The holidays are here and money is tight so now is the time to consider your purchases carefully! That being said… on tap right now we look at some of the horror-related games available on Steam that are currently on sale.
Find out whether or not they’re worth your hard-earned cash!
We will be adding titles to this list throughout the week so CHECK BACK OFTEN!
Developed by Digital Confectioners
Distributed on Steam
Not Classified by ESRB as of writing (expect M)
Can you feel it in the air? The joy, the whimsy, the ever present tingle that dreams just might come true? Maybe you’ll finally take that magical cabin excursion you’ve been longing for, or your boss will finally give you that raise, or that girl you are fighting with might just get over it with a brief snog under the mistletoe and a shag on the copy machine. It might not happen, but if we cross our fingers and wish, maybe it will all become real this season of merriment. And maybe—just maybe—if we all believe hard enough, video games will all become insanely discounted and available for digital purchase at the drop of a hat.
OOOOOOH shit, I guess dreams really do come true! It’s time for the annual Steam Ever-More-Predictable Holiday Sale! Cry “havoc”, and let slip the credit cards of mirth, for the time of insanely discounted digital goods is upon us! If you are a console gamer and therefore ignorant scum, the Steam Holiday Sale is a time where all us PC gamers get to buy all the 60-dollar games for naught but a nickle and a ball of twine, a statement that is seemingly grand exaggeration until you actually look at the deals and realize that you could currently get brand new titles for up to 75% off. Sure, you can’t trade them in at GameStop, but it’s been a good few years since their trade-in package involved light cuddles and sweet whispers while they leaned you over the table to savagely fuck you, so I find that the ol’ brick and mortar corporate cesspit has lost a lot of its appeal.
So what does this mean to you, starry-eyed fan? Well, ‘tis the season of giving, and what gift is greater than my massive knowledge of all things video games? Yes, this season I will be reviewing some of the standout horror titles to grace the intangible shelves of Steam’s discounted online library so that you might better decide which titles best deserve your half-pence and lint. So without further ado, I present some thoughts to chew and ideas which stew; and take this in lieu of Christmas if you’re denomination be Jew, a half brew review of a game that’s not poo.
Depth is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where one team plays as divers looking for treasure and the other team plays as sharks.
Oh, wait, you’re still reading? I did just tell you it’s a sharks vs. people shooter, right? To be honest that’s really all I had prepared. Well off to more rhyming then… No? No more rhyming? Well fine, I guess I could talk about the merits of the game. Ugh, things were so much easier when my contemporaries were all six and could be sold on something but the inclusion of sharks or quantity of First Edition Charizards.
The first question I will answer is that yes, Depth is indeed a scary game. Far scarier than either Left 4 Dead game, which previously held the title of “Only Awesome Multiplayer Horror Game Ever,” even if it wasn’t that scary. It certainly feels arcadey, as scattered treasure drops and Call of Duty esque score plusses add to the sense that you are competing for a leaderboard rather than fighting for your life. Still, despite this detraction, there’s something viscerally terrifying about wading into the deep abyssal darkness, clenching your pistol close and wondering which spot of dense blackness the next torpedo of teeth will come lunging out from. Environments accurately depict the overwhelming darkness of the deep sea. Your flashlight can only go so far, and your flares only last so long. The game mitigates this a bit by having most of the objective zones be in more claustrophobic and defensible spaces, but God have mercy on your ever shrinking testicles during the moments of open sea travel between waypoints.
The game splits players up into two teams: sharks and divers. As divers, you scour for treasure and defend a robot named S.T.E.V.E. while he cracks open various treasure boxes. The divers are always on the defensive, holding off the sharks at various hubs while a little progress bar above S.T.E.V.E.’s head tells players how long they have left in that spot. After the little guy finishes, he putters off at a leisurely pace, middle finger raised to your increasingly shrill cries, as he decides casually which new death trap to go do his business in. Over time and as a reward for collecting treasure and scoring kills, players earn money, which is used between lives to buy ever stronger shark slaughtering gear. The teams are split up into 4 divers and 2 sharks, so even with the highest level gear, don’t expect to become a submarine armed with the BFG 9000. Sure, there are weapons that can kill a shark in one hit, but given the massive speed and logistics advantages of the sharks, even this relatively powerful weapon falls short of god-tier.
Sharks are always on the offensive. Ideally, you hit the divers hardest while they are going from spot to spot, but give that the divers win if S.T.E.V.E. takes a smoke break at 4 different spots and goes home, waiting isn’t always an option. Luckily, sharks benefit from sharkey-senses, and can tell where not only the divers are, but destructible walls for them to Kool-Aid man through and scamper off with a tasty human treat. As awesome as busting through a wall and snagging an unsuspecting diver is, it is doubly awesome to just tap the wall a couple of times and watch the sea turn brown with fear. To counter the divers’ ever increasing arsenal, the sharks gain evolution points for kills. Each point can be spent on upgrades that cost between 1 and 6 points, with 1 point skills being for girls and 6 point skills for manly men. There are three varieties of shark to play as: the Tiger sharks are the most balanced, Mako sharks sacrifice 2 units of health for 2 of speed, and the Great White trades 2 units of speed for 2 units of health, 3 inches of length, and half an inch of thickness.
Games go on until either the aforementioned robot phones home or each team spends their 30 lives. For how different the two teams play, it is interesting how often games come down to the wire. Sharks main goal is to snatch up people and whisk them away. You deal damage based on how much you swing your head back and forth when someone is in your mouth, so there’s a give and take between trying to drag someone to a nice sit-down place and just fast fooding them down before you die. The game breaks down into some interesting phases, and generally it is the case that sharks will start and end the game stronger, while divers dominate the middle game.
Since God has yet to see fit to invent the double mawed shark, sharks can only grab one person at a time, and while you are nibbling on your prey they are stabbing you in the face as hard as they can. Different sharks can take a different amount of stabs before dying, but as a general rule the fastest shark can’t kill more than two people before helping itself to a seal health pack, which swim around and glow purple. As the humans build up money and start being able to field more robust weapons and placeable defenses, it becomes more and more important for the sharks to take advantage of tactical weak points and ambush zones. By the time the end of the game rolls around, most sharks will have been able to purchase all the upgrades they want, and become auto-healing fast-swimming razor-finning death tornadoes. By this time, S.T.E.V.E. is usually taking his long oblivious stroll through the open water to get back home, so the game quickly becomes just holding off the toothed giants long enough for the divers to be saved by the clock.
As I mentioned before, games really rarely are one sided. Despite being terrifying and fast, the sharks will die to only a few shots. If an enemy manages to get you a few times before you grab someone, the flailing person in your mouth desperately stabbing at you will generally take you down first. The humans have no method of healing damage, so the attrition game is generally favorable towards the sharks. Still, you have to kill them fast enough, or the humans get away with all of your precious gold.
Humans, likewise, never really feel as fragile as they are. While a snapping jaw in the darkness will get you repeatedly every game, you are given enough deployable items and weapons to feel like you can hold your own in any situation. What is terrifying is the unknown. You know the sharks can see you, but you can’t see them. As the sharks approach, you are warned by an ever increasing heart beat. I’m torn between which is scarier: a constant heartbeat telling me the shark is near and just lurking out of view, or the rapidly escalating heartbeat that comes right before a shark ambushes you from the blackness.
There is another game mode called Megalodon, which is crap and not worth talking about. Its like juggernaut mode in other games, and just as stupid.
The biggest problem with Depth is replay value. While I certainly enjoyed the bits I played, and there are plenty of items to unlock, I don’t really see this game holding any kind of lasting or competitive appeal. It lacks the sheer visceral splatter and mayhem of Left 4 Dead or addictive “just one more round” appeal of MOBAs, and I can’t see this game becoming as competitive as more traditional shooters like Counter-Strike. Still, the game is only $25 normally, and currently 33% off at $16.74. Keep an eye on it to see if it goes on daily deal, at which point it will likely be $12.50. I often don’t buy games over $10 during sales, but I’ll be a Mako’s turd if this wasn’t worth every penny.
Developed by Scott Cawthon
Distributed on iOS and Steam
No ESRB classification
Hey, have you been on YouTube ever? Seen any of those “lettuce plays” that are all the rage? Then you have seen Five Nights at Freddy’s. Seriously, if you live on the internet, it is impossible to avoid bad scare-cam Let’s Plays made by men screaming for the appeasement of children and man-children alike. On the one hand, it seems like this game was specifically made so that men trying to be the real life equivalent of Spongebob could pretend to lose their shit over it. On the other hand… it’s actually kind of a clever and well done indie game. I’ve always held the opinion that you can’t really judge a piece of work by its fans, but there are only so many My Chemical Romance concerts you can be the oldest person at before you start to question your judgement. Five Nights at Freddy’s is among titles like Slender and Happy Wheels in the pantheon of basic bullshit internet antichrists, so believe me when I say how hard it is for me to grit my teeth and give this game a good review.
Don’t get me wrong; I hate Five Nights at Freddy’s, and not in the “guy that talks to me too much and always tries too hard to ask me about my sex life” kind of way. I hate Five Nights at Freddy’s like vegans hate butchers. You take something I love, cut it up into a totally unrecognizable mess, and everyone thinks that’s what it normally looks like. Turkeys do not come with their feathers off and their giblets already stuffed up their cavity, and gamers are not screaming man children who make rape jokes every time it might get them an extra page view. That role is reserved solely for media critics, prostitutes the lot.
I am reviewing these titles together because A) they are basically the same game and B) I have to remove one of my testicles every time I write something nice about Five Nights at Freddy’s, and I might want to spawn someday. To give you a brief overview of the differences between the games, in the first you close doors to stop things from murdering you, and in the second you either wear a mask, turn on a flashlight, or wind up a music box to stop things from murdering you. In the first game there are 4 animatronic things that kill you, and in the second there are like 6 or something. Look up a markiplier let’s play if you really give a shit and want to drown in a puddle of screaming filth.
Okay, okay, sorry. Five Nights at Freddy’s is actually pretty good. Based on your personal gaming preferences, you will think that the game is either that kind of creepy thing you didn’t care to play again or the most terrifying shit ever. The basic premise of the game is that you are a security guard at copyright safe Chuck E. Cheeses, and at night the animatronic figures come to life and walk the halls. You are stationed in a control room, and your only method of tracking the robots is with strategically placed cameras. You do your best to follow their movements, and then either close doors/interact with the environment to keep them at bay. You have to survive for 6 hours game time, and you only have a limited amount of power to check the cameras and keep the doors closed. In the second game you have to do the aforementioned music box/mask/light routine to keep things away, but it’s basically the same concept.
The animatronic figures won’t move while you look at them, so they all have this uncanny mannequin quality to them. At one moment they will be on stage, still lifeless, and at the next the could be looking right into the camera of the hallway outside your door. They are supposed to move around in a logical order, room to connected room, but it seems like this is way more of a factor in the first game than the second. The second is largely about responding to spooky things in your face as fast as possible while winding a music box. If they manage to get to you, they jump in your face and scream in what can only be described as a Newgrounds flash game manner, and you have to start the night over. Make it 6 in game hours, and you pass to the next night. I didn’t time it, but Wikipedia says 6 in game hours takes 8-9 minutes, so let’s go with that.
Each animatronic animal has different behavior, so managing what keeps which at bay and figuring out which one is stalking you from what angle can be an incredibly tense and rewarding task. Some are scared off by lights, while others get angry if you aren’t looking at them. While sometimes the game does fall victim to RBG (random bullshit generator), overall you get a sense that the reason you lose is because you failed to keep your time well managed. There’s nothing quite like running out of power at the last second and praying the clock turns over before the automatic loss triggers.
As for visuals, the camera feeds are staticy and the rooms covered in shadows. It is always a start when you switch to a camera and one of the animatrons is looking right into it, but it can be even more terrifying to switch to one and see it just standing peacefully in the shadows. The environments are all drenched with this surreal “real place gone wrong” feel reminiscent of Silent Hill outside of the dark world, and it would be a disservice to say that it evokes anything other than an uneased choking dread. I mean sure, staticy feeds and characters that only move when you aren’t looking is a cheap trick, but its the kind of cheap trick that wears that special shade of red lipstick that gets you off and the eyeliner just smeared enough to be hot.
On top of being tense and decently challenging, Five Nights at Freddy’s also has a great sense of building a good horror narrative. The right blend of comedic and mysterious, every night before the level begins you are called by the manager, who informs you of the new level conditions. It’s a really great touch, and goes a really long way towards both educating the player and breaking the monotony of the game. If nothing else, at least try to look up a video of the calls, as they are worth listening to.
To top it off, the game is really cheap. The first is $5 normally and currently discounted down to $3.34, and the second is $8 normally and currently discounted down to $6.39. I would be willing to bet these will both go on sale sometime during the sale, so pick them up if you want a good quick but satisfying horror romp. Definitely worth the price, and definitely better than Youtube hype.
If Markiplier were a real human being, he would be the guy that held Hitler’s hand in times of doubt, and told him that if he really just tried, the world would see he had great ideas.
Developed by Superflat Games
Produced by Curve Studios
Rated T for Teen
Lone Survivor is a zeitgeist nightmare. A survival horror crafting game with a hunger system, psychological narrative, and pixel graphics is something everyone that is up their own ass thinks they are good enough to finally get right. Even Keiichiro Toyama knew his limits, and he made Silent Hill. I reviewed this game before for a previous independent attempt at video game journalism, so let me break from my normal pattern of over-exposition and get right into why Lone Survivor is an overrated piece of trash.
Above all the gripes I have about the story or the gameplay or it being up its own ass, the biggest problem with Lone Survivor is that it is impossible to look at. I’m not saying the graphics are BAD, no one can say that about a pixel game now days without nerd girls the world over refusing to ever show them their deviant art/touch their cocks again. What I am saying is that the game was physically painful for me to look at. Like seriously, right now, look up a gameplay video, and try to tell me that the pixel coloration and text formatting does not send needles into your eyes. I don’t really give a shit how good a game is, if I physically cannot look at it without feeling pain, you have done a bad job. I do not care if it was part of the “artistic expression.” If an artist rapes me or punches me in the face to make an artistic point, they are a sociopath and their art is terrible (relevant link http://www.artlurker.com/2009/09/the-rape-tunnel-by-sheila-zareno/).
As for the gameplay, there’s not much to say about it. Its standard horror fare. You shoot things when you have ammo, avoid them when you don’t. Use lures to get enemies to move, and you find keys that open doors that have keys in them that open other doors. You come across a series of moral choices, that to the game’s credit are less moral choices than emergent gameplay decisions. Adopt a cat, help out a stranger, etc. Things are never given to you directly as bad or good, so kudos.
Except eating too much raw meat gives you a bad ending. The fuck is that bullshit? I get that uncooked meat feeds into your “primal and savage nature,” but isn’t this game supposed to take place during an apocalypse, real or imaginary? I’m sorry, but if you are going to get all high and mighty over me for eating raw cat ribs during the literal end of the world, you need to check your privilege.
There are a number of lugubrious gameplay barriers as well that don’t serve a meaningful purpose. If you want to open a can, you have to bring an opener back to your apartment. If you want to cook food, you have to get fuel for your stove. If you want to boil water, you have to go get water and a pot plus the fuel. Yes, I get it is realistic, but this isn’t Minecraft. I can’t just run off carefree into the environment, initially saddled with a goal, but inevitably overwhelmed by the need to explore and adventure. This is a game where if you don’t eat every 6 minutes, the wasting virus you have contracted gives your character the grumblies. Finding the materials to actually play the game to its full effect is a chore. I don’t mind games that make me collect things to upgrade my base, but to have to do so much scavenging for basic function is annoying.
As for the game’s much touted story, it feels like a Dan Brown novel written by a Silent Hill fanfiction author. If you could not figure out from the first 5 second that the entire world was a manifestation of the “nameless man’s” (protagonist) guilt, then this is the first work of human narrative fiction you have ever encountered. If you could not figure out that the man with a box on his head was a representation of yourself within the first 5 seconds, then you dropped your Cheetos during the opening cinematic and were too busy diving to the floor to scoop them up with your mouth to pay attention. If you think this plot is deep, then you are the problem with horror games, and why every “new” indie idea is just a rehash of Silent Hill 2
Let me give you a good example of why this game is a tainted mess. Here is the top rated review on steam “Never in my life, has a game siphoned my very core of hope and purity, yet given me so much to live for. This game is a must for horror fans, this game is purely amazing and has so many strong suites it’s amazing. I would play this more if my sanity wasn’t being drained every second by it’s impending horror.” (courtesy of CryX4) Wow CryX4, the game is so amazing that it is amazing? It gives you something to live for? It drains your sanity every second? No. No it does not. It is a video game. But this is the kind of hyperbolic nonsense that horror fans have to put up with. Sure, I might make a joke about how a movie or game made me slice open a part of my body and remove it out of shame, but no one thinks that’s serious. I can imagine this person writing this review with a swelling in their heart, imagining themselves as the tortured game designer/protagonist, extolling the virtues of a project he has come to consider his child.
The whole project reeks of something the developer was too close to to look at objectively, and something everyone else too wishes was their baby to criticize. The game hurts your eyes, throws pointless moral binaries in your face, and makes you strain to accomplish the simplest tasks. If this were a mainstream title and didn’t ride its indie cred, it would be a totally forgotten mess that was lambasted as having too many ideas that were too poorly executed. Despite being released 2 years ago, it still demands 15 of your hard earned dollars, 7 and a half during its current sale. If you really feel like wasting your money on an overly self-important burden of a game, be my guest, but I honestly don’t understand why you wouldn’t just play Silent Hill 2 instead, which was not garbage and exactly what this game wanted to be.
Developed by Fullbright
Produced by Midnight City
No ESRB classification
Gone Home is the only game to have ever simultaneously disappoint and deeply move me. It isn’t that the game is bad, quite the opposite. I was disappointed that there was not more of it. Of the odd category known now as “walking simulators,” Gone Home tells the story of the Greenbriar family through the eyes of the eldest daughter, Kaitlin, who has recently returned home from college slightly after midnight to find that her family is all missing. The only you ever hear of Kaitlin’s voice comes from a message on the answering machine telling her family that she will be home soon, so the rest of the narrative is fleshed out by letters and journals left behind by various other members of the family. Piece by piece, you weave together a tapestry that depicts the intricacies of a family, where each life works as not only its own play, but as a part in a larger drama. Beautifully told, it really gets at the heart of character drama. The mother isn’t disapproving of her daughter’s romantic choices because of some unshakable moral standpoint, but is too distracted by her own dissatisfaction to give her the understanding she deserves. It beautifully reflects how real life sentiments are rarely so binary, and how our own misplaced emotion can harm those around us.
By putting the story together piece by piece, the game maintains a sense of progressive mystery. Start to finish, Gone Home takes place in the rooms, hallways, and sometimes secret passageways of the Greenbriar’s home. Certain doors are locked upon your arrival, and only through light puzzle solving can you progress. As you are led from room to room—sometimes by a breadcrumb trail, but more often by your own curiosity—you are free to pick up, examine, and sometimes manipulate various objects in the house. Sometimes these are just for flavor, and sometimes they lead to neat little secrets like extra songs or hidden information on the house’s mysterious past. Often times these little tidbits offer you hints on how to proceed, but actual progression is secondary to the pull of learning more about the family and house. The method distributing information is non-linear. You don’t learn about your father’s failed writing career until after you learn about his alcoholism, and you hear about your mother’s potential affair long before you hear about how she came to that point. It is a narrative style so compelling, that by sheer desire to know more was I able to will myself through the spookier parts of the game.
So, I wouldn’t be reviewing this if there wasn’t some kind of horror aspect. While it is hard to say that Gone Home is a horror game, it is certainly frightening. The premise alone of walking through the hallways alone of an unfamiliar house, dark and creeky, while wondering what happened to the warm and populated home you expected is enough to give pause to anyone wondering what lies behind the next door. Lights turn on and off on their own, bulbs pop, doors thump, and a mysterious red light seeps out from the attic. On top of that, secret passageways and compartments abound, and while some are necessary to progress, many of the game’s more buried treasures tell the story of great uncle Oscar. It is never entirely clear, but something bad happened with Oscar, and there are rumors that his ghost still walks the halls of the house.
Not the least of the believers in this tale is Kaitlin’s younger sister Sam, who serves as the primary narrative focus of the story. Most of the game is spent learning of the growing up and eventual sexual maturity of Sam, whose ghost hunting diaries through the house lead through secret passages and into the metaphorical and literal hidden lairs behind the home. Rarely does a game give you so much reason to care with so little hyperbolic or dramatic flair to make it seem larger than life. This is the story of real people living in a home, and the triumphs and tribulations they all face trying to get through life both as individuals and as a family.
There are some shortcomings to the game, but I really cannot say why without spoiling the whole thing for you. Keep in mind, this is the first and likely last spoiler free review you will ever get out of me, so realize the respect and love that I have for this game. That being said, it doesn’t lead up to much. There isn’t really any reason to play it again, so after the 2 hours it takes to beat it is unlikely you will get anything more out of it, save for intellectual discussions with friends. Likewise, there isn’t a whole lot to do in the game. Other than picking up objects, twirling them, and reading notes, the game doesn’t offer any other gameplay. Puzzles are also of the casual variety, so players looking for a challenge will not find one. The ending is a bit anticlimactic, especially given the way the tension ramps in the final act. Still, as far as fulfilling the narrative promise of the game, there is in my mind no conceivable ending that could have done better. Sure there were different ways to end it, but none that would have surpassed the original.
Gone Home is a beautiful triumph of narrative gaming. Walking simulators are a feat often tried, but rarely mastered. Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, and Gone Home are the only three I’d ever recommend, and for me Gone Home towers over the other two in quality. As an English major from Berkeley, I have read books for college classes that had a less compelling grasp of storytelling than this game. A true marvel to behold for anyone looking for a creepy yet quiet and compelling mystery, Gone Home is a game that truly will stand the test of time.
Developed by Flying Wild Hog
Published by Devolver Digital
Rated M for Mature
In a time when games were made exclusively for boys and misogyny was the rule instead of the taboo, a man named Duke taught us how to kick ass when bubblegum wasn’t an option. The Duke was a foul mouthed mega-macho ball of cheese, and behind Doom levels of splatter and a whole Schwarzenegger of one liners beat a golden heart of cheeky fun. 3D Realms created an icon with Duke Nukem 3D (commonly referred to as the only Duke Nukem), and it would take 15 years to deliver a proper sequel. Riding the success of Duke Nukem 3D, 3D Realms cranked the cultural insensitivity up to 11 and released Shadow Warrior a year later. Chronicling the adventures of asian swordsman Lo Wang, players must battle an army of demons during their quest to take down the evil Master Zilla. The game was innovative for the time, featuring vehicle segments and weapons with multiple firing modes, which wouldn’t become standard in games for years.
It is a bit funny that for a game that was originally so innovative, the remake would go for an explicitly “retro” feel. The 2013 Shadow Warrior is a reimagining rather than a remake. While the game still stars Lo Wang and features frantic first person sword and gun play, this game is noticeably different in that it contains both a decent story and clever jokes. Sure, there is still a heavy dose of immature boy humor here (the character is named Lo Wang, after all), but the heart that beats at the core of Shadow Warrior is one of sentiment rather than just pure cheese.
Early in Lo Wang’s quest, he befriends a demon named Hoji, who for unknown reasons has been banished to the mortal realm. Together the two embark on a quest to stop Zilla from taking over the world and defeat the evil demon lord Enra. To figure out how to defeat Enra and learn the history of the Shadow Realm, Lo Wang hunts down mechanical golems called whisperers. He learns that he must assemble the pieces of the Nobitsura Kage, an ancient sword capable of killing gods, or else lose the world to Enra’s demon armies.
If you played Flying Wild Hog’s previous game Hard Reset, then you know what you are in store for with Shadow Warrior. Wave after wave of demon materialize for you to chop, shoot, burn, and magic heart crush. Limbs fly off, heads roll, and chests split open in a fountain of gore that will prove orgasmically satisfying for any splatter fan. Larger demons can be decapitated, and their heads used as laser cannons, while minor demons hearts can be used as an instant kill against all demons in the immediate area.
Along with your katana, the arsenal of guns include a piston, shotgun, uzi, rocket launcher, etc. Money can be found throughout the game to purchase new upgrades, while karma earned in combat or found in shrines can be used to upgrade your powers on a multi-tiered skill tree. Ki Crystals can also be found, allowing you to learn new attacks like a shockwave. In classic video game fashion, secrets abound, but with the modern design wisdom to not have any of the more ridiculous feats that Doom required to access hidden weapons or rewards. Overall, there is an enormous amount to both see and do in Shadow Warrior, and will remain interesting even after many playthroughs of its lengthy campaign.
Environments are varied enough to be stay interesting, and a combat rating system will constantly push you to figure out more diverse and bombastic ways to kill your enemies. This is, however, a retro shooter, so beyond the linear levels mixed in with some open multi-objective ones, don’t expect the level design to revolutionize anything. The game sticks to a safe spot, but one that it executes with expertly.
There’s really not much more to say about the combat. Sometimes a turret section here or there will break it up, but mostly you will be chopping demons in twain till the credits roll. This is something I am totally fine with, as long as the combat is satisfying, and for me at least the game never felt like it was becoming repetitive. Even if it was at times a bit samey, the challenge was great enough and combat viscerally satisfying enough to leave me always entertained.
That being said, there are reasons I can see people being turned off to the game. It is certainly a bit of a boys game, and juvenile dick jokes abound. As I said before, however, what sets Shadow Warrior apart from its predecessor or contemporaries is that the humor has heart. While it might be initially difficult to believe that you could ever care for a character whose name means large penis or his sarcastic demon companion, by the time the credits role you will feel loss, triumph, and perhaps even a few man tears. Yeah, when you enter Lo Wang’s secret hideout and find out hes a huge comic book nerd, it feels a bit like pandering, but overall the jokes work more to create a sense of camaraderie and chemistry between the two main characters to better flesh out the narrative.
If you are a fan of the old Duke Nukem style shooters, this game is for you. If you need to watch fountains of blood and limbs pile up to become fully erect, consider this game your Viagra. If you want a decently told story that mixes humor with drama, you surprisingly won’t be disappointed with Shadow Warrior. If you worry about games becoming too simple or care more about accurate depictions of minority cultures, this game is not for you. If sexist jokes turn you off, you will not like Shadow Warrior. If you are looking for something closer to the original Fallout in complexity than Fallout 3, then Shadow Warrior will seem like a waste of time.
Overall, Shadow Warrior offers up a bloody good time that might move you more than you expected it would. Flying Wild Hog really went above and beyond adapting a classic style to the modern era in a way more than just straight replication. A surprise favorite of mine, take with a grain of salt in this review my bias. I love splatter shooters, and this game delivered on that promise and then some. If Shadow Warrior were a real boy, I’d kiss him under the bleachers for the whole pep rally. Yeah he’s crude and dark and a bit of a guy’s guy, but hes got a great heart and if you just get the time to know him you’ll see it too, mom and dad.
Oh, and it’s only $4 right now. From $40. For the next day. I love PC gaming.
Developed by Blackpowder Games
Distributed on Steam
Not classified by ESRB
Betrayer is yet another horror game that will probably get a pass from many people on concept alone. A first-person stealth-shooter, Betrayer tells the story of an unnamed protagonist who washes ashore the beaches of colonial Virginia. The player will encounter various spirits over the course of the game, whose untimely deaths serve as both quests and backstory to help flesh out the world. The time period is relatively untouched in gaming, so the chance to deal out some black powder death and tomahawk haircuts is appealingly unique.
The visuals are also unique, sporting a grayscale palette for both the light and the dark worlds. Players switch between the two by ringing a bell, with the main difference being that the dark world is… well darker, and the player can talk to spirits. There are certain quests or objectives that can only be completed in one or the other, so expect frequent switching between the two. The only color in the world comes from the ghastly reds on enemies armor, and the bright red dress of the game’s mysterious sole living NPC. The woman in the red dress serves as a main quest giver, and it is around her that the story unfolds and revolves.
Players start out with a hatchet and bow, but after a few kills will likely acquire most of what the game has to offer. Musket, crossbows, and pistols round out your main arsenal, with powder kegs and tomahawks serving as consumable extras. Health does not automatically regenerate, so players must conserve water skins that return you to full life and can only be refilled at certain checkpoints. Since theres a finite amount of damage you can take each time you venture out, the game promotes a stealthy approach. Taking a few enemies out with your bow before they can notice you is more likely to lead to success than just blasting in with your musket.
So if at this point you are sold on concept alone, please read the rest as a warning. I was very excited for Betrayer when it came out. I thought the visuals were gorgeous, and the time period unique enough to warrant my $15. While I did not hate the game, I will say that I never beat it, and never intend to. I do not have some kind of visceral distaste for the game. I just found it far too tedious to complete and not compelling enough to overcome that tedium.
I got to about the 80% point before looking at the passageway to the next zone, taking a deep breath, and just throwing my hands up, so I feel like I’m pretty well qualified to talk about the game despite not knowing how it ends. The main reason that Betrayer is tedious is because of the light/dark world mechanic. The game doesn’t have any waypoints for quests, so finding where to go is done by pressing the listen key and trying to figure out where the breeze is directing you. It’s a fine concept, but having to explore the same area twice while listening to the spirits of the wind guide me to the next clue about what happened to the lost ghost boy wears on my nerves. Combat is not quick, as enemies take multiple hits to kill and muskets multiple seconds to reload. Now I do not mind games with slower and more thoughtful combat, but when it becomes a frequent roadblock in your running around and listening to the wind endeavors, the combat goes from a monotonous challenge to a downright annoyance.
The areas are large enough that exploring them even once becomes a task. There are a handful of zones in the game, and each must be thoroughly traveled twice to get all of the content. Even then, some quests are resolved unintuitively. I would never have guessed I had to find a randomly spawning wraith and kill it before it disappeared to get the game’s only shovel. If not for the internet, I would have gone the whole time just assuming I had yet to acquire it as a quest reward.
What’s even more annoying is how a game supposedly about stealth sometimes just says “no stealth for you this time!” I am not talking about forced combat sections, though there are a couple of those in the game. What I mean is that enemy helmets have a random chance to deflect arrows. Arrows can only kill unsuspecting enemies in one hit if it is a headshot, so if you shoot the arrow and it just clangs off you either have to reload a checkpoint or pull out the musket and hope for the best. Arrows aren’t effective as a mid-combat weapon, so if you don’t have a good gun then sometimes the lord of random chance just tells you to start over. New and more powerful weapons can be bought with money, but they are all just stronger versions of a previous weapon. Higher level bows have a lower chance of deflection, and better guns have more damage and faster reloads. Pretty standard stuff, and not a lot of variety.
So like I said earlier, its not that Betrayer is bad, it’s just boring. A lot of good ideas stretched way too thin across a game that just couldn’t support it. A lot of ideas, not a lot of execution. At $20, the game isn’t going to be worth the price for most, but seeing as how it’s only $8 right now, it might be worth checking out. See if the idea interests you, then buy accordingly.
Developed by Tripwire Interactive
Distributed by Steam
Rated M for Mature
Killing Floor is one of those baffling relics of PC gaming that pop up from time to time. Essentially unchanged since its release as an Unreal Tournament 2004 modification, Killing Floor is now a stand alone release powered by the Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 engine, which itself was also originally an UT 2004 mod. Veteran PC gamers will feel nostalgic booting the game up, as the minimalistic menu and populating server list with a big refresh button will break back memories of Counter-Strike LAN parties of yesteryear, in a time when 1.6 was still new and the only version. People who gamed at this time are the sorts that scoff at the idea of $15 map packs, as new maps, skins, and indeed entire new versions of the game were only a click to a new server and a 15 minute automatic download away. After they verified game files of course, and did something called “cache”.
So you can imagine the waves of nostalgic delight that washed over me when I connected to a “pirates of the carribean” map, which downloaded with a percentage tracker on the server connect screen. I will say that time has been kind to this method of peer-to-peer connection and downloads, as one no longer has to wait a whole round and a half to enter the game or risk being dropped mid download for inactivity. And heaven help you if the map changed while you were downloading! Then you’d have to be booted back to the connection screen and redownload what would inevitably be a whole new slew of modifications, map info, and announcer packs for the next map as well. High-speed internet has made the need for dedicated servers only something for console snobs and the destitute, and even with a toaster for a modem I couldn’t see any Killing Floor data taking more than a few minutes to download.
However, most of these old games that still have a following are competitive. Quake 3 might have bots, but you really want to play so you can rocket jump frag your friends and see if you can still railgun pwn noobs after over a decade of Call of Duty has dulled your reflexes. Killing Floor, on the other hand, is not competitive. Sure, it is multiplayer, but it is a co-op shooter. With no 360 no-scopes to brag about or 5v1 comebacks to cheer for, I really have no idea why people come back to this game. I’ve played KF maybe once a year for the past 4 years, and it has always been basically the same game. In preparation for this review, I fired it up again, ready to see what they had added. Other than a few new guns and an objective mode, it was still the same game.
And I would get that, if the game itself were super compelling. To briefly summarize, Killing Floor is a game where you and up to 6 other people shoot between 7 and 15 waves of zombies, each wave consisting of about a hundred undead. There are various types of zombies, and while some shoot, some stealth, and some spit at you, they all basically follow the same pattern of shamble over and try to smack you. They have varying amounts of health, and some of them enrage, but if you and your buddies put your backs to a wall and open fire, things usually turn out just fine. The character models for the undead vary between standard shamblers and creatures that look like something from a Silent Hill fan game that was trying too hard to be edgy. I don’t really get the design scheme of a game where a butcher zombie in an apron and carrying a chainsaw is part of the same undead horde as a cyber zombie with an arm cannon and proton pack.
So hold off the hordes, and at the end of it all you fight the “Patriarch,” a big goofy looking mech-zombie that has a rocket launcher/machine gun for one arm and a big goofy hand coming out of its chest. It can go invisible and heal, and soaks up a metric fuckton of damage before going down. Its pretty satisfying to finally take it down, but after the sixth time it gets kind of old.
The big reason to keep playing is that performing certain feats levels up different “perks.” Shoot enough dudes with a shotgun, and your field support skill will go up. Get 700 headshots with rifles, and your marksman skill will go up. It takes a really long time to level up the various fields, and after 2 hours of slashing away with my katana to level up my berserker perk, I took stock of my life and got a job.
To mitigate the grind, there are servers that allow you to spawn infinite enemies and give you unlimited money. This is my favorite feature of these old games. Sometimes these maps are for grinding specific achievements, sometimes these maps are for grinding levels, and sometimes these maps are just for grinding headshoting skills, but grind maps are a uniquely oldschool PC gaming set piece.
And for that no frills oldschool mentality, I kind of like Killing Floor. Yeah enemies are going to bounce around erratically and clip through the environments, thats just what happens when your game was made in 3 months by a group of highschool friends. Get over it, nerd. Hell yeah you are going to sometimes join servers where scoring kills grants you exp so you can level up your avatar like a warcraft character, get used to the random lasers flying out of everyones heads. Oh im sorry, do you not know all the key commands to “rock votes” or “votemap”? Heres an unintuitive multi-tier menu that explains things as a text overlay while you play. Good luck finding a corner dark enough to read it.
While not really a great game, Killing Floor is marvelously and unapologetically retro. It still manages to exist at a $20 price point a million years after its release, but is also kind of one of those games that almost everyone just default owns now because it was on sale for 90% at one time or another. They still release christmas and halloween maps sometimes, and every once in a blue moon a new character pack will miraculously still manage to make sales. If you check your Steam library right now, chances are you own Killing Floor and didn’t even realize it. For the rest of you, consider picking it up next time it costs less than $5 and relive/see for the first time how PC games used to be.
Developed by The Indie Stone
Distributed on Steam
Not classified by the ESRB
I am vastly unqualified to talk about Project Zomboid. To date, I have tried three times to get into it, and every time I reach my point of “fuck this” at about the 30 minute mark. Still, the game is popular enough and in high enough demand that not covering it would be a massive mistake on my part. So, keep in mind while reading this, that I am absolutely terrible at Project Zomboid, and with a gun to my head would still not learn how to play it.
Playing Project Zomboid feels more like making a video game than playing one. It is so hard and so complex, it is almost as difficult to get into as Dwarf Fortress, and with roughly the same level of visual fidelity. You have to give the developers credit, because with all of the half-baked open world zombie survival games littering Early Access and Kickstarter, it took some serious commitment and balls to actually deliver on that promise. There is so much to do, so much to consider, and so much to learn in Project Zomboid that the game almost has to be played in a window next to the wiki. They should offer seminars on how to survive the first day alone. I learned Excell faster than I learned just how to secure a house in Project Zomboid.
Of the things you have to consider in Project Zomboid, the zombies are just one of many threats to your life. Of course you have to eat and drink, that has become standard in survival games. Some games might even have hypothermia as a consideration. I have never seen a game before this one where running too much can cause a heat stroke. The game’s version of status ailments are called “moodles,” and range from being injured to just bored and unhappy. You seriously have to worry about how bored your character is in a game about the zombie apocalypse. You also have to worry about how wet your character is. If you stay out in the rain too long, you better hope you can find a towel or start a fire, because if you don’t you increase your chances of getting sick.
But not only the various status ailments are this complicated. The whole game is this complicated. Everything has its own site cone and sound waves. If you are facing a direction, what zombies are behind you actually become fogged out. You seriously cannot see behind your head in an isometric adventure game. That is a beyond Fallout level of intense. Sight cones really matter, too, since a zombie can see you through a window and try to get inside. To mitigate this, player can hang sheets over windows to act as curtains, and peek out intermittently to see if the coast is clear. Players can try to clear houses by baiting zombies with sound, but too much noise can lead to a chain reaction, and soon a whole horde is pounding on your door.
Of course there is crafting, and of course you have to find the correct corresponding tool to craft. Saws become more valuable than shotguns in the long run, and what kind of storage space you have becomes a serious long term concern. Everything takes time to move from one place to another, so even storing good becomes a consideration. If you do manage to create a safe house, then looting the surrounding area becomes easier, but be careful not to draw too large of a swarm, or you will quickly find your house not so safe.
Combat is actually pretty simple given how complicated the rest of the game is. Players wind up swings, and then beat zombies when they are downed to finish them off. Each kill takes a random amount of time based on how much damage your weapon does with each hit, but overall zombie killing in the early game is more of a tedious necessity when clearing houses than something you do for fun. It really does get that whole “neverending and impossible hordes” feel right, and it really does seem like the real enemy is the elements and the zombies are just kind of an omnipresent obstacle.
Chances are, you already know if you might possibly be into Project Zomboid. Purchasing the game, I thought I was one of the people who had the patience and metal wherewithal to have a successful run at Project Zomboid. I am not. The game taught me that I am not. I will enjoy hearing friends talk about the game, and wonder with amazement how they ever had to patience and time to figure all of it out. I will continue to wish the developers the best of luck, and hope the game reaches the lofty goals of all the clamouring fans on the internet. I am glad that the game exists, but I will not be partaking in it. This is a party I am satisfied just hearing about, a pretty lady who I am satisfied just being acquaintances with. I’ll surely talk her up to my friends who might be into that, but I’m certainly not going to find my jollies there.
Developed by The Fun Pimps
Distributed on Steam
Not classified by the ESRB
Speaking of open world crafting survival games with zombies, 7 Days to Die! Titled like a poorly translated asian horror film, 7DtD is yet another attempt to cash in on all that sweet sweet Minecraft money. Stating my bias right off the bat, I do not understand why people like these games. I get Minecraft. Minecraft is a simple and goofy little game where everyone can make their own ideal dream habitat, where the only limit is their imagination and curved edges. Sure, Minecraft has some gamey stuff like enemies and specific pattern crafting, but it’s all very easy to figure out and play. Theres not a lot of needlessly complicated crafting trees and prerequisite items, and unless you are going to start messing around with Redstone nothing really is beyond the grasp of anyone playing it.
While less complicated than Project Zomboid, 7 Days to Die is still very complicated. I have played 7 Days to Die on and off for the better part of a year as part of my delving into various different zombie survival games, and I will say with confidence that I have not even scratched the surface of what the game has to offer. You start out with naught but your fists and a few survival items, and the game gives you a smack on the bum and some rubbish piles to search through. Everything takes time to search, with larger and more loot probable items taking more time. Piles of trash take a second, cars five, and thirty whole seconds for gun safes. Your success in 7 Days to Die will largely hinge on what you find early on. Sticking to the road and heading to the nearest landmark is generally a good idea, but since the game spawns you randomly theres no telling if the nearest landmark will be full of locked doors and zombies or guns and food.
If you do not manage to find some kind of early game axe for breaking into locked houses, you can always fashion a stone axe out of a sharpened stone, stick, and plant fibers. If you cannot seem to find a sharpened stone or plant fibers, that is because you have to craft them. To craft them, you have to put it in the crafting screen by itself and click craft. The game has an in game menu to tell you how to do this, but not a tutorial for you to figure this out, so the average player will have no idea how to get these simple and early game items.
Later items will require a similar level of commitment to figure out. Making a fire ax takes 3 sticks and 2 iron ingots. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, do you have a forge? If you cannot at this point figure out how to make a forge because it is not one of the items in your crafting menu, that is because you have not found the correct skill book to learn how to make the forge. Go find it. After you have found it, you may now start smelting an iron ingot. Just go ahead and toss in your 6 scrap iron that you found by breaking down various iron items, 6 sticks for fuel, and your iron ingot mold. Oh, you forgot about the mold? That will take 5 lumps of clay to make. Haven’t found clay yet? Well all you have to do is find one of those valuable water sources and just search around until you find some. Once you have all that in order, just do it all over again for your second ingot and you can make yourself a fire axe.
The problem with this is, in order to get a lot of that scrap iron or recipe book, you have to be able to loot houses. Houses are generally accessed by locked doors, which you can easily knock down with your trusty fire axe! Oh, how do you get in before you have the axe? Well, you could punch it for 100 years, or you could get lucky and find a fire axe randomly in the wild. That is what I mean when I saw that your early game survival is based largely on luck.
Now I know some 7 Days to Die zen master is going to come in and tell me how im just a noob that wasn’t good enough to play the game properly, and to him I say “yes, exactly.” If I have to dig through 7 pages of a wiki to figure out how to get all the things in order to build a rock tied to a stick, then I am too stupid for that game. I understand how it might sound cool to be able to break down everyday items into useful materials, and how everything can be broken down into a more base and craftable form, but this is too much. If I need to forge a pistol slide, barrel, and stock in order to make a pistol, that is too many steps. Just let me put my iron in the shape of a little gun and let me start killing things.
It is for this reason I will never see most of what the game has to offer. I will never create my own compound complete with traps and an adjacent mine shaft, because that shit would take way too much time. In Minecraft, making a safe house for the night was as simple as punching downwards and putting a block over your head. Sure, there are some unintuitive things, and it might take someone a while to figure out how to use the forge properly, but once you kind of get what you are doing you can have a functional base up and running in 15 minutes. It takes me 15 minutes in 7 Days to Die to read the wiki page on the various uses of shrubs.
So, with that in mind, I will say I did not like 7 Days to Die. Once again, if this kind of game sounds like your thing, then have at it! I certainly do not care for it. It isn’t that I don’t like these kinds of survival Minecraft clones, I just hate needless complication. The more steps you add between me and the thing I want to accomplish, the harder it is for me to keep giving a shit about it. I appreciate a challenge, but I just cannot see why I should give a shit about 7 Days to Die.
Developed by The Astronaughts
Distributed by Nordic Games
Rated M for Mature
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was one of the games I was really hoping would go on sale. An intriguing enough premise to catch my eye, but not open my wallet at the full-price asking point. Similar to Gone Home, Vanishing is half walking simulator and half puzzle game. I had intentionally blacked myself out from all media about the game, since with really narrative heavy games it is very easy to ruin the plot even by inference. Therefore, I will try and keep the review as spoiler free as possible, but keep in mind that even the slightest detail might tip something off and ruin the story for you. If you want to avoid all of that, just skip to the bottom where I give the game a 3.5/5 and click to the next review.
The game is told from the perspective of Paul Prospero, a paranormal detective with a flair for the dramatic macabre. Arriving to the town of Red Creek Valley via an enigmatic train tunnel, Paul must piece together clues and solve riddles on his journey to find the titular Ethan Carter, who has *spoiler alert* vanished. There are two narratives to follow, with the first being the immediate story of Ethan and his family and the other consisting of short stories and flashbacks that flesh out the family prior to the events of the game. There is an interesting interplay on reality here, and as the more fantastical shows it has roots in the real, the real becomes more fictitious.
The game starts off with a white text on black background disclaimer that, “This game is a narrative experience that does not hold your hand.” You know you’re in for some pretty obtuse shit when that shows up. That being said, its not really all that difficult to get a grasp of the basics of the game. Your method of interacting with the world is minimalistic. Right clicking zooms in, but unless I missed something was never required to solve puzzles. As the game starts, loud traps spring that require your investigation. In this way, the game teaches you how to inspect elements. As you go on, you realize that inspecting things leads to a clearer picture of the spirit world, thereby teaching you how to complete puzzles. After you find the last trap hidden off the beaten path, you learn that sometimes you have to look for objects outside of the main path. So maybe the game holds your hand a little bit, but it’s more of a spiritual ghost hand gently guiding you than an impatient mother dragging you along.
To elaborate, this is a spooky detective game. While you do solve murders by finding clues, deducing the most probable course of action, and creating a timeline, it is all done in a ghostly manner. Inspect a body, and how much of the spirit realm you can see dictates how much of the puzzle you have left to solve. Sometimes puzzles are solved rather quickly, and other times they can be arduous. The difficulty seems to peak at the midway point of the game, and while this helps the narrative flow better at the end, it does feel anticlimactic.
While murder investigations are generally pretty straightforward, the secondary story bits are usually far more complicated. Ethan is a young and imaginative boy, whose short stories come to life. After you solve each puzzle, the world snaps out of the fantasy into the reality that it reflects. It is initially unclear whether he manifests them into reality, has some form of prophecy, or simply an active imagination. I found myself constantly considering and reexamining what truth to really believe as the game went on. It adds to the fantastical mystery element, and at these times the game is at its best.
Even the most obtuse puzzles aren’t text adventure level hard, so it shouldn’t take you more than a few hours to beat. If you knew all the answers, I’m sure the game could be whipped through during a lunch break, but thats kind of missing the point. The game is one to be enjoyed slowly, taken in bit by bit, and muddled over as you travel from location to location. It is very easy to miss a side quest or two your first time around, so take your time and make sure you see everything there is to see.
Unfortunately, poorly hidden items too commonly break the flow, detracting from the overall experience. The game is only 10 puzzles long, so even having 4 of these with difficult and obtuse solutions is too much. For example, the first murder scene of the game cannot be solved without finding an inconspicuous rock that has a little bit of blood on it. Then, you have to figure out that the tree stump at the end of the train tracks has a matching indentation in it, and put the rock back. This is way too easy to miss, especially in a game without well defined puzzle boundaries. Likewise, I would not be surprised if most people do not realize that the swirling letters can be focused by turning your head, showing you the direction of an objective. Sure, the game said it won’t hold your hand, but it is difficult to intuit in a game with a lot of floating text that this specific floating text means I should stand still and look around.
My other main gripe is that the twist is a bit contrived. I won’t spoil it here, but I will say I guessed at what it might be at around puzzle 7, groaned, and prayed it wasn’t that. When it was that, I stared at my screen disappointedly, took a deep sigh, and told The Vanishing of Ethan Carter that it just wasn’t working out and we should see other people.
The game also commits the cardinal sin of forcing you to backtrack, but in the most devilish way possible. Normally when a game wants you to backtrack, they will ask you to with promise of a quest reward or for a narrative Easter egg. Rarely is it forced on you. You usually don’t have to go that far, but it is always a way to padden gameplay length without having to actually make new environments. In Vanishing, if you have not solved all the riddles by the time you get to the last room, you have to start over.
I mean, I guess you don’t HAVE to start over, as I think it’s actually possible to backtrack through the entire game (don’t quote me on that, I did not care enough to test this). The last wall of the game is a map that shows you where all the hidden short stories are, almost taunting you, expecting you to just start all over to see the ending. There is a spaceman hidden in the bushes of the very first zone. It is impossible to see from the main path, and there is no indication to look for it. This is directly after the first two puzzles, which immediately jumped out at you, giving you the expectation that the game wouldn’t just screw you like that. But it does. It does screw you like that. It screws you with the biggest backtrack its little legs can muster.
I feel bad being too harsh on Vanishing, but with so little actual game to warrant praise and demerits, flaws become that much more glaring. The game is really pretty looking, so thats a plus? The story and puzzles are the only things here, and while both are very interestingly crafted and compelling to finish, possess too many flaws at various points to be considered excellent. Even though I liked the game, thought the narration was great, and loved the reality warping nature of the story, I can’t just ignore what came off to me as obvious flaws.
That being said, I am recommending the game… kind of. The game is $16 currently, but will probably be on sale again for $12. If you want to spend $12 on a short and flawed but compelling game, by my guest, and I’d love to hear what you think about it! That being said, I can’t honestly recommend this game to people that aren’t that into this kind of thing. It doesn’t break genre walls to suck in new players, and it doesn’t do something so new that it creates a whole new genre and demographic. I enjoyed it because I am the kind of guy who will push W for 30 minutes just to hear an old guy talking about how he’s going to jump off of a cliff. This is slightly more interesting than that, but cancelled out by the frustrations.
Developed by GameORE
Published by Strategy First
Not classified by the ESRB
This game is 29 cents. Cheese on a whopper costs more than that. Normally the game is $2, but it is on 85% discount for the entire duration of the sale. I do not really need to explain that this game is bad. It costs a quarter and four pennies. That is a price point generally reserved for individual pieces of gum or two Andes mints from a jar by the register of a bodega. If I were to close my eyes right now and paw at the area where I leave my pants, I would likely shake loose from my pockets sufficient funds to purchase this game for all three of my friends.
The game also happens to be terrible. Originally a Newgrounds Flash game, I can only assume that this was submitted to Steam as a performance art piece depicting the declining standards of quality control in digital libraries. Sadly, this game was not vetoed by virtue of being poop, and joins the ranks of Day One: Garry’s Incident and Orion: Dino Beatdown in the list of games my brain refuses to believe were not made as ironic jokes. Still, it is 29 cents.
I am not exaggerating either when I say this is a Newgrounds Flash game. You can actually play the game online right now if you wanted to. I mean, it wouldn’t be the Ultimate Edition, which according to the store page features “Even more jumpscares!” and “6 NEW horror puzzles.” So I guess if your goal is to be the next Pewdiepie (who has already played and screamed over this whole thing, never you worry), you really have to splurge for the definitive edition. It IS only 29 cents, after all.
If you are unfamiliar with this type of Flash scare-cam game, then allow me to enlighten you. In these games, you look at still images of scenes either drawn crudely in Flash or stolen without any credit from a Google image search. As you click things to progress, faces also stolen from a Google image search jump out and go “Boo!” That’s seriously it. It’s a hidden object game that makes sure you aren’t sleeping every now and then. I’m seriously not making this shit up, it’s a whole genre of games prolific on any Flash portal. They used to be a surefire way to rake in the e-penis, but have been largely replaced by knock-off mobile games. So now, the digital shelves of Steam serve as home to all sorts of low quality and/or never finished horror games, with little but intuition and some reviews to tell you which are garbage and which are actually okay. It is a cancer, clogging up the shelves and pushing out legitimate indie titles, even if it just does so a little. Still, it IS only 29 cents.
I would tell you what a better version of this game that is worth buying would be, but there are no good versions of this game. Back when they were on Newgrounds, it was fine, because you knew the game you were playing was made by some kid who was still learning game design. Sure, it was all trash, but so are the paintings of children, and everyone has to start somewhere. This game is made so shoddily, that if you press tab it will highlight in yellow what you can click on. This is also known as “the old Flash trick,” focusing on the old because for at least the past 4 years preventing that from happening has been common knowledge. I half expected to right click and be able to push play to get to the next level. Still, for a cent less than a quarter and nickel, what were you expecting.
It seems like the Steam community has at least caught on. Even the positive reviews are all jokes like “great uninstall simulator” or “a fun game for drinking parties, take a shot every time you feel like you just wasted 19 cents.” Well now that I know that the game was 90% at some point, how could I ever justify the 29 cent price point? Geeze, guess I have to take away the game’s one merit. While the game is 29 cents, it is in fact not JUST 19 cents. With this in mind, I cannot recommend you purchase it.
I will say there is one fantastic part to the game. The game makes little to no sense, so puzzles are mostly just solved by rubbing things until a ghost pops out. During one segment, you have to solve a musical puzzle by poking wailing corpses hanging in cages. They serve as a makeshift ocarina, and only with the correct lilting melody of disparaged groans can you proceed to the next level. I would gladly play a whole game that was just guitar hero but with dead people, but only if it was 19 cents.
Developed by Krillbite Studios
Produced by Ole Andreas Jordet
No ESRB classification (safe for 10+)
Among the Sleep is another game that had me excited on concept alone, and also yet another that unfortunately I have to give a low score to. There’s a lot that can be said to its benefit, but the good is so loosely packed into such a small package that it is almost embarrassing that they released this as a finished product. It caused some stir a number of years ago with an initially promising trailer, featuring a toddler as the player character being hunted by some shadowy force. Three years later and the final product is little more than an hour, with gameplay so simplistic you wonder what they were doing with all that time.
Once again, I will be warning that this is going to be a spoiler heavy review, but this time it’s out of a lack of options. The game is so short and basic that you can’t talk about it without tripping over a major plot point or theme. Other than the intro and outro segments, the game only consists of four playable levels, and only in two are you in any danger. I actually checked my chat logs to see when I had told a friend I was going to start playing it, and I found I had beaten the main game in only an hour and and twenty minutes. After the supplemental DLC, the whole game said and done took me an hour and fourty minutes. There was one achievement I missed, so if I bothered looking up what it was I might be able to squeeze an extra ten minutes out of the game, but at that point I’d just be making excuses for it.
The premise of the game is intriguing enough to get me excited, even for a genre I typically dislike. Ever since Amnesia: The Dark Descent hit shelves, there have been a number of copycat games that have met with varying levels of success. Many of these games are made in Unity and you will never hear of them, since they lack any kind of polish or traction outside of parody Youtube channels. Still, every once in a while, a Slender pushes through to show us that even crap can be meme popular enough to push a project all the way to a disappointing final production. Equally rare, sometimes an Outlast shows us that there might be some hope for the genre.
If you are unfamiliar with the game type by mere reference alone, all of these games focus on you running and hiding from enemies rather than engaging them in combat. The bastard child of Survival-Horror and Sneak-em-ups, the games were at first widely well received as a counterbalance to the growing action trend in horror games. For those of us who grew up on Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the alternate kind of gripping horror that Amnesia (and before that Penumbra, but that game was a mess on the distribution end and went by relatively unnoticed) brought to the table was a welcome reprieve from the Resident Evil 5s of the world. Keep in mind, I don’t dislike games like Dead Space, but the actual traction this real true-blue horror game was getting gave me hope that perhaps the market would clamour for more strictly horror titles.
However, after a number of games were released and years had passed to let the hype settle, I find myself dissatisfied with the genre. I feel that taking away the player’s ability to defend himself entirely is cheap and unbelievable. I too agree that if a serial killer was stalking me and I suddenly didn’t have hands, that would be scary as hell, but I find it more compelling personally to try to overcome a great threat with my meager means. I can’t help but balk at how the protagonist of Outlast could fail to pick up one of the many broken bricks or pieces of rebar nearby and attempt even a feeble defence, but I guess I’m also one of those guys who likes all of his knits to be picked in a pleasing narrative arc with no holes.
So in comes Among the Sleep, a game that realistically explains such powerlessness by putting you in the role of a 2 year old. An incredibly interesting concept from the get go, having to navigate the world through feeble crawls and shoves makes us really consider game space in a whole new way. In theory, at least. While the developers do some interesting stuff in regards to crawling versus walking, where crawling is faster but your actions are limited, it doesn’t come off as anything more than the standard “sprint and hide in a cupboard” gameplay of every other horror game. While I had to stand on chairs to open doors, every obstacle had conveniently placed boxes for me to climb up. It never felt like I was a little person in a world too big for me, forced to make my way, but rather I was a character in a video game navigating a space custom tailored for me. Just like every other video game.
Seeing as how the game stars a toddler, it is safe to assume that the whole thing is just his imagination. While I personally would love to see a game starring the a toddler on the USS Ishimura during the events of Dead Space, I don’t think the world is ready for first person toddler eviscerations. It is pretty cool how Among the Sleep created this horror dreamscape, and during the first scene of the game I was clenching my bowels in excitement over what the black shadow slowly creeping up the stairs behind me had in store.
While the levels are all imaginatively realized, there was a split between the levels that were relevant narratively and the ones that were well made. The first level takes place in the house, and as the introduction is the least terrifying and most grounded in reality. The second level takes place at a playground, and is similarly almost real save for distorted geometry. Both of these levels lack any danger, requiring you to walk in a straight line and pick up objects to progress. The third and fourth levels require some puzzle solving, but I couldn’t exactly tell why they related to the child. I get that the third level was a distorted cabin by a lake, but it didn’t really make sense why my toddler would imagine himself there. The last level was an Escher-like series of corridors, which while visually striking didn’t really scream “the mind of a toddler.”
Similarly, while I kind of liked the plot and ending, it is executed poorly. The big revelation is done so ham fistedly, that it was almost as if the game expected you to also be a toddler, incapable of basic narrative deduction. The teddy bear is a nice companion and narrator, given that the toddler is incapable of speech. The teddy bear has this really awesome childlike manner and disposition, and brings an excellent contrasting naive innocence to the darker setting and themes. In the end, it all gets cocked up by a big white light deus ex machina. Regardless of the parts I did like, it felt like I had just watched a short film rather than played a game.
Above all else, the game just isn’t scary. There are spooky and creepy things, and at times I found myself actually liking the toned down level of horror, but when they try to ramp it up it falls tremendously flat. The game is at its best while being subtle, but when it tries to become exciting it stretches itself too thin. The enemy spawns predictably and follows very direct patterns, and then just poofs away when you crawl under a table. There is a cool part in the fourth level where you are being hunted by the Babadook, but as long as you don’t knock over the conspicuously placed beer bottles, it never spawns. While the game was frequently tense, I was never really in fear for my safety.
The problem is, this could all be redeemed if the game offered me more, but there really is nothing else to be said. The game is seriously less than two hours long. Theres no replay value, and while I did really like the supplementary DLC, it just left me wondering why they couldn’t have made the whole game like that. I understand that yearly budgeted dev cycles are how we get Assassin’s Creed games with more bugs than the planet Klendathu, but if your years developing to hour of gameplay ration is under 1:1, theres some serious problems with your production process.
I really wish I could like this game more, but they had to do more with it. It seems like someone in the team had a good idea for a premise, and just no one figured how to capitalize on it. The game costs $20 regularly, and this is with multiple funding grants and a successful Kickstarter. While only $10 right now on sale, I couldn’t even recommend this game for $5. There’s just not a lot there.