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Archive for September, 2012

Zombies and RPGs

21 Sep

As most forms of entertainment, the game industry (and I include indies in this) are driven by fads and moods… And apparently, there’s two huge forces in this regard at the moment: zombies and RPGs…

Let’s start with zombies: there’s hundreds of games and mods with zombies in it… for some strange reason, zombies are the monster du-jour everywhere… The reason for this eludes me, but it is probably because I like more cerebral monsters (like vampires, demons or robots) than the mindless concept of zombies…

Anyway, zombies are here, and apparently they’re here to stay!

8-suspicious-events-surrounding-the-Miami-zombie-attack[1]

I’m guessing that what makes zombies terrifying is the fact that they can’t be stopped except in very specific methods (usually, blowing their heads off), they can’t be reasoned with, and they always outnumber the player… This makes them perfect for games, specially action-packed titles.

To be honest, I’m tired of zombies… every week, a slew of titles come out that either are zombie-based, or have some zombie-like DLC. There are interesting titles in this arena, though… Day-Z is a great example, since the concept of it is amazing. It captures the essence of zombie-movies: survival… I found the execution a bit lacking, but it still has its merits! But for each good zombie-game, there’s one million of just mediocre titles that jump onto the zombie bandwagon… I find amazing the connection: “I love zombie-stuff, so I’ll buy anything that has to do with zombies”, but it seems to be the current trend! At least, I don’t see people ranting against zombie-stuff as much as I do…

Another fad that’s rising is RPGs… It seems that every indie is making a rogue-like, every big company is doing a RPG or adding RPG elements to their games…

Since I’m a big fan of RPG, I should be thrilled by this, but the feeling I have is that we’re ending up with mediocre games – most roguelikes don’t bring anything new to the table, most RPGs have the same tired tropes over and over again, some games have RPG elements cooked into them for bullet-point value only, not adding anything to the game itself (in some cases, actually detracting)…

Don’t get me wrong, there’s amazing work being done (and on the horizon) by indies (Legend of Grimrock, Frayed Knights), medium companies (Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2), and big companies (Mass Effect, Skyrim, Project Eternity, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2)… But again, for every one of these, there’s loads of mediocre and pointless titles…

What it sounds amazing to me is that I haven’t seen (doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist) a zombie RPG!

“Play as the ZOMBIES or as the SURVIVORS, in this fantasy/sci-fi world in which the evil technomancer Darklordius unleashed a magical virus that infects live people. When a survivor die with the virus in them, they become zombies… But redemption is available for the scientists of the White Citadel, led by Doctor Maximumgoodguy… A zombie can be put through a painful process to become human again, with little loss of ability!”

I’d say it would be interesting… Survivors had to survive (so no silly war machine kind of gameplay where a single person kills hundreds of zombies), get food, water, fortify their houses, etc… To keep things balanced, Doctor Maximumgoodguy could only unzombify a certain number of people per day… And maybe each time a survivor died, it gained a stacking debuff… when it reached a certain value, then it would become a zombie, with some incentive to “switch side” again, but to play as well as he could as a zombie to be able to gain that possibility…

So, this idea is free, Internet… Make it happen… If my calculations are correct, if you launch this within then next couple of years, you’re sitting on a money pile! Smile

 
 

Deadlight

14 Sep

Deadlight-1

Played this one on my vacations, and it was sweet!

Zombie side-scroller, which kind of reminds me “Shadow Complex” (much simpler and without the backtracking )…

It’s a super-polished work of Tequila Works, that pits a man in search for his wife and daughter against hordes of zombies.

Visually, it’s very impressive, contrasting a silhouette foreground with very detailed 3d scenarios… From a gameplay perspective, it shifts from heavy action driven moments (for example, running from collapsing building) to a slower moments, while trying to bypass some zombies, solving puzzles or just taking in the atmosphere…

While it is a very short experience (circa 5 hours of gameplay), it’s a very rewarding one, since it doesn’t feel like it has filler…

The only thing that kind of disappoints me is the story being so deja-vu (come on, how many games can you make with a man searching for his family?!), and not even the twist at the end is enough to cover for that failure… That, and the fact that the storyline cutscenes are done in a “comic/cartoon” style that clashes with the super-polished visuals of the rest of the game.

All in all, a cheap and very enjoyable game which I highly recommend! 9/10

 
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Alan Wake: American Nightmare

11 Sep

alan-wakes-american-nightmare-walkthrough-cover

This was a big pleasant surprise… I wrote about the original Alan Wake, and one of my big complaints was the fact that I saw Alan Wake (the character) as too empty… While I enjoyed the game, I didn’t see myself playing sequels or DLC based on it (specially given the crummy ending).

So, when a friend of mine convinced me to give this a try, I wasn’t expecting anything good, specially because it was a downloadable title… but boy, was I surprised…

“Alan Wake’s American Nightmare” really exceeds the original… Heck, this should be the original, with this kind of format, pacing and length!

Most of my original criticisms (animation in general, done-before story) are gone, replaced with a tighter game, with a much more focused experience!

The atmosphere of the original is intact and surpassed by the narrative hook of making the whole game seem like a “Night Springs” episode (the Alan Wake equivalent to “The Twilight Zone”). The story is also more interesting and is more successful in investing the player in it.

The addition of new weapons and more enemies makes the tension drop a bit in the combat sections, but at the same time it doesn’t make them into a chore like in the original.

Apparently, you don’t need to have played the DLC to make sense of the story, which is also a good bonus (I haven’t played it, and besides some references that may or might not be explained in the DLC, there’s not even a big connection to the original game).

All in all, I hope they’ll make more games like this one… a short, compact experience (circa 4 to 6 hours) that corrects the flaws of the original game and gives something new to the player… 10/10

 
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Long time, no see…

04 Sep

Yep, another big hiatus, and this post doesn’t have any encouraging news…

Vacation time for me means that work just piles up, and I’m doing my best to get it under control, before I can actually resume writing on my blog…

I managed to play some cool games on my vacations, I’ll tall you all about that in the next posts, I just don’t know when I’ll have the time/motivation to write them…

Anyway, this is not dead yet, it’s just an extended leave!

Games I’m discussing in the near future (so you have stuff to click on):