that I am too much eager to read your opinions on Fear Effect, and of course to find out which game you want me to start playing next!

 

[gaiages]

Nice idea! You might want to consider putting the reviews themselves in some sort of blog--it'll be way easier to format them and catalog your writing along the way! If the thread gets really big it'll be hard to find reviews after a while.

Um, as for a vote... why not Catherine, since you've already started it? It's not a super long game either

 

[FairFriend]

Nice idea! You might want to consider putting the reviews themselves in some sort of blog--it'll be way easier to format them and catalog your writing along the way! If the thread gets really big it'll be hard to find reviews after a while.

Um, as for a vote... why not Catherine, since you've already started it? It's not a super long game either

I absolutely plan on making a blog where I can catalogate all this threads that I'm accumulating. But that will come at a later time. Anyway thank you for the suggestion and for the consideration in choosing a title I've already started!

 

[FairFriend]

Syberia

Now that I think about it Syberia may be the only point and click adventure game that I have ever finished, which should speak volumes about its ability of capturing the player's attention. Without a doubt Syberia is a perfect introduction to the genre, since it features very logical and fair puzzles which never test the player's patience, thus allowing her to enjoy the many strengths of this adventure, from the astonishing art direction to the lovable characters and the engrossing soundtrack.

I'd like to start with the art direction of the game, which is probably the reason Syberia is known to most. The aesthetics of the game were crafted by Benôit Sokal, whose name was already known to pc players at the time of Syberia's release for being the mind behind another point and click adventure, Amerzone. Though Amerzone was an interesting title in its on regard (I must admit nonetheless to have played very little of it around the time of its release), Syberia far surpass it in possibly every aspect, most notably in the visual department.

It makes little sense to me to try to convey in words the magnificence of the pre-rendered backgrounds of Syberia, especially considering that a wealth of screenshots is practically one click away. I'll limit myself to posting a few of them here and there for those of you who have never heard of the game.

As promised some screenshots from the earlier stages of the game, not mine though

Contrariwise I think that is important to speak a little bit about the gameplay of Syberia. First of all, Syberia is a very approachable title. As I mentioned earlier I have very little experience with this kind of games; nonetheless I was able to finish it in a breeze. I would go as far as saying that the title may be a little bit too easy: I predict that seasoned players wont feel challenged at all and even regular players may come to the conclusion that the puzzles are little more than an hindrance to the enjoyment of the more cinematic aspects of the game, like its dialogues, cutscenes and soundtrack.

Though there is not one single puzzle that stands apart from the rest for having a counter-intuitive solution, or for being poorly conceived, that's not to say that Syberia doesn't have any problem in this department. From time to time the objects with which you can interact appear minuscule, due to the camera being far away from them, a problem which is exacerbated by the necessity of playing the game in window mode, if one doesn't want to upscale the game to resolutions it was not meant to support and to deal with pixellated backgrounds. Moreover the game often forces the player to traverse a large number of scenes to carry an object from point A to B: while it is always a pleasure to marvel at the world created by the developers, the protagonist's pace is quite slow, meaning that minutes will be wasted just waiting for the character to reach the destination. This can be especially frustrating since figuring out how to solve a puzzle is immediate while the gathering of the needed inventory objects is everything but. Let's just say that the ability to jump from scene to the other at a mouse click is sorely missed. Finally the game does sport from time to time some collision detection issues, and there are at least two obstacles whose nature is fairly pretentious, making it difficult to understand what action must be performed in order to surpass them.

With that said whatever problem Syberia may have it never gets in the way of the enjoyment of the experience as a whole. World building and the characterization of the protagonist are Syberia's forte; Kate Walker, the lead of the story, may as well be one of the best female characters in gaming.

Kate is an American lawyer, whose job at first is that of getting Anna Vorarlberg to sign off the selling of the factory of automata which she owns. When Kate reaches the town of Valadilène where the factory is located, in the French Alps, she finds out that Anna has died of old age. A letter that Anna had written before dying reveals that Hans Vorarlbeg, Anna's brother who had been presumed dead for decades, is in fact still alive. Kate must embark on a journey throughout Europe in order to find Hans and to get him to sign off the contract by which he relinquishes the ownership of the factory.

The first thing worthy of note is, in my opinion, Kate's profession and her attitude towards it. For once we are presented with a character who not only engages in an activity which is highly intellectual and usually associated with a high status, but she also does so with great professionalism, which induces the admiration of many of the people with whom she interacts. While still fairly young (presumably in her early 30s), Kate displays such a confidence as it can only derive from an excellent knowledge of the ins and outs of her profession. At the same time the game doesn't shy away from showing some of the more intimate traits of Kate's personality. The player has access to her mobile phone, from which she can call Kate's boss, her boyfriend, her mum or her old time friend and colleague, Olivia. While most of the time these people will be unreachable, after certain specific events the player will be able to get through. The conversations that result often revolves around the relationship between Kate and the people with whom she get in touch; not only do we get the chance to learn more about Kate's character, but we can also gauge how other people view Kate. While at first everybody manifests her or his confidence in the success of Kate's mission, as the situation becomes more and more complex, with the news of Anna's death and the appearance on the scene of a new heir, slowly but surely the same people start doubting Kate's capability and for one reason or the other suggest with increasing firmness that she should come back to the States and allow someone else to take care of the case.
Kate's boss is eager to complete the acquisition of the factory, since the good relationship with one of the most important partners of the firm depends on it. Dan, Kate's boyfriend, grows impatient as Kate's return is postponed time and again by the unfolding of the events. Finally both Olivia and Kate's mum, while generally supportive of Kate's decisions throughout her adventure, oftentimes mistake her confidence for stubbornness . Kate obviously is not impervious to these behaviours, and reacts at times with incredulity and frustration, but as the complaints become more frequent, she gradually learns not to give them too much attention, and to focus on the objective at hand instead.

The relationship between Kate and Dan is particularly meaningful, since rarely does a game present a character like him under such a bad light: he is shown to have a possessive and manipulative personality, he idealizes Kate to the point of fuming whenever she disappoints his expectations about what someone of her social status should or shouldn't do and so on. Needless to say there will come the time when Kate will have to choose between him and the continuation of her journey, and though I have no intention of spoiling the game, I will say that Kate will grow greatly as a person during her adventure, finally arriving at a point where she'll be able to assess with calmness and confidence what really matters to her the most.

It is exactly the marriage of a nuanced characterization and a will strong beyond would be expected of any common person that makes Kate Walker such a fresh and inspirational character.

- - -

Alright, another one bites the dust! Now I need to get on BloodRayne and after that I'll try to reprise my playthrough of Catherine. Abstaining from buying Alan Wake or Bayonetta + Vanquish has been very difficult!

 

[FairFriend]

Firstly excuse me for the triple post! I hope that some gentle soul will come around this time to post something (not necessarily related to the topic!), so that I won't feel too bad about posting my next review, lol. Anyway, here we go with BloodRayne. Remember to vote on the next title in the backlog that I should tackle!

The first BloodRayne belongs to a certain genre which has been long extinguished: that of the third person action games with mouse camera movement. I understand that the wordiness of this definition may suggest that grouping these games under one moniker may be improper, but I feel like the constraint of having to manually adjust the camera really made for a very particular experience. Allow me to explain myself better.

I'd like to take a step back in time, to the year 1996 when Quake was released. I believe that it is with the release of Quake that the machinima phenomenon was born. Machinima are videos of the player's interacting with the game world in such a way that, with the help of heavy editing, the end result looks like a cinematic of sort. Instead of shooting at the usual enemies the player engages with the world in peculiar ways, through the tools offered by the gameplay. The session is recorded in game, not from the standard first person view, but from that of a third person; the recording is then cut, edited and dubbed, the end result being very close to attaining a narrative coherence which makes the machinima a precusor of modern cutscenes.

The reason why I mentioned the machinima phenomenon is that it is thanks to its popularity that players realized that a game like Quake, with a few console scripts, could be retooled in a third person action game. The mechanics remain the same: you move and strafe with the arrows (or alternatively with WASD) and you control your aiming with the mouse. This realization led many developers to the creation of titles which played like first person shooter but offered the third person view (sometimes as a mere alternative to the standard first person). While this added option would not be enough to define a new genre, soon enough new games were being built under the premise that the player would preferably play them in third person, and thus new mechanics that exploited this assumption were being introduced, while retaining the core experience inherited by Quake and co.

Another monumentally important tile was released in 1996: Tomb Raider. It important to underline how Tomb Raider played in a vastly different way from the aforementioned titles. In this game there is absolutely no camera movement and no strafing, with the exception of small sidesteps needed to align Lara to switches and levers. In addition to that, there is a delay between the input of the commands and Lara's animation, something which would severely undermine the experience of playing every first person shooter that would implement this form of latency. Nonetheless the success of Tomb Raider was such that some of its mechanics and gameplay principles, like the focus on puzzle solving and the methodical exploration of the vast environments, would be included, albeit in a much lighter rendition, in many other games.

In my opinion it is the collision of these two historic events in the world of gaming, the birth of machinima and the release of Tomb Raider, which sprung games like Heretic II, American McGee's Alice and, ultimately, BloodRayne. All these titles, which feature platforming and some kind of mouse-centric, camera based combat system, I put under the same banner, whatever we wished to call it.

It is not hard to see why this genre was short lived. Firstly it relaid on a control system which didn't translate well to consoles. Secondly it was a genre born out of the developers' lack of experience with 3d environments. Camera placement has always been difficult to get right, therefore it's not surprising that many games of the early days of 3d were contented with fixing it behind the character's shoulders. When developers became more familiar with the trappings of a dynamic camera in a 3d environment, they opted out of the camera behind the shoulders solution, which admittedly dictates very strict conditions on the gameplay and, perhaps more importantly, doesn't allow the player to take a good look at the characters' model, which were getting more and more detailed in light of the heavier emphasis on storytelling made possible by the improvement in 3d graphics.

Now, that's not to say that there's nothing to enjoy, or even relish, about those games, which were caught in kind of a transition phase, so to say. For example camera movement allows for very quick manoeuvres, at least on PC, which sit well with the frantic nature of the hand to hand combat that many of these games feature. The fact that Quake was the technological father of the genre also means that its representatives often sport complex, interconnecting and non linear level.

BloodRayne is a game that in more than one way proves to know the pitfalls and the limitation of the genre it belongs to. This way it manages to at least partially circumvent those limitations, making for an enjoyable experience even today.

I will skip on the plot details, suffice it to say that the premise puts the player in the tight corset of Dhampir Rayne, a young woman who, being born from a human mother and a vampire father, possesses all the qualities of the latter and few of the notorious deficiencies of vampires, like a weakness to water. The game takes place during the WWII; Rayne is recruited by the BrimStone society to assassinate a list of Nazi officials who are looking into bringing to life an ancient Evil to exploit its power to win the war.

Rayne's signature outfit, as it appears in BloodRayne 2

Admittedly BloodRayne art direction can be offputting: Rayne's taste in clothing is a tad debatable and her mentor, Mynce, whom you met in the first training level, doesn't fare much better. The game also displays a juvenile propensity in framing Mynce's breast during cutscenes to show off the very rudimentary jiggle physics at work; certainly I wouldn't surprised if most players did not make it to the second level set. Fortunately Rayne's characterization, and the actress dubbing her, more than make up for it. Rayne is a strong character, always quick to rebuff anyone who questions her skills. She is second to none in what she does, that is slaying Nazis, and listening to her quips while she slaughters and dismembers anything and anyone that gets in her way was honestly exhilarating. Now, one may object that violence can be just as offputting as women objectification, but I would argue that BloodRayne never crosses the line between slapstick violence, to which the Dhampir's antics belong in my opinion, and the more brutal kind of violence that you'd expect to see in other games like Manhunt. At the end of the day, though I won't champion Rayne as an empowering character or anything like that, I will admit to have found her a few steps above the abundance of Lara Croft's clones that were introduced in the late 90's and early 00's.

Alright, with that said, how does the game play like? Well firstly one can't help but noticing that BloodRayne takes a page out from Jumping Flash. Well, perhaps it would be more exact to cite Turok as a source of inspiration. You see, everytime Rayne makes a jump, the camera adjusts itself a little bit to show you the exact spot where Rayne will be landing. Couple that with Rayne's vampiric ability of making truly spectacularly high jump, and you have a very visceral sensation that reminded me immediately of the aforementioned titles. BloodRayne doesn't even try to be as meticulous as Tomb Raider when it comes to timing: in this regard the game shows to be aware of the limitations that come with combining the platforming sessions of Tomb Raider with the speed and control layout of Quake. Instead when it comes to jumping BloodRayne focuses on making them look spectacular and not a frustrating experience, by tilting the camera just a tiny bit, as I was mentioning. As a consequence, the game comes off much better that many of the Tomb Raider clones that were being released at that time.

Jumping can be pretty important in the game. Since the geometry of the level is fairly limited, not many details get in the way of the exploration. Nowadays, since geometry can be so complex, levels often present invisible walls and many more constraints which force the player on a predetermined path. Contrariwise games like the original Tomb Raider and BloodRayne feature levels which, for obvious technological reasons, lack the polygonal complexity, but at the same time are built with the expectation that the players will use every single ability in their possession to explore even the remotest corner. As a consequence, especially in the later levels, the player will often find herself questioning whether she is really supposed to make that jump, or climb that steep wall exploiting the ”gamey" physics, and while this sense of not knowing exactly the level boundaries may be frustrating for some, I've always found it very rewarding when one's intuition turn out to be correct.

Unfortunately it is only in the last set of levels that the designers' imagination is set free, while the first two mostly feature levels that somewhat limit the game's secret platformer identity.

The first levels take place in Louisiana, and they are not the best introduction to the game, being quite bland and uninspired

As for the combat, it's kind of a mixed bag, really. One the one hand Rayne is capable of amputating every single member of the foes she encounters. Not only that, but she can do so in slow motion, thus allowing the player to appreciate the wonderful, albeit slightly clunky, animations and the copious amount of blood that springs from the amputees. On the other hand, BloodRayne takes the infamous Morrowind approach to hit detection: making contact with an enemy doesn't guarantee that Rayne will cut through him. Of course the blood decals are there to give some kind of feedback to the player, but as for the exact amount of damage done to the enemy, that remains a mystery, unless you're battling a boss of course, whose remaining life is clearly showed by a life bar. Different moves, performed by chaining more and more attacks, inflict more or less damage, depending on the length of the combo, and chances are that being closer to the enemy increases the efficacy of the move, but by the time the credits rolled I still wasn't sure of that.

What really holds together the combat is the amount of detail that was put into guaranteeing that the player would be able to combine any two mechanics at any time. For instance, not only can Rayne use her signature twin blades, but she can also use guns, shotguns and machine guns dropped by the enemies. She also needs to feed on them, since her bodily reservoir of blood slowly but surely drops over time, even when she's not being attacked by enemies, due to the notorious thirst for blood of her kind.

Rayne while she sucks the life out of an evil Nazi, while using him as a shield against his fellow Nazis' rain of bullets!

Therefore the player can pray on every single enemy by jumping at them; Rayne will attach to their bodies and will begin sucking blood from their necks, thus incapacitating them. Other enemies that may be around won't stop shooting at Rayne, consequently the player needs to position Rayne in a way so that the body she's draining will serve as a shield too. Meanwhile, by pressing the fire button, the player can make Rayne shoot blindly at everything that's in front of her, while she's still intended at sucking the blood out of the enemy's neck. All of this while the Nazi shouts with a heavy accent ”Get her off! Get her off!".

Decals and corpses are persistent in the game, and if Rayne walks over a pool of blood she will leave her footprints behind, just like in Duke Nukem!

I could go on and on mentioning many tiny details, like the destructible environments, which together bring to life a very vivid world. Unfortunately I could also point out just as many defects, like some of Rayne's abilities being useless. Ultimately it comes to the player's appreciation for gothic atmospheres and an old school of level design whether or not she will enjoy playing BloodRayne. Rayne's character, the dark humour implicit in the proceedings of the game, and some of the nuances of the combat system made it a worthwhile investment of time for me, but in this case more than ever YMMV.

 

[InsaneFandom]

Well there's certainly a very nice range of games in your backlog!
My vote would go for Persona 3 Portable - it's one of my favourite games ever but it's actually still in my backlog since I stopped right before the end. I'm working on it again with a replay as the female MC and am just as into it as I was the first time around
Plus I think since it's fairly long & involved you might need a little bit of a push to get back into it

I'm enjoying your reviews btw, they're well written with nice use of images
You've piqued my interest on Syberia, I've known it existed for a while but never really looked into it. Sounds like something I'd really enjoy

 

[FairFriend]

Well there's certainly a very nice range of games in your backlog!
My vote would go for Persona 3 Portable - it's one of my favourite games ever but it's actually still in my backlog since I stopped right before the end. I'm working on it again with a replay as the female MC and am just as into it as I was the first time around
Plus I think since it's fairly long & involved you might need a little bit of a push to get back into it

I'm enjoying your reviews btw, they're well written with nice use of images
You've piqued my interest on Syberia, I've known it existed for a while but never really looked into it. Sounds like something I'd really enjoy

Added one vote for Persona 3 then! I believe I must be midway through the game, I've already passed the summer festivities if that means anything. But the plot has staled and right now I only see grinding ahead of me, but alas, that's the life of a JRPG player!

I'm glad to know that you're enjoying the reviews; as for the screenshots, I'm planning on recording my playthrough whenever I play on PC, so that I can later post .gifs and screenshots to better illustrate my points. For the time being I need to rely on random images from external sources, which I feel is kind of a shitty thing to do.

I hope that you'll be enjoying Syberia, I'm glad that I was able to convince someone to play that game. Kate Walker in my opinion one of the best and more credible female lead in gaming, up there with Jennifer from Primal and Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, though as you may have noticed the latter is one of the games in my backlog and I haven't really made much progress in it.

 

[FairFriend]

Catherine

Alright GAF, here I am with another review. This time I'm reviewing Catherine, a game which had been recommended to me by fellow poster gaiages. In reality I had already made a lot of progress, so it took me relatively little time to finish it.

Catherine is a game I feel conflicted about. On the one hand here we have a puzzle game with very interesting mechanics and a more than serviceable plot, whose ending depends on the choice made by the player throughout the adventure: a very novel mix of genres if I have ever seen one. On the other hand, while the premise of Catherine is very intriguing indeed, its execution leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion.

Let's start with the things that impressed me the most. There's no denying that the art direction is nothing short of sublime. While I understand that some people may be put off by the style, which is typically Japanese, I believe that even those people will concede that the character design is supremely inspired and that the few sets that appear in the game are well thought out and marvelous to look at.

One thing is for sure: Catherine's art directions is fabulous! I look forward to buying the artbook

While I do have more than a few qualms with the plot, the dialogues are well written and the english voice acting is excellent. At first the plot manages to grab the attention of the player, promising to treat adult themes like infidelity in the context of a horror adventure. Unfortunately weak characters and a narrative structure which does little to accommodate for the choices the players make pulled me out of the experience leaving me with very little to enjoy beside the solid gameplay, the visuals and the soundtrack.

As usual I'd rather not explain extensively the gameplay mechanics, since whoever is interested in a more detailed exposition can simply look up any of the myriads of available reviews. Instead I'd like to focus on the things that stroke me, either positively or negatively. Starting with the latter, the game is fairly unbalanced. Having played the European version, at the "normal" level of difficulty, rarely did I find myself in a situation which forced me to apply all the tricks that the game teach you throughout its length. Instead I usually relied on the same limited set of moves to beat all the stages, from the earlier ones up until the last boss.

In short the gameplay consists in climbing towers like the one pictured by pushing and pulling the boxes and climbing of top of them. Seasoned Tomb Raider players will find themselves at home

The game dispenses extra lives, in the form of pillows, way too liberally. By the time I won the match against the last boss I had 90 extra lives (!). The problem is that often you'll find more than one extra live between two checkpoints. Sometimes you may need to repeat the same section of the level a few times to come up with a good strategy, and if between said section and the last checkpoint there is more than one pillow, dying effectively nets you additional lives instead of decreasing their total! As a consequence never did I fear that I would't be able to end of the stage: it was always a question of when I would do that, not if.

Now, if you're that kind of player who's mainly interested in obtaining the best score, that's not much of an issue, since you're not supposed to die at all. But for a regular player like me this tiny detail, the amount of extra lives available, was pretty annoying, because it sucked any tension out of the experience.

The game does a very good job at introducing new challenges, on top of the core gameplay, as Vincent, the protagonist, climbs the tower that appears in his nightmare. Nonetheless I feel like the game overstayed its welcome. For once, clocking at a 15 hours, the games is simply too long for being essentially a puzzle game. Secondly, by the time I had reached the penultimate stage, I had already played for more than 8 hours. Which means that the game spread its last stage (divided in smaller sections) over approximately half the span of the whole adventure. If you also consider that no new mechanics are introduced starting this stage (or possibly even the one before), you should be able to see why one who's not invested in the story may feel eventually bored.

Speaking of the story, I'd like to preface that the sole reason why I bought this game in the first place is that I'm a huge fan of Persona 4. Persona 4 Golden was the first JRPG that I've ever completed, and while looking back at it years later I can definitely see how some of its characters and storylines are not as mature as they appeared to me the first time, I still maintain that it is leagues above many of its peers in terms of choice of the subject matter and the handling of it. Therefore starting Catherine I had very high expectations, since to my knowledge it's been developed by the same Persona team.

The main cast of Catherine. Vincent is the douche with the Rave t-shirt.

Catherine puts you in the shoes of Vincent, a young man who is caught between the love for his longtime partner, Katherine, and the attraction for a younger lady similarly named Catherine. The game presents a duality between a safe live in the company of the former or a more exciting and chaotic one in the arms of the latter. This dualism is embedded in the very structure of the game, since every time Vincent beats a stage he will be asked by a mysterious figure that inhabits his dream a moral question, to which Vincent and the player can give only one of two scripted answers. It is very clear from the beginning that by consistently giving the "good" answer Vincent will eventually stay with Katherine, while by choosing the "evil" one he'll decide to leaver her for Catherine. The game doesn't do anything to hide the manichaeism at its core; actually it consistently use the blue and red color to designate the answers which will respectively result in the K(atherine) ending and in the C(atherine) ending.

Now I should mention that if you are inconsistent about the "kind" of answers that you pick up, you may eventually get a different ending, in which Vincent tries to convince either of the girl to accept him, but is eventually rejected by both. Now, this doesn't change much the state of things because it doesn't solve the main problem that I have with this idea. For a game that tries to reach out to an older audience Catherine's worldview is exceedingly naive. Things in life are not as clear cut as the game tries to paint them: it's not necessarily true than a "safer" life, as the game calls it, will be less exciting that the "chaotic" one offered by Catherine. One really needs to make a huge effort to step in the shoes of Vincent, who due to his ineptitude is a less than likeable character, to say the least, to see the absurdly contriver situations from the point of view of that the game assumes. In other words Catherine failed completely in making me feel empathy for its protagonist, a not so excusable sin for a game whose half of the appeal should come from the story.

An example of the very obvious dilemma the game proposes. After a while every pair of alternative will read: Catherine or Katherine. Answering honestly is unfruitful because the question is just too generic. In this case I'd say that it depends on whom you married. Or are we talking in general? Then the question does make even less sense because I'd expect my married life to be a continuation of my life as a bachelor, so neither a beginning nor an ending. Frustrating...

This leads me to the characterization problem. As I've already mentioned, Vincent is not a very good protagonist. I was not expecting him to be without faults, given the premise of the game, but I do believe that his character is unresolved and irrational to a level beyond one that I would find realistic, even in light of the final revelation

Spoiler

that Catherine was actually an imaginary woman modeled after Vincent's own idea of how the ideal woman should look like

. However, I think I would have been able to to accept the less than stellar characterization of the protagonist, had it not for the ability that the game gives the player to alter the course of the story. As I noticed, the two possibilities offered by the game position themselves and the ends of the moral spectrum, but all the alternatives in the between are not merely gradual variations of the two extremes. The moment the game asks me to dictate how Vincent should behave, and the moment both the answers I can give are idiotic because they must adhere to the false dichotomy K vs C, which itself was probably motivated by the necessity of limiting the branching narrative to just a few different outcomes, I can't help but distancing myself from the characters and their troubles.

The problems I have with the characters do not end here. Vicent's friends, who hang out with him nighttime at a pub aptly named Stray Sheep, are quite bland and interchangeable, saved in extremis by the excellent voice acting. The two female leads are not particularly well written since they must adhere to the stereotypical story that the game wants to tell. Therefore Catherine is more pushy and vapid, while Katherine is more understanding and less temperamental. Now, that's not to say they do not possess any hidden trait: Catherine will reveal herself to be quite possessive of Vincent while Katherine will show to have a manipulative tendency, even though these traits should be framed in the context of the respective relationships with Vincet, who in all honesty is a sore loser who doesn't deserve either (a reflection of the choice I made during my playthough? Maybe. The point is that the player needs to aim for a very specific ending if he wants Vincent to be a character at all: narrative and game mechanics collide in the least natural way, imo).

At last but definitely not least we have Erica, the transgender waitress of the Stray Sheep. You see, not only Vincent is having these feverish nightmares, but apparently a lot more men who, just like him, have not been faithful to their partners. The player can actually meet other aficionados of the Stray Sheep during Vincent's nightmares. By conversing with these men, either during the nightmares or before while they are still at the pub, Vincent can learn more about their sins and eventually, by advising them, lead them to salvation. It is implied that Erica is having these nightmares too. Now, what are we to conclude from this? Honestly I don't know and I won't dwell to much upon it because the game offers an even more explicit example of how it sees the character of Erica. Toby is the youngest of Vincent's friends and, it is implied many times during the conversations Vincent can have with them, the least experienced in romantic matters. He falls for Erica and eventually the two of them start dating. It is made clear that Toby has not realized that Erica is transgender, even though they have already become intimate. Whenever Toby brings up the subject of his dating Erica, his friends always react very uncomfortably and try to stray the conversation, and when eventually Toby tells them about having sex, his first time, with his girlfriend, they act in a dismissive manner, almost frowning upon him. In other words the way the relationship in painted fall in the ugly stereotype of the transgender "trapping" the unexperienced lover, while his friends ridicule him from afar.

By now I think I made myself clear: Catherine is a very good puzzle game, with great visuals and a very atmospheric soundtrack. Unfortunately it is not nearly as mature as it pretends to be and the storyline falls victim of the false pretense of giving the player agency over its development, while in reality the only consequence is that of infusing the game world with a false dichotomy between two lifestyles which in reality are always complimentary of each other.

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Well, I hope you enjoyed your reading. Let me know what you think of the game and the review and don't forget to vote for the next game that I should finish (refer to the OP for more info).

 

[InsaneFandom]

Sorry I kinda lost this thread
I think you're quite near where things majorly pick up steam again in Persona 3, but I know what you mean about the grind - Tartarus is super repetitive. By late game I often just run through levels avoiding most of the enemies tbh & I haven't felt underpowered by doing that (though I've not fought the final boss yet)
I think the characters, links & story are well worth it though. Overall I prefer 3P to 4 actually.. though I don't think that's the popular opinion

Yeah including your own images & gifs would be a really nice addition.

Your view on Catherine is interesting, it's a game I've been meaning to try for ages. I always assumed I'd be a little down on the puzzle sections & it'd be the characters, story & decisions that made the game for me but judging from your take that might not be the case at all. Still plan on checking it out for myself but maybe I'll lower my expectations a little

 

[FairFriend]

Sorry I kinda lost this thread
I think you're quite near where things majorly pick up steam again in Persona 3, but I know what you mean about the grind - Tartarus is super repetitive. By late game I often just run through levels avoiding most of the enemies tbh & I haven't felt underpowered by doing that (though I've not fought the final boss yet)
I think the characters, links & story are well worth it though. Overall I prefer 3P to 4 actually.. though I don't think that's the popular opinion

Yeah including your own images & gifs would be a really nice addition.

Your view on Catherine is interesting, it's a game I've been meaning to try for ages. I always assumed I'd be a little down on the puzzle sections & it'd be the characters, story & decisions that made the game for me but judging from your take that might not be the case at all. Still plan on checking it out for myself but maybe I'll lower my expectations a little

No need to be sorry! Gaming section moves so fast, especially after e3. After all, this is the reason why we have a subscribe option wink wink XD

As for Persona 3, I'm at the point when you capture Chidori, one of the Strega members. Things are picking up steam again and I've learnt some tricks to deal with the grinding. First, allow the team members to attack the shadows first. I've noticed that it takes less time for them to beat a shadow without me than for me to enter the battle, beat the shadows, do the minigame and finally resume the exploration. Of course there is the disadvantage that you can't play the minigame, but if one doesn't need a particular object I think that it is not worth to enter the battle for the minigame alone.

Secondly I noticed that the AI is more than capable of managing the party members, if they are sufficiently high level, so I decided not to give them direct commands, which again saves some time.

I also managed to finally start the social link with the dying boy at the shrine, something that I've been trying to do since I first met him, so my interest has been renewed.

Regarding Catherine, I came to it from your same angle, but in the end it was the puzzle sections the part of the game that I enjoyed the most. I still think the experience is worth it because the gameplay of those sections is addictive and the game looks and sound great, but as I noticed I would temper my expectations about the story.

 

[FairFriend]

EDIT: Damn, double post! Sorry!

Doom II

Alright, this time around I'll keep it short. Doom II: there isn't much to say about this game that hasn't been said yet.

It is still extremely enjoyable, due to the perfect gameplay, the excellent enemy and weapon variety and, at last but not least, the timeless level design. With that said, I find it a step down from the first Doom.

How it can be so, you may ask, when Doom II is basically the first Doom with more levels and additional enemies (plus the now legendary double barrel shotgun). Well, for once the level design is not as impeccable as that of the first Doom. The levels now are much more open, and consequently not as detailed as those of the first Doom. To fill the vast rooms of these levels the designers decided to increase the number of enemies that the player will have to face at once; not a problem in itself, but this choice has slightly changed how the game feels like to play, and I must say that I prefer the experience of the first Doom.

Secondly more is not necessarily better: I'll take a shorter, but tighter, campaign as that of Doom I over the longer, but messier and more meandering, campaign of Doom II.

I'd encourage people who have never tried the Doom experience to play the first game from start to finish, while seasoned player should rather take a look at what the community has created in these last two decades. Nowadays Doom II sits in a tight spot, between the more focus campaign of its predecessor and the more ambitious projects of the fan community, and as it stands, it comes recommended only the die hard fans.

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I think I'm nearing the ending of Persona 3: Unfortunately the grind is real, so I fear that it may take me a few more weeks (plus I'm working on my dissertation, so I don't really have much time to play). Perhaps I'll finish some other games that I'm close to completing in the meanwhile, though I'd like to finish Persona as soon as possible because it was of the games requested.

BTW, I was thinking about relaxing my rule of not buying new games until I'm done with the backlog: what if I allowed myself to buy a new game every, say, 3 games I take off the backlog? What do you think would be the optimal ratio of new games/games finished? XD

 

[FairFriend]

Metro 2033

Alright GAF! Here I am with another review!

Firstly I'd like to apologize for the triple post. I'm afraid that at this rate I will be forced to move on to another format. Or maybe the mods will close an eye? Or perhaps some kind soul will come to rescue posting something (anything!) to break my combo?!

Secondly, the game I'm reviewing today is one I started playing years ago, consequently my impressions of it are not exactly fresh. I'm talking about Metro 2033, more precisely the original PC version. I'll keep it short this time around too, because I think the shorter the review, the higher the chance that someone will actually read it.

Now, let's move on to the review proper. The first thing I feel like mentioning is that Metro 2033 is an fps intended first and foremost for consoles: the graphics settings only allow to chose the API (DX 9, 10 or 11) and to set the overall quality (from low to ultra). Similarly, there's now way to adjust the FOV.

Levels are fairly linear and punctuated by sections during which the control is taken away from the player. The purpose of said sections is to move forward the plot, though it must be noticed that optional conversations with NPCs, especially in the first levels, are just as important to the development of the story.

Without the shadow of a doubt, the overall atmosphere of the game and the lore are the best things about the game. I don't feel the need to retell the story, since the game is years old and a very popular one; suffice it to say that it's based on a very popular, and voluminous novel, also named Metro 2033. The setting is a postapocalyptic Russia in which, due to the radiation produced by the nuclear holocaust, people are forced to live in the underground Metro system.

What stroke me the most about the story is that it is often ambivalent in the way it presents your enemies, the abominations that inhabit the surface. Indeed the game features a moral system, even though this aspect of the gameplay is never revealed to the player, which contemplates moral points, gained by helping NPCs or simply talking to them, and two different endings. The behaviour of the player will net her either a positive score or a negative one, unlocking the two different endings. The positive one, so to say, will explain further the nature of the monsters spawned by the nuclear war, retroactively making the ambivalence of the narration even more poignant.

Unfortunately the actions that will influence the moral score appear to be pretty arbitrary, and mostly consist in talking to NPCs, whose only reason of existence is that of expanding the lore and justifying the moral system. I would have appreciated a more ramified and sophisticate implementation, but the subtlety of the way in which the actions of the player are acknowledged should be commended nonetheless.

Moving on to the gunplay, I cannot help but feeling a little bit disappointed. Even though weapons variety is high enough, and all of them are pretty useful, there is no real standout (like, say, the BFG or the gravity gun), perhaps a consequence of the gritty approach to world building. Movement is fairly limited, meaning that the player can only crouch or jump, so no peaking around the corner, an option that I've come to miss a lot in modern shooters since PC port of console games have become more frequent. Given the fact that the games forces on the player two or three stealth section, I wouldn't have minded an expanded movement set.

The gameplay is enriched by a few touches that contribute greatly to the immersion of the player but have little consequence on the way one approaches the fighting, like for example the necessity of using a gas mask in the zones characterized by high radioactivity. The abundance of spare masks that can be retrieved on the field makes the necessity of swapping an extinguished air supply with a new one more of a nuisance than a real threat.

Overall, Metro 2033 comes recommended to the fans of films such as a Stalker and whoever feels like immersing herself in a meticulously crafted postapocalyptic world, with the caveat that there isn't anything special or particularly well done about the gameplay.