When Gaming Becomes Work

Day 19 of Frag Cake's Steam Challenge 
Current Game: Anomaly Warzone Earth
Progress: 10 missions completed

It's strange that this is a contingency I hadn't planned for. In a previous post, I had worried about particularly difficult games, games I had already played large chunks of, games I didn't know anything about. In all of this, I somehow didn't take into account games I just didn't care about. It seems so basic now that I'm in the midst of it, but it honestly hadn't occurred to me before. Anomaly is that game.

It's really not a bad game (though the attempts by the writers to insist on the Britishness of the characters might lead you to believe otherwise). I totally understand what they're going for, flipping the tower defense genre on its head. Nothing wrong with that, nothing in particular wrong with the execution of that idea, it's just not an idea that inspires any interest from me. Every time I've thought "hey, got a little extra time in my day, I should game" a little voice has said "but you have to play Anomaly . . ." and I've moved on to other things. This is not helping my challenge at all.

So, I'm trying to break it down: Why am I trying to complete this challenge? One of the big reasons it caught my eye is my realization of the large number of games I haven't really given a try. Surely I should be getting my money's worth for all these games. Another reason is experiencing a broader array of artistic endeavors - if all I do is play Civilization and Team Fortress, I'm limiting myself and my understanding of the gaming milieu. And, as with any challenge, there's a certain male boisterousness that inspired some (possibly unwarranted) bravado.

What do I lose, then, if this game goes by the wayside? I feel I've squeezed pretty much any value I was going to get out of this game (looks like I paid $2.50 for it), and I've grasped what I understand to be the thrust of its input in the gaming world. It hurts my ego a little that I'm giving it up, but it will certainly soldier on, I'm sure.

I'll admit, I don't have a hard and fast rule for situations like this. So far, the two games that I've quit prematurely have been at 3 hours. I don't want to make that the standard by any means. But it's been nine days since I finished Amnesia and I've still only mustered up three hours of playtime for Anomaly. Because it's felt like work. The game has led me to cheat on the challenge with The Binding of Isaac, of all things. That game is so hard, I've racked up 10 hours total without coming especially close to the (first) ending.

I've seen this suggestion bandied about on Reddit and I generally like it: Once you complete a game in order, you can select one game out of order that you'd like to play and continue to that. I think the best way for me might actually be to select a game and have that be an option. Having two very different games will help a lot, I think. So, for example: I beat Amnesia, now I've selected Binding as my choice. The next alphabetical option is Audiosurf. I can play either of those and be within the rules of my updated challenge. When I beat the alphabetical game, I move onto the next. When I beat the selected game, I select another. And so on.

This solves the game exhaustion problem, but does not address the possibly more significant problem of games that have utterly failed to inspire. This is a problem that's going to take some thought, and more than likely will end up being on a case-by-case basis. My underlying principle is this: Give the game a genuine, fair shot to the best of my ability.

I'm not going to review Anomaly, I don't feel like I've earned that privilege. Instead, I present you with the worst attempts at being British in video game history (these are all direct quotes):
"Best fireworks display I've seen since Guy Fawkes night!"
"That dome makes Big Ben look like a midget!"
"Keep this up and the Queen will have you over for tea and crumpets!"

Anyway, now I'll switch the progress bit:

Current Games: Audiosurf / The Binding of Isaac
Progress: 3 hours played / 11 hours played

Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review

The last remaining memories fade away into darkness. Your mind is a mess and only a feeling of being hunted remains. You must escape. Awake... Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a first person survival horror. A game about immersion, discovery and living through a nightmare. An experience that will chill you to the core.

I need a hug and some hot cocoa.

Amnesia is a 2010 first-person survival horror game where you wake up with the titular mental disorder in an eerie castle and must uncover the secrets that lie within. It's also one of the most viscerally scary games I've ever played.

After the first few hours of playing, I would find myself staring down into the darkness of my empty house and refusing to venture into it. After not very long at all, I would have to run around and turn all the lights in the house on so that no shadowy corner might conceal anything. I never quite lost sleep, but I did have to make an active, concerted effort to keep the game out of my mind.

I think this game has helped me understand something about people who like horror movies. Most horror movies are not especially great films, not finely-crafted works of art. What was the last horror film that won an Oscar? And yet, these movies have huge fanbases, committed audiences, and rake in the money like nobody's business. There's a certain simplicity to being able to say: This movie is supposed to scare you. If it scared you, it's a good movie. Period. In a similar vein, it's evident that Amnesia is a scare-making machine, a factory of disturbing experiences and chilling moments. In that way, it utterly and completely succeeds.

That doesn't make it a perfect game, though, and we need to move into the actual meat of the gameplay. Most of this boils down to searching rooms for glowing items, completing some basic physics puzzles, backtracking to that obnoxiously locked door, and moving into the next area. Rinse and repeat. There's a certain lack of difficulty in the mechanics that I think is intentional. If you're running back and forth between the same two rooms because you didn't quite catch the glowing object in the corner, you're not scared. If you're Alt-Tabbing out to a walkthrough, you're not scared. If you're extremely annoyed at the esoteric puzzle, you're not scared. There's a creeping, tentative progress in the game that plays the tension just right.

The other major component of the gameplay has to do with light and darkness. You have a limited supply of oil to fuel your lantern, and you also have tinderboxes you can use on candles and torches and such to permanently light a room. Light is important because the longer you remain in darkness, the more your sanity meter begins to drain. Lose a little and you start to see roaches crawling across your screen. Lose a bit more and your vision begins to blur. Eventually, you fall to your knees and are barely able to function. However, I found that there were almost always plenty of tinderboxes and oil available, and that being even moderately discerning about when to use the items meant you never had to worry about running out.

The darkness plays an even more important role once the enemies are introduced. You have no weapons, no means of defending yourself, no recourse to a comfortable shotgun or crowbar. Your main weapon is running as fast as you can, slamming doors behind you, and cowering in a corner praying for mercy. The monsters can see you readily if you are in the light, but if you remain in darkness your sanity begins to drain. Even looking at the monsters for more than a second or two will start to unravel your brain. This creates some really wonderfully terrifying moments, where you're crouched in a dark corner, the monster is coming for you, and you have no idea if this is a good enough hiding spot or if he will just rip you to shreds. 

The sound design is deserving of a mention all its own. The music is appropriately creepy most of the time, but there's also little scratching noises that seem to be in the back of your head, buzzing sounds like hoards of insects, squeaking rats and phantom footsteps. The sound totally draws you into the experience, and I highly recommend playing with headphones for the best possible scare. The soundtrack also swells into a rhythmic, tense beat when an enemy is present and a horrible screeching noise lets you know he's coming for you. It's so effective that even when all you're doing is barreling down hallways and you're probably not in danger, your heart is beating fast and chills are going down your spine.

I don't want to go too much into the game's storyline, but most of it is told either through random flashes of memory you experience throughout the castle or by notes written by your pre-amnesiac self. The story is overall appropriately disturbing, the antagonists diabolical and a touch Lovecraftian, but overall I found the specifics of the story to be somewhat confusing. It's possible I needed to go back and re-read some notes, but generally the narrative is a little muddled and characters later in the game seem to appear and assure you of their relevance without a lot of context.

Ultimately, I would say this game is definitely worth playing, and it ends up on Steam sales practically every single time. Just be strong: If I can make it through this game, so can you.

Score: 4/5

Steam Store Link
Current Price: $19.99

Next game: Anomaly Warzone Earth. I believe this was a Summer Sale, my best understanding is that it's a reverse tower defense game.

Fear Uncertainty and Doubt

Day 5 of Frag Cake's Steam Challenge 
Current Game: Amnesia: The Dark Descent 
Progress: 90 minutes played

Before I dive into the beating heart of this post, I'd like to present a few clarifications about how I personally am going about this challenge:

• I'm going alphabetically, top to bottom through my library. Some have discounted sticking to a rigid order like this, but I know myself too well - I need the tight leash or I won't finish this project
• I'm starting early and don't have an end date. This train goes from 1 2 3 Kick It all the way to Zen of Sudoku (man, that's a weird pair of games)
• The challenge says you can beat the game on any difficulty. I will be defaulting to "Normal" in most cases, but am not too proud to drop it down if I'm getting pwnt
• My library currently lists 107 games, but a few of those might be DLC or duplicates (like Team Fortress 2 Beta, etc)

 Next, a few things about the blog:

• I will continue to write a review for each game I complete. I'm not entirely certain about what form this will take and it may vary significantly game to game, but I will be sure to put some kind of post dedicated to each game
• I'll also try to keep general progress markers at the top of each post to make it more clear where I'm at with the game I'm currently on and the challenge in general
• If it's not abundantly obvious, I've never really used Blogger before. I'll try to make it look less generic and terrible if I have time. For now, content is king? Hopefully?

Allrighty, that's all out of the way. Now, I thought in the spirit of the next terrifying game in my list, I would break down the most daunting challenges in the days ahead.

First and foremost, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This game scared the piss out of me when I first tried it, and I don't think I've gotten any braver since then. Granted, I'm not strictly required to play it in the dark by myself with headphones on, but I feel like that's part of the experience. I'm gonna have to become a man sometime. The first ninety minutes or so have already struck some real fear in my lizard brain . . .

Also, games I'm bad at like The Binding of Isaac. I have maybe 7 or 8 hours already logged in this game, and I still haven't beat it. Maybe I just don't have the twitch gaming skills for it, maybe I've gotten really unlucky on the chest drops, but I've only made it all the way to Mom one time (with a perfect, seemingly unbeatable combination of items) and I still ended up dying. Dungeons of Dredmor has also made me look pretty stupid (this could be a situation where I need to turn off Permadeath, though). My brain is also pretty bad at some puzzle games and I can't even imagine what will happen when I get back to SpaceChem.

The Steam Holiday Sale. According to the rules, if I pick up any new games they have to be completed before continuing down the list. All it takes is one really good bundle to throw me off my progress. I also definitely need to break myself of buying games I already own on 360 because they're cheap. Also, is it just me or are the Humble Bundles coming every few months or so? Those have not helped the library bloat situation.

Playing Borderlands again. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this game, but I played through most of it on the 360. I picked it up on Steam for a lark thinking I would get some co-op in, but it never really panned out. Also, I've been playing a lot of Borderlands 2, so I feel like going back might not be the best experience ever. Especially because I have all the DLC for the first game. Maybe if I can find a different enough build (melee-only Brick or something), I can keep things fresh.

Titan Quest, Torchlight, and Torchlight II are almost in a row. I might just lose my mind with that much Diablo clone action, but that's a problem for future me. If we make it that far. It's also similar to the Borderlands issue because I'll be going back to older versions of games that might not have the same "quality-of-life" improvements that we've seen in games of the genre since.

And perhaps the most concerning, Games I Know Nothing About. What on earth is Cogs? When did I pick up Dustforce? Rochard sounds French or something . . . Vessel? Uplink? Wizorb? I got nothing. I'm sure they were parts of Humble Indie Bundles, or possibly also Potato Sack games but I have pretty much nothing to go on. This could also be a really good thing! Who knows.

For now, though, Amnesia awaits . . .

AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity Review

BASE jump through a floating city, creating your own stunts to delight your fans. You dive off a skyscraper, relying on quick reflexes to negotiate the intricate tangle of girders that make up the floating city. All eyes are on you as the judges mark your score. One hundred points for hugging those exposed struts as you fall.

Well, at least this isn't a prototype. And now I know where tiny bits of the gameplay for Kick It came from.

AaAaAA is a 2009 game from Dejobaan Games that essentially boils down to maneuvering your way through a floating city as you plummet through 81 various levels. The gameplay starts very basic - 10 points for "hugs", remaining close to a building and 100 points for "kisses", getting close to a new building. As you progress through the game's menu (below), you unlock various other abilities such as the Gesture glove so you can thumbs-up your fans and flip off your detractors or the spray paint can for defacing particular buildings. By getting a high enough score on each level, you earn "teeth" which in turn allow you to unlock more levels, videos and items.

My first complaint about the game is decidedly subjective, and that is the overall tone and presentation of the game. From the  strange terminology (never quite figured out why teeth was the currency of the game) to entirely nonsensical videos, the whole game smacked of trying just a little hard to be quirky and "indie". Perhaps it just hasn't aged especially well, but I found myself constantly annoyed at the random voice-overs blithely wasting time in the menu or other random weirdness. Being nonsensical is not the same as being hilarious.

This style has consequences for usability as well. If you look at that level selection screen above and think "wow, how clean and intuitive", then you and I are very different people. It's messy, confusing, and unnecessary. It becomes especially obnoxious when you find yourself scrambling for teeth toward the end of the game to unlock the last few levels. Well, you think, the best way to get more teeth is to improve my score on a level I didn't do particularly well on! Too bad, says the game, you need to scroll over every one of these cubes to figure out which ones you only 2-starred. When it comes to menus, function always trumps form. I would take something that looked like an Excel sheet if it was sortable, showed the difficulty, and didn't display hints as though they were levels.

All of that aside, the gameplay itself is quite good. There's a tension, a clenching that occurs with each jump as you balance the risk of smashing yourself into a thousand broken bits against the reward of sweet, sweet kisses. The landing is probably the most frustrating part of this experience, though. As you get to the bottom, there are often several different rings which award significant bonus points if you land within them. It's almost impossible to get a good score without landing in at least the lower-scoring ring. This makes the landing maneuvers a whole body experience, at least for me. I found myself standing and leaning wildly to one side (like you unconsciously do in racing games) in the hopes that I would swing just one . . . more . . . inch . . . Let's put it this way: I'm glad I played this game without anyone else in the room.

There's also enough variety on the level design that what seems like an overall simple mechanic can take on many different flavors throughout the course of the game. One level might have you hugging close to a mountain and trying to skim across score plates, and the next has you slaloming around skyscrapers and flipping the bird to a couple hundred spectators. It gives each level a kind of distinctness (especially as you replay them for higher scores) that the obnoxious names have nothing to do with.

At first I was annoyed by the teeth mechanic as I do not generally take kindly to being forced to replay old levels. However, there's a real dopamine rush in going back to a level you only even got 2 stars on after twenty minutes of crashing into crap and suddenly realizing you're way better at the game than you were just a few hours earlier. It's viscerally satisfying to be coming in for a landing just knowing that you nailed that 5-stars (and heartbreaking when you miss it by a few hundred points).

Overall, I can generally recommend this game, though probably not for full price. If it's in a solid bundle though, give it a whirl! There's also apparently a sequel that incorporates these levels as well as introduces quite a few new ones.

(A quick note, I did unlock and complete all of the levels but I didn't five-star all of them. I felt that this was still completing the game, even if it was not 100%-ing the game.)

Score: 3.5/5

Steam Store Link
Current Price: $9.99

Next game: Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I'm working on another post that touches on why I'm so apprehensive about this one.

1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby) Review

From the creators of the award-winning AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, grab the playable Kick It pre-release, and get the full game when it comes out! Battle your favorite drum 'n' bass tracks, or zen out as you soar through that trance album.

I'm calling it. I can't finish the 10 hours for this game. I feel strange having this game be my first review on the blog, because it's not a good game. It is, in truth, just barely a game at all. That fact is acknowledged throughout the menus, telling you how it's a prototype, this game mode is experimental, so on and so forth. So again, I feel strange. It doesn't quite seem right to excoriate a game that's just barely rubbing two sticks together.

But I said I would review it, so here I go. The overall gameplay is similar to Audiosurf - you input an mp3 you have in your library and it formulates a game level around that music algorithmically. Except Audiosurf lets you pick music from wherever instead of moving it into a subfolder in the game. And Audiosurf has different modes that actually make sense and differ greatly in approach and execution. And Audiosurf doesn't have an abortion of a user interface. Audiosurf lets you pause and resume. Are you getting the picture? Audiosurf is a much better game.

The gameplay basically boils down to "kissing" the objects that you're flying past - that is, moving close to them without hitting them - and picking up score items. The "learn" section of the godawful menu alludes to enemies you have to shoot and having to rotate the score plates to match a certain direction. As far as I can tell, that never actually occurs in the game. I played the four "cities", tweaked the settings, and never found anything other than the same repetitive, awful gameplay.

The 3 hours I spent on this game were painful. It felt like work trying to put together the willpower to finish the requirements of the challenge. So I didn't. Maybe it's weak sauce to bow out of the very first game in the challenge, but I couldn't do it. How bad was it? At one point I muted my computer and started listening to an audiobook as I desperately tried to rack up enough time to delete this from my library and consciousness. That's right kids, it was so bad that I muted a music game.

I looked into it, and this game is definitely a result of me buying the Potato Sack (that weird ARG tie-in for the launch of Portal 2). I just barely participated in it at the time, and it might be just as well. If the other games in this bundle are as incomplete as Kick It, it's going to be a long slog through my library indeed.

Thank God I got this as part of a bundle, because $9.99 for this half-conceived and quarter-delivered game is ludicrous - it isn't worth a tenth of that. It may be a pre-release prototype, and maybe the full game will be something worth talking about. This is not.

Score: 1/5

(As a post-script, the pre-release version came out in April 2011, now 20 months ago.)

Next game (from the same developer): AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. That's the actual title. Goddammit.

Steam Store Link
Current Price: $9.99

Stumbling Already

Day 2 of Frag Cake's Steam Challenge 
Current Game:1… 2… 3… KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby)
Progress: 1 / 10 hours

I really wish 1 2 3 Kick It wasn't the first game on my list. It's basically a prototype for some other, presumably better game. The gameplay is as bare-bones as can be imagined. I have no idea how I'm supposed to get 10 hours out of this. It feels really lame to skip the very first game in the challenge, but it's really a chore.

So It Begins

Day 1 of Frag Cake's Steam Challenge 
Current Game:1… 2… 3… KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby)

I have over 100 games in my Steam Library and have only played (much less completed) a very small number of them. It's getting a little silly. Then I came across this post on Reddit (cue giant image):

I decided to take the bull by the horns and get this rolling before 2013 starts. Partly because I'm impulsive, and partly because I think it's less likely the idea will stick with me if I don't get started right away.

I'm writing this blog as a way to chronicle this journey, review the games, give impressions, and otherwise have an output for this valiant attempt to get my past self's money's worth. I'll try to post a few times a week, or any time there's a relevant update. For now, I'm working on Kick It (which I'll call it for short because of the ridiculous title), a game along the lines of Audiosurf that takes your mp3s and turns them into a game algorithmically. Since it's a more open-ended game, I'll have to play 10 hours to be able to mark it as "completed". Wish me luck!

Relevant links:
My Steam Profile
Frag Cake Steam Group
Subreddit for the Challenge