Beyond: Two Souls

Beyond: Two Souls is an epic story adventure told hopping around seemingly random events in your life.  You are Elliot Page and you have an entity that you can control to do entity type things; make stuff move, spy on people, control simple minded people.

The game is quick time events, but done well - not a simple button prompt, stick motions that involve you in the scene - do them right and your character dances well for example.  

The story is linear in scope at times with boolean-type variations of an event that are presented to you at the end of the chapter how you compared with others.  This kind of mechanic kind of makes me want to choose the road less travelled, but I forced myself to try and behave as I think Jodie would do.  So when presented with a bunch of bully kids - I shoved my paranormal hands in my pockets and walked away instead of unleashing bloody Carrie vengeance.   Apparently only 11% of us kept from murdering our peers ...  

Unheard

Unheard has you trying some new detective software that allows you to replay a scene and listen in on the location based audio.  You are then asked to solve the puzzle of the scenario -- like "who stole the real painting", but things are crafted in such a way that you have to analyze the whole scene, an exchange might be happening in a back room that shuffles around the scenario.

The story has layers though, as you progress you realize that one scene is designed to be you, and there is a bit of a Shutter Island wait-a-minute reveal.  The game gives you a choice of deciding what was really happening -- there isn't a wrong answer to this puzzle.

Unfortunately what it had going for it was also a big weakness.  Having to replay a scene 5-10 times to listen in on different rooms really ups the time cost, but you have to listen to almost everything because of the amount of twists a case might have.  I ended up giving up after one where I missed a minor little conversation bit that scrambled up my answers completely.

SOMA

SOMA is a game by Frictional Games, the same people who made Amnesia - so I have been wary to play it by association.  It came with an interesting premise though that kept me for a while before the mechanics of the play through made me read on and spoil the ending.

You start the game as a person volunteering for a brain scan for a medical student project, but immediately upon the scan happening you remove it to a dystopian Bioshock Rapture influenced underwater base and hunted by robot AI.

Here's why that makes sense, and it's kind of brilliant sci-fi to me - the scan becomes the template for human psyche made digital, so in the distant future (the year 2000!) when attempting to reconstitute a human in a cyborg construct, this scan was used as the digital template.  THAT version of you would open it's eyes in the far future or wherever it was activated, maybe thousands upon thousands of times as a distinct entity.

Now the game took it one extra level than that mind-fudge; the goal is to launch the ARK, a digital end-life for all of the digital human constructs to live in, because the earth was going to be catastrophically destroyed and this was kind of a last ditch effort to save everyone that went bad.  Your reward for doing this is to copy your conciousness into the ARK as well.

But you effectively lose the coin flip.  Conciousness doesn't move, it's digital - it's a copy.  So you stay.  Your digital consciousness, the copy, is on the ARK living out a happy afterlife.   Ooof.

Life Is Strange: Episode 1

Life is Strange is a story based game of a teen girl heading to a photography college in her old hometown, where she is re-united with a long lost best friend and develops the power to rewind time.

The interface is simple interactions with objects look/talk and you are unfortunately not able to do things "right" the first time, you have to suffer through failing in order to rewind and do things differently.  Though I felt in doing this I had some choice removed from me.

You also play as a teen wallflower, and that's a hard role for me to inhabit in the video game space -- so when the hot mean-chick was picking on me, I went all bad bitch back in her face which I'm alerted had some effect on the story - but I don't know how to do it differently.  I am a bad bitch.

The story is fraught with gun violence and big brother surveillance morality.  Entertaining probably if played on a phone while waiting to pick up your child from practice, but Episode 1 was around I'm guessing about 90 minutes ... I don't have any enthusiasm to play the other 4, maybe on my phone.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

 XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a squad focused turn-based strategy game in which you are the primary response team to an alien incursion.

It's done well, with simple controls, lots of character and research advancements to keep you in line with the progressively harder alien menace.  I played pretty deep into the campaign and could imagine myself playing it in its entirety, but now that I've gotten deep into it - my attachment to the characters I've levelled up in the campaign have made me replay levels, to "tighten up and keep frosty".

I can see why this game was so popular, I wish I had played it when it was the new sexy instead of retro sexy.  XCOM 2 feels old at this point even, but I'd definitely be in on #3.

Braid

 Braid is a platformer that plays with time.  You and some limited objects have an unlimited amount that you can go back in time.   So it's a matter of unravelling what the level offers you and traversing it in a Mario'ish way using this mechanic.

The point where I gave up on this was when it started getting to be about execution time.  You can speed up your reversal in order to be at a certain point where the scene caught up, and getting that precision correct can be a bit annoying.  

You are trying to collect puzzle pieces and assemble what you found like a jigsaw in some hub levels, but I never completed an image to see what it did...

Never Alone - Kisima Innitchuna

Never Alone - Kisima Innitchuna is a side scroller where you take on the role of a young girl and a companion snow fox who go to investigate why a blizzard will not stop.  

It is designed for two players but you can toggle between them when one or the other needs to do something unique.  This was a cause of a great deal of frustration because there is a (mighty!) bug that when it thinks a second controller is plugged in, it automatically becomes player two.  I didn't realize that was happening because your second character keeps up pretty much ala Tails from Sonic, but there were things I just couldn't do and I admit ... I yelled a few "what the heck?"s and stronger before investigating that there is a config file that I need to add with some value on their forums.  Not Innit'tuitive?

The game play is similar to Beyond Blue where it's there as a layer over information that you can gleen about the native population.  The game audio has an old native storyteller relating the story of the girls travels with a subtitle translation, at sometimes it's distracting to read the text - but there is a ... peaceful softness in having a grandfather accompany and narrate your journey.

What stopped me from finishing?  Mechanics were a beautiful mediocre Mario with some frustrating companion reliance.  It IS designed for two players, and a platform puzzler was more of a distraction to the old man's story.  (Any jumps where one of us fell into the water and he'd reset the narration.)  Probably more fun to watch someone play without that distraction of making the jumps?

Event[0]

Event[0] had you exploring a derelict space station trying to figure out what happened to the crew and dealing with an ornery AI that you must interact with to perform ship functions in an "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" sort of way.

It's a quick episode, but an interesting experience.  I ended up with the "bad" ending because I didn't agree with the decisions I was reading the captain make in the log files, and she killed one of her crew -- so at the final decision point, I went against her wishes and destroyed the Singularity Drive.

The UI was a little bit cumbersome as you had to switch between a typing type interface at terminals that were spread throughout the station, and normal navigational keys.  All in all a well done experience.

Buddy Simulator 1984

This game had amazing promise, but didn't take it to the places I was hoping it was going.

Buddy Simulator 1984 has you befriending a text computer program that slowly grows in power and gets more and more cringy/clingy to the player.  Like a primitive War Games computer, he gets bored with the simple games and needs you to allow him to upgrade.

They played around with some glitchiness, but it really needed to go 'dark'.  If it had tried eliminating everyone else that tried to be friendly in the game or went well over the top with the super cringy-clinginess, it might have been a big hit - but all it all it was fairly tame.   Effectively it built a bad adventure game and whined a lot ... 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I wouldn't say this game made me stop playing .... but, this Sekiro was the game I played last before stopping any Steam games for a very long time.  I was into it, I had made it up to the drunken warrior, but it's kind of a game that demands attention and discipline.

Very similar to Dark Souls with the exception that it's not all dodge-dodge-dodge - combat is more reactive, and there is a more directly told story.  The bosses were very tough, but it loses out on the "epic" that is Dark Souls bosses based on the theme, nothing really measures up to fighting the Gap Dragon for the first time, the "dragon" you fight was more of a novelty battle than a fight. 

Great game though, glad I stuck it through -- feels SO GOOD to beat something that hours before was a brick wall.   

Beyond Blue

Beyond Blue is an experience more than a game.  You play as a researcher tracking some whales and swim the ocean Pokémon style trying to scan all the things.

It's beautiful and peaceful in the ocean, which I suppose it has to be since there is no real "game" to it.   My prepare-yourself gamer attitude that I have developed over the years made me think a shark was going to attack me at any moment, and I did experience a momentary "oh fuuuuu..." when I pod of Orca were swimming my direction, but really this is a sandbox of pure pleasure for a diver I imagine.

You are kept company on your dive with conversations and an evolving story that is really a vehicle to give you more oceanic factoids.  Subtle and smart.  This was a good one.

Styx - Master of Shadows

This was probably a fantastic game, but it pales against what I've come to play and for a game that's based mainly on that mechanic.  It just didn't do it for me.

Styx is a stealth game where you play as a snarky goblin, sneaking around some big castle - stealth killing, hiding bodies, stealing the lewts.  Effectively it comes across as a bad Hitman, and I found myself wandering around bored the first level with no enthusiasm to go on.

My feelings were confirmed watching a video trying to excite me more about the game, and unfortunately without that "epic scope of gameplay/story/look/feel" you're looking for in these games, they come across like a bad Zelda, find the purple key to continue garbage.

Devour

Devour was a game where up to 4 people navigate a house to discover what happened to a missing person who was known to be doing some devilry.   Apparently the ritual that her attempt to summon Azazel has failed in some way, turning her into a lumbering beast, and our mission is to capture and burn the goats we find in order to ... thwart the ensuing darknesss?  

Well - it seemed like the thing to do.

There were three of us doing this, and I learned that the barbarian of my crew is a bit of a liability when it comes to a game that doesn't give you a big shiny axe.  😁

Pretty fun and great example of an indie title, even if you know she's gonna get you, there is no bracing yourself -- it's a jump out of your seat moment.

  

Among The Sleep

 This is a game that started out with a lot of promise and I was really excited for what I thought it was going to be.  You are an infant, barely walking -- the idea of trying to survive a chaotic household and neglectful parents was unfortunately NOT what it was.

You find a creepy bear companion that comes with you through dark "nightmare" landscapes, where the radiator steam sounds like a dragon, but effectively it's an exploration game crawling/climbing/toddling looking for collectibles.

No thanks.