Game Reviews

[SirMustapha]

I'm lucky I didn't have coffee in my mouth when I read your post, Chris.

In practice, there is a way to "opt out" of PvP, which is to remain in the "hollowed" state after you die. Still, you have to revert back to human to gain some benefits (upgrading bonfire to gain more healing items, requesting help from NPCs, and a new others), so it's still a disadvantage. But many players seem to forge that, as for them, "don't reverse hollow" is an end all solution. Bro, do you even lift?

Still, the better reaction I've seen to someone asking how to disable online play is the guy who wrote, in all caps, and I quote: "DISCONNECT WHEN YOU GET THE INVASION MESSAGE, HOW HARD IS THAT FOR YOU?"

... well, can I bind that to a key, at least?

[gkscotty]

And now, on to the Dark Souls of restaurant management sims.


Cook, Serve, Delicious!



I came into this not expecting much. What I got was one of the most engrossing games I've played in a long time.



Cook, Serve, Delicious! is a restaurant management game, with you reopening a long-neglected place in the newly renovated Sherrisoda Tower. Construct a menu of at least three items and get out there, ready to boil, chop, fry and serve your way to success.

What this primarily takes the form of is customers entering your restaurant and taking up one of the work stations on the left. Number keys are used to access their order, and then you have to fulfill it as quickly and as accurately as possible. Food can be upgraded, raising the profit but also adding complexity, as you suddenly have to deal with orders requiring pesto sauce instead of tomato, the need to add meat or vegetables into your lasagna, or a new Jumbo sized soda cup.

It might not sound like much but it's quite engrossing. Food can be prepared quickly and simply with practice, which makes the challenge preparing it more quickly and more accurately every time. The game is not really concerned with making you use motion controls or gestures to cook, adding Tomato Sauce to your pizza is just a case of pressing or clicking T in the ingredients list, so it becomes a race to quickly comprehend and implement the recipe. If you're a fast and accurate typist you'll do well, though apparently touchscreen on tablets, of gamepads on PC, work well too. Mouse can also be used for everything but I found it a little too slow compared to the keyboard.

A combo system adds drive to keep serving perfect meals, with a Perfect Day always being satisfying to achieve given the difficulty, and the Buzz system means that the better you do, the more customers you get and the harder things become. There are a multitude of ways to affect buzz, primarily in your menu choices. For example, fatty foods tend to drive down buzz, while healthy ones increase it. Buzz can be lowered in the morning by selling foods like fish, or raised with coffee and pancakes. While getting more buzz is always more profitable, I appreciate that deliberately lowering your buzz is a great way to make the game easier if you're swamped.

But... then there's the rush hours. The game will give you a break, but twice a day it seeks to test you. Rush hours at 12 and 6 positively drown you in customers, and while they're intimidating, surviving them without breaking your combo always feels like a feat.

Gameplay-wise there's a whole lot more to talk about, but some maybe left better unsaid. There's equipment to upgrade, safety inspections, chores to do, VIPs to please. There are bets, challenges, comedic e-mails, dating and crowdfunding. There are a multitude of modes and content beyond the main restaurant, including co-op for the single player and many multiplayer versus modes and challenges (which I did not try much)



Graphically it's basic but functional. the food looks great and it's appealingly designed, my only complaint being that the food preparation graphics can often obscure important information about how well cooked your other meals are. The sound is fantastic, full of overblown meaty thuds and snaps for things as simple as putting lettuce on a roll. The music can be great, but some tracks feel out of place, particularly an 8-bit sounding one that's not quite right.

As for downsides, I would say that the inconsistency for key mappings could be a pain. Want to put meat on a burger? Press M! Want to put meat on nachos? That's G, for "Ground meat" for some reason. Soup in particular is a nightmare, with eventually something like 20 ingredients some of which need to be chopped multiple times. Pizza is another example - Tomatoes is O, because T is Tomato Sauce. Olives though is V and onions is N. On nachos sour cream is C while it's S on baked potatoes. While I can see how it came to this, it's not very intuitive and takes some learning. Though it is worth noting that you can rebind every key for every recipe if you wish. Once you learn it though it becomes second nature.

Overall, I don't think it's going to appeal to everyone, but I found it great fun. The multitasking really spoke to me, the game is simple to pick up but hard to master, ran flawlessly, and it's just nicely designed. While it could be called repetitive I was never bored until I decided to grind for the last few achievements. It's an intense experience that I'm really glad I took up, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

[SirMustapha]

It was really unfortunate that I couldn't watch you stream that game, as the amount of lag on my end made the whole thing unwatchable. But I enjoyed what I saw. I can see the appeal of it, and considering that I fairly enjoyed a few of the Papa's [insert food here]eria games, I might try my hand at it sometime. I find it nice when games gave that sensory feedback and just look and sound appealing.

[c_nordlander]

It sounds fun, and like it presents a realistic depiction of restaurant work.

[SirMustapha]

Alright, Dark Souls? Listen, man, you're out of line. Look at yourself. You're a mess. You're wasted. It's time to go home, wash your face, try not to throw up on the couch, and go to sleep. You have to face the facts: you're not a hard game. You're not. In essence, that's not what you are, and if you keep pushing yourself in that direction, you just get ridiculous. The more you try to force it, the more you keep hammering that "I'm hard! I'm hard! Look at me, I'm hard!" little routine you do, the more it becomes clear: people have trouble with you not because you're difficult, but because you're a chore to sit through. Seriously, you're a fucking chore to bear. You're like that guy who does these really unfunny jokes to people, and when no one laughs at you, you throw a fit and insult them, throw your beer on their face and storm off the pub shouting "see? I'm the best here!". They could chase after you and pick a fight, but what's the point? It's not worth it. You think you're so edgy and full of meaning, with all your pessimism and dread, but in truth, everyone knows you're trying too hard. It's all fake.

Seriously, you want to take pride on your fighting system and how complex it is, when in the end, everyone knows the whole trick of fighting your enemies is relying on dull memorisation. It's all about dodging on the right time, and remembering which of your enemies' attacks have that annoying little extra step that throws me off timing. And their attacks are all entirely random, which you claim is a way of forcing the player to pay attention and react correctly, but then I see this HUGE, massive knight in heavy armour and a tower shield who can whack away more than half of my HP with a single hit while I'm blocking, and he jumps away from me five times in a row. Because that's what I'd do if I were that knight, of course.

And what's worse is that you know those enemies aren't all that hard to fight. So what do you do? You force me to fight two at the same time. And, OBVIOUSLY, as it were to be expected from a fit-throwing game such as yourself, the enemies are entirely transparent to each other's attacks. They slash right through each other, so I can't even try to use one's position to the other's disadvantage. Heck, the enemies can hit me through walls. And don't come and say to me that was just a minor glitch or a rare exception, because I had that happen enough times to know that you just plainly don't care. Attacking through walls? No problem! Though it wouldn't be as annoying if my character's attacks weren't constantly blocked by a wall that's standing half a mile away from me. Yeah, can I see a wall at all? My sword will inevitably hit it and miss my enemy. Because that's what I expect when I swing a sword, of course.

But well, you'll say, I can always rely on ranged attacks. After all, I'm a mage! I have spells! Yeah... if only I could ACTUALLY TARGET MY ENEMIES, you know? It's often impossible for me to target my enemies when they're standing right in front of me AND ATTACKING ME. And if I manage to lock onto them and they take just one little step away? My target is lost, and my spell goes flying off in ANY random direction the game happens to choose. Because, of course, it's impossible to aim a spell without having a selected target. The bolt will fly up in the air, down at the floor, anywhere except towards the middle of the screen, as I'd normally expect. Oh, hey, there's an archer skeleton who's hitting me with arrows through the arches of this wall! Can I attack him? No, because you can't target enemies through walls, even though your spells COULD actually reach them.

But hey, not even that is enough for you! You have me fight enemies on narrow bridges with no railings, off of which I could fall and lost almost all my health, while my enemy will jump after me, pretty much unharmed, to finish me off. You have me run and dodge swinging blades in a game where I have virtually ZERO depth perception, thanks to your awkward camera. You have me run through extremely thin support means through little arches that throws the camera off its tracks and causes me to run dumbly towards the edge and almost fall.

All of this for what, man? For what? We both know the reason: you just have to prove yourself. You have to constantly scream and shout about how hard you are, how challenging you are. You just can't be comfortable with being challenging; you have to be always more. You're already standing at the very edge of the abyss of sheer difficulty, and you just have to take that one step further... Because that's what you are, Dark Souls: an insecure, whiny little manchild. You actually had potential. You started out fun, even though you did lure me into an extremely difficult path early on in the game, while tucking away the correct path in some boring corner of the map. You force me to run through the same old boring paths and do the same old boring fights over and over again just to get to that boss. In other words, much of the "frustration" comes from doing the same boring menial tasks over and over in for a painfully long time before you get to the interesting bit (funny how a certain recent, much hyped indie game got heavily criticised for this same reason... hmm...). You rely on repetition to wear out the player and artificially inflate your so called difficulty.

And... you know, it hurts me to talk about this, because I really praised your system of having the player risk losing his souls if he dies. I thought it was an interesting way to make death a serious threat without pushing it into "Rogue-like" "permadeath" bullshit territory, but... well, come to think of it: the things you lose when you fail to recover after your death are souls and humanities. But both of them are gathered by just killing enemies and exploring the level. You only lose the souls you amassed by killing the same enemies you'll have to kill again once you respawn, unless you were reckless enough not to use your souls to level up and upgrade your equipment when you had the chance. So what does this mean? Everything you lose when you die can be recovered by one very simple method: grinding. You grind, and you grind, and you grind, and voilà: you're back in the game. So the actual resource that is constantly under risk in case of death is not humanities or souls, but THE PLAYER'S TIME. Death equates to wasted time and boring repetition. How can I possibly defend a mechanic like that?

I'm sorry, but you lost me. I was with you right up to Blighttown. I had faith in you. I was even willing to tolerate the AWFUL Great Hollow and Ash Lake sections and their terrible, terrible design (tell me the truth: did you make those sections secret because you were embarrassed of them? Because, after all the effort you put into them, you realised they were shit? Because that's what it looks like when you have those atrocious sections as secret areas, which don't even give particularly great rewards). But at Sen's Fortress, I realised that you could talk the talk, but you couldn't walk the walk. There's only so much time I'm willing to waste by repeating the same shit over and over again just to see more of your pretentious designs and get some more level ups that keep getting less and less rewarding. If you were a little bit more confident, you might be able to avoid that pitiful inferiority complex you're stuck in. But for now, you need to get real, fix up your shit, and leave me alone, alright? No, there's no use coming up with that "you're giving up, you're a wuss" nonsense. I beat Risen, okay? I bet goddamn Risen. I played that atrocity of a game all the way to its shit ending. I'm not insecure to the point of having to beat you to prove my worth. If I want to beat a game that relies on cheap memorisation, I'll try to beat one of those games like Simon, where the pattern just gets endlessly big. And yeah, that's a joke, because you can't beat an endless game. That's the humour: trying to beat an unbeatable game is more worthwhile than trying to beat you. Lame joke, I know. Whatever. Just go home now.

Oh, and before you leave: I know I've been mostly polite for now and trying to be helpful. This was just a ruse. I don't care about being helpful, and you know why? Because of YOUR FUCKING MULTIPLAYER BULLSHIT. Seriously, just fuck you. Just fuck you. Just go off and drown in a puddle of your own vomit and grievers and "Praise the sun!" messages and forbidding me from quitting them game if I get "invaded". You thought I was going to be nice with you? Well, git gud, you casual.

[SirMustapha]

Also, on a less vitriolic and angry note, I have to say I'm really sad about what's happening to No Man's Sky. Even to this day, after everything I've seen in this world, it's still baffling to see what the power of hype and unrealistic expectations can do and the unfathomable damage they can make. Just looking at how facts were unfolding towards the launch, could I have realistically guessed that things would NOT go down the way they did? This situation is as sad as it is inevitable. The reviews are piling up, the judgments are falling from the sky, and the anger, the bitterness, the disappointment and the sheer irrational passion (you know, the bad kind of passion) has already gone out of hand. For something that's not even worth it. It's an indie survival game, not goddamn Tony Hawk Pro Skater 6. It's just a bunch of guys who had a huge idea but not quite enough chops to pull it off convincingly, not some large, bloated company openly ripping off customers with half arsed garbage. It really saddens me, as much as I feel it shouldn't. It's entirely predictable and oh so tragic.

Also, if it weren't so expensive, I'd be willing to give it a try. I like the fact that it's entirely single player (unlike some other game I already talked about-- okay, I'll shut up) and isn't heavy handed on "story". And as far as the grindiness and the repetition goes... well, you know.

[SirMustapha]

It only now occurred to me to talk about this here, but anyway.

This Sunday, I decided to stop being a complete idiot and tuned in to watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Unfortunately I missed a good chunk of it, but started watching just in time for the presentation of Tokyo as the host of the next event. Beautiful, energetic presentation, but it couldn't possibly prepare the crowd to what could come next. In the video, prime minister Shinzo Abe turns into Mario and runs through the city to reach Rio in time for the ceremony. A green pipe appears on the street, and he jumps into it, when a countdown starts.

And then, it happened. The primary political figure of one of the world's most powerful countries, right in most important sporting event in the world, in the middle of the greatest football stadium in the world, appears as Mario.

Words can't describe how nuts the crowd went. Words can't describe how nuts I went. Of course, this is a delight for any person who is even remotely familiar with pop culture from the mid-80's onward (though in Brazil, Mario only became popular in the 90's). It's funny, it's lighthearted, but for me, it's more than that (because I'm fucking pretentious, and everyone knows). No longer can an adult think video-games are "for kids". No longer can people demean video-games as a mindless waste of time. No longer can those things be said without provoking a good twirl of the nose from any decent person, because if Mario is good enough for the Olympics, then Mario is good enough for anyone.

Obviously I don't think this was the main intention behind that bit. Japan wanted to show their modern pop culture and their technology as part of their national identity. In this sense, video-game characters, animé and Hello Kitty are all fair game. But I think this sent a bigger, broader message, and one I welcome with wide open arms. I was so happy that, when fireworks blasted to the tune of SMB's end-of-level fanfare, I actually wept a bit. Amazing, amazing moment.

Of course, the rest of the ceremony was gorgeous, and when the whole thing erupted with samba, I was sky high. It was a wonderful, moving ceremony; but, damn you, Japan, you own my heart now.

[gkscotty]

Didn't watch the ceremony, but did see the Japan video. That was a bit of a surprise.

Makes me wonder if the sports will have mascots. Sonic's a shoe-in for the athletics, Link for archery, sailor senshi for gymnastics...

[SirMustapha]

This is another "work in progress" review, as I'm talking about a game I haven't finished yet, but I think I already have a fair bit to talk about it.

Starbound

I've been interested in this game for a long time, way back when it was on Early Access. It is, for all intents and purposes, a Terraria clone, and its major difference is the inclusion of interplanetary travel. In other words, instead of one huge world to explore, you have several (a few thousand per game, allegedly). The fundamentals of survival and crafting are all there, as well as terraforming, building structures and decorating them. As a massive fan of Terraria, this game did enough to please me, enough to check out the 1.0 version soon after it came out and be pleasantly surprised.

See, during Early Access, you started the game orbiting an unknown planet, with your spaceship unable to go anywhere due to need of repair. As such, your first mission is to explore the planet, reach its core and gather core fragments, which will then allow you to fix your ship and start your interstellar adventures. All simple enough. As the game left Early Access, an introductory part was added, which explains why your ship is broken and why you're orbiting an unknown planet. It's odd for me not to want to spoil the beginning of the game, but I assure you, it's worth checking out for yourself, whether you play it or watch it.

Suffice to say, this game, unlike Terraria, has a proper plot and proper objectives. Of course you do have objectives in Terraria, most of which come in the form of bosses to defeat (most of which have given me a massive sense of accomplishment once I beat them; take that, goddamn Dark Souls). Starbound, however, is constantly pointing you on the way to go, even though it gives you complete freedom to do whatever you want. Since I'm more interested in the progression aspect rather than the "creative" one, I spend more time trying to make advancements rather than building pretty houses, but I figure both things are perfectly possible. The main progression you make is accomplished by visiting new planets, each one containing new resources, which allow you to craft more advanced equipment, but also presenting its own perils (stronger monsters, radiation, etc.). Though your travels, you'll also meet friendly villages of one of the several races available in the game, and you can get quests which reward you with equipment and "pixels", the game's currency. You'll also find merchants, from which you can buy and sell stuff, and when you discover the "outpost" early in the game, you can upgrade your stuff and unlock new abilities. In all, it's a treat to people who enjoy RPGesque elements, even without a proper leveling system.

The gameplay itself is, well, essentially Terraria, but with some interesting differences. For one, right from the get-go, you're equipped with a "matter manipulator", which allows you to dig and place blocks, place and remove items, chop down trees and so on. In other words, it's a handy replacement for all tools in Minecraft/Terraria, and it only doesn't work as a weapon. The manipulator starts out weak and slow, but by finding "modules" as you move on, you can upgrade it. Also, you can dual wield items in the game. For example, you can use a pistol and a flashlight when exploring caverns, or a sword and a shield, or a pistol and a shield, or whatever other combination you like (though some items are two handed). One big difference from Terraria is the fact that it has no minimap. I can tell this was a design decision, not just an omission, because this changes priorities when playing the game. With a minimap, you have a very easy way to tell where you're going, which areas you've been in, and how to reach areas you've been previously on; in Terraria, this is essential. Starbound requires you to have a constant awareness of your environment, and this is heightened by the fact that the screen is zoomed in further. Of course, this makes exploration more difficult, and creates some tense situations as well. For example, I'm playing on survival mode, which means you drop most of your items when you die, as well as permanently losing 30% of your pixels. Of course you can go back to the place you died and recover your items (even if you die multiple times after that), but if you died by falling into a pit you hadn't seen before and have no idea where you died, finding that place again can be really tough. But even if you're unable to reach that place ever again, you'll still be able to move on, as you only lose certain types of items, not all of them. And as far as I know, your items are not despawned; one time I died on a planet, went back to pick up my items, and realised I failed to get my manipulator modules back after I've gone to an entirely different planet; once I got back, the modules were still there.

Due to the lack of a map and the constant need for interplanetary travel, it doesn't feel as rewarding to nurture and build a house and its surroundings. In Terraria, for example, it's extremely fun to terraform the world, creating, for example, a "hellevator" that leads you straight into the underworld, a "skybridge" that spans the entire world high above the ground, as well as building a network of rails for faster travel (even though I never got to this point). In other words, you feel like you legitimately own the world. This is absent in Starbound; I do feel like a speck in the universe, and even though I've adopted one of my planets as my "primary home", it feels pointless to build a "hellevator" in it, because there are only so many things I can do in it, and I'll have to travel to many other planets in order to keep progressing. Still, this is not a criticism of this game; this is actually a praise, because it means this game has a very different focus. After all, if I wanted simply to play something exactly like Terraria, I'd play Terraria, right?

Overall, I'm greatly enjoying this game so far. It's imaginative and beautiful, and even though I struggle with the inventory system at times (when exploring, I often have to switch between the manipulator, the torches, the weapons and the healing items, and I very often pick the wrong item, especially in the really tense moments), it feels nicely optimised. The inventory size is very generous and there's a good diversity of resources and items to find. I didn't like the hunger meter and the constant need to eat, but as you unlock the kitchen counter and start producing better recipes, this becomes far less of a nuisance (and it's even fun to cook new things). If I have one complaint, it's the music. But not because it's bad, but because it's too fucking sad. I have to say, I'm really not a fan of the music in Minecraft, but it felt, at worst, unobtrusive. For some reason, Starbound sounds downright mournful at times. I like the mix of orchestral and electronic textures it uses, but the mood, for me, doesn't quite match. I remember once playing it two years ago, during a pretty tough moment in my life, and I had to stop playing it because of the music. So, in the end, I just mute it and put something more cheerful.

Other than that, I do recommend it. It's an interesting, lively spin on the genre, and I have to commend it when an indie game successfully leaves Early Access as a complete, well crafted game. Kudos to the developer.

EDIT: about the music, just to show that I'm not joking: Hymn to the Stars. This track kills me everytime. It's gorgeous, but I almost can't listen to it anymore because of how poignant it is.

[Nidotamer]

Well absolutely everything about this week has been terrible. And could get worse and god knows what else. Guess I can only do a game review in the hope of… uh… passing time I guess.

Hitman: Blood Money

That other game I go on about a lot!

Story

You take the role of the now legendary Agent 47 who has a very nice job. Pay's great, get to travel lots, can bring your own stuff and meet all sorts of people… mostly to kill them. There's some stuff about a former FBI director giving some reporter the full story on 47 (most of which are lies compared to the actual events of the missions) and a rival group of assassins. For the most part though, it's just “you're a bald, barcoded guy who travels the world and kills people for money and/or fun (we'll get to that!).

Gameplay

This is a fun one. Hard to explain though. See, Hitman: Blood Money is mostly based around replay value and alternate methods of completing missions. Each mission puts you in a different location, from a opera house to a quiet suburb to the whitehouse itself. You're given objectives that may differ but you'll always kill at least one guy and the rest is up to you. You can do things the proper way, stealthily, only target kills, no evidence left or you can play a deranged loony with a small arsenal… or in one level you can dress as a clown and take on the FBI with naught but hedge trimmers. Your choice, although the silent assassin gets paid more. You get payments depending on how you did and you can use those to either clean your records (unnecessary for the silent assassin) or upgrade your custom weapons that you can select during the breifing.

NPCs are generally divided into three groups. Civilians are unarmed, cowardly and usually run to someone with a gun if they spot anything troublesome. Guards and police are even more trigger happy in real life and will open fire on you over things as trivial as flicking the light switch too many times or lightly shoving someone. Then there's targets, they can behave like either but usually have unique events and obviously you gotta kill them to progress. Usually Civs and guards will be your biggest obstacles, as well as security cameras that will lower your overall score should you get spotted (though if you can find the tapes, you can disable the cameras and remove the evidence. Also there's VIPs, which are NPCs you can't kill without failing the mission.

Not that 47's without his tools. His most useful is likely the fibre wire, used for strangling people to death, you can even use it from atop an elevator to choke passengers nice and quietly. Then there's the syringes, one sedative, one poison. You can jab these into someone's neck or into food and drinks. Then there's an array of customizable weapons and accessories like the Silverballers (one of the few guns that can use a silencer, so useful!), shotguns, two kinds of assault rifles and a sniper rifle (only one that can be silenced!). 47 also has the infamous ability to nick the clothes off of certain NPC types after knocking out/killing them as well as dump bodies over rails and into convenient boxes. And let's not forget the Ru-Ap mines, useful to causing chandeliers to fall and blowing people sky fucking high (yeah!). Finally there's the shove, usually harmless unless someone's standing near, say, a balcony rail… or a small body of water.

Taking out targets can rely on either your stealth and prowess, your might, or ability to exploit their stupidity. A kill with a syringe or fibre wire leaves a bloodless corpse, anything else does not. There are also accidents which can range from pushing someone over rails to manipulating a rehearsal of Tosca so the lead gets shot with a real WW1 pistol to… well, just see this one for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKbptWt_Qs4. Accidents are great because not only do the bodies not count against your score if found, they also don't impact your score if you kill a non-target this way making it a handy method of permanently removing a potential witness. Also a lot of them are hilarious so there's that.

It's all up to how you want to play.

Characters

Agent 47

Bald, Barcoded and Badass, he's the International Contract Agency's most effective assassin and for a good reason. He's a class 1 clone (that is, one raised from infancy and has a full life expectancy). He was made with the DNA of five men (who he killed), was due to be replaced by a group of superior clones (who he killed) went into retirement before being brought out by a Russian crime lord that was also his uncle (who he killed), was once ambushed by a Parisian Chief of Police (who he killed). Needless to say, he makes a lot of enemies but they're rarely around for long. Nobody realizes that maybe you shouldn't mess with a man who killed his father, all five of them… and three Uncles, several younger brothers, a few older ones too…

He's a ruthless killer for hire, true. However maybe he deserves some evil points deducted since all but a scarce few targets are the scum of the Earth including Mob bosses, Terrorists, Child Prostitution Ringleaders and rival assassins. Not that he kills any of them for anything but money but hey, technically he makes the world a better place! Hitman: Silent Assassin also had him in a much more heroic role, trying to find and rescue a priest he worked for during his retirement and his only real friend outside of Diana.

Diana Burnwood

Local British accent. She handles the briefings, intel and cleanup on 47's assignments. She may not seem like it but she's a crafty woman who's two steps ahead of everyone. Thankfully she's not only on your side but may also be one of the very few people that could be called a friend.

Agent Smith

The Princess Peach. Seems he's in trouble and needs bailing out every time he and 47 meet, even 47's getting annoyed with it by now. He usually carries important info and has links with the ICA.

Spoiler

in the penultimate mission he takes over as 47's handler, as well as being his client

Alexander Leyland “Jack” Cayne

A heavily crippled and disfigured man who used to be a director for the FBI. He's the (wholly unreliable) narrator.

Spoiler

and the big bad, running an agency that's attempting to run the ICA out of business and kill 47. Fortunately they're about as effective at killing 47 as they are at their cover jobs, as in not at all.

And

A bunch of other cockheads that have to die

Nuff said. There's a lot of these and killing most of them is a blast! Sometimes literally! Plus nearly all of them are far worse than 47 so don't feel too bad about bumping 'em off. Except maybe the one from the tutorial level, that was more like a mercy killing…

And now to the review!

Hitman is one of those odd series that actually kept being considered better over time and while that streak may have been broken by the one after this, the game after that (simply titled “Hitman”) might be picking up that trait again. Generally though, this is considered the magnum opus of the Hitman series and it's easy to see why. One might have heard all the complaining about GTA being a “murder simulator” but that's only if you wanna be some gangbanger. Hitman's the gentleman's murder simulator, rewarding planning and patience over bullet spraying… but gives you that option if you want anyway. The different ways of carrying out your objectives makes for a lot of replay value too. Will you strangle your target in an elevator? Take him out while he takes a piss? Throw a gun near a railing on a high place, wait for the target to investigate then shove him over? There's almost always more than one solution and when a plan goes off without a hitch, there's a unique satisfaction to it.

Some people may have thought of this game as being all nitty-gritty but I'd say it's more “comically serious” it may keep up a straight face but it's hard to say something is actually serious when one of the most effective ways of killing one target it dropping a bloody piano on her or pouring ether on a teenage girl's panties to knock out a perverted FBI agent. Some murder methods become downright Looney Tunes but neither the game nor 47 will break their usual straight faced appearance. If anything it just makes the funny bits all the better. There's even two Simpsons references in the newspapers that show up after the missions, one is dated as “Smarch” while another has a statement from a Police Chief Wiggum if any guards die.

But nothing's perfect mind you. For instance you can take weapons you find in missions with you and use them in other places… but they're almost all inferior to the custom weapons so aside from being able to carry some openly depending on the outfit there's really no benefit to them. There's also a lot of generic NPCs that are painfully stereotypical, almost everyone in the Mississippi levels talks like Cletus and there's very few female NPCs that aren't showing some form of cleavage (though in two cases they're an intentional move on an assassin's part to seduce 47… even though he's basically asexual. Nice job, ladies.) and while they do try to play off the rival agency as being a threat… they're really not. Granted teasing the incompetent AI is a lot of fun but when your confrontation with their best man can be subverted if you know where he'll take cover, place a mine there and once he's in position blow him sky fucking high (yeah!) before he can fire a single shot at you… they really don't have much menace to them. Then again, it is kind of an excuse plot anyway. That and some levels may have bits that are a little linear. Not Final Fantasy 13 linear but when the rest of the game gives you so much freedom, it becomes a bit odd.

All in all, there's a good reason why a relatively short game managed to rack up over 220 hours on my steam account. You can play the game almost any damn way you want. You want to go back to a mission just to see how many people you can shove over rails or into the insta-drowning kiddie pool? Go ahead. For an extra challenge, see how many you can kill this way while still retaining Silent Assassin. Did you know there's a special rating for killing everyone with knives? Or another for screwdrivers? Or Fire extinguishers? Or hedge trimmers? Give those a try. Experiment! Almost everything has multiple solutions and they're all good fun!

Oh, if you just wanna watch a let's play of it, I'll throw in a personal recommendation: AuzzieGamer. His videos are more a hybrid of let's play and walkthrough but he'll highlight a few different methods as well as some of the sillier aspects of the game. Also plenty of people being killed mid-sentence. It was one of his earliest LPs so it picks up more at the second episode so if you wanna start there, fair enough. Most of the missions work out of context anyway!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list= ... 9B34863032

[SirMustapha]

Risk of Rain

I think it's kinda visible by now that I have major issues with "difficulty" in games. More specifically, I have major issues with games that use its (supposed) "difficulty" as a justifiable substitute for actual design, or as a distraction from its lack of actual substance. Games such as Risk of Rain go one step beyond, and use "difficulty" as a substitute for... well, everything.

... actually, for almost everything. For one, this game has some of the best music I've experienced in games. It's atmospheric, dynamic, extremely well written and arranged. If anything, I feel profoundly sorry that such excellent music had to end up in this game.

So, yeah, this game. I remember I got it in a Humble Bundle of "hard" indie games, which included Dustforce (which I like) and Super Meat Boy (which I really wanted to like). As it turns out, Risk of Rain is a 2D platform shooter with... *sigh*... "roguelike elements". Yes, all the levels are randomized, which means that "it's completely different every time you play it!", and "you never know what challenges to expect!". Yes, you only get one single life and one single shot at it every time you play, meaning that "dying matters!" and that "you have to be careful with your choices!". Yes, that's all nonsense, because we know that so many games are only "roguelike" because the developers are incapable of designing a game, and instead let randomness and unbalanced difficulty make it all seem intentional.

Of course, I'm not against roguelikes and randomness in principle. I think those are elements that can be well employed, and as much as I really didn't enjoy Spelunky, I wouldn't call it a bad game (not in public, at least). After all, Spelunky does have a high degree of unpredictability, and the randomness is used to create challenges, as the level layout and enemy positioning force you to play carefully. In Risk of Rain, there's no such thing. There's no proper "terrain", so to speak, as the platforms are way too big and spaced out to have much of an impact in the gameplay. The result of that random level generation is, invariably, that the gameplay mostly sucks. In some instances, you'll be able to kill dozens of enemies by simply standing still and holding down the shoot button, without losing even one HP; in others, it will be impossible to kill the enemies without having to jump right in the middle of them and get promptly killed. Such fun, much challenge.

The gameplay itself is as follows: at the start of each level, you're placed in a randomly selected spot of the map, and your first mission is to locate the teleporter to the next level, which is, of course, also randomly placed. Enemies will spawn along the way, allowing you to gain levels and gather money, which you can use to buy various upgrades from chests and "shops" scattered randomly over the level. Once you find the teleporter and activate it, you'll spawn a boss, and enemies will start pouring in continuously for 90 seconds. You have to defeat every enemy on the level before you can warp to the next level, and repeat the merry process. Also, as time passes, the difficulty gradually increases, which means the enemies will be harder and will spawn more quickly. So, if you take too long to find the teleporter, tough luck: the game will probably get ludicrously hard before too long. Also, you'll have to decide whether it will be best to stick around for a while and buy upgrades, or jump to the next level with haste.

It's far from a bad design. In theory, it's a mix of exploration, platforming, action shooting and survival. And of course, the difficulty increases very fast, whether you blaze it through the levels or slog through them. And there's a lot of potential for a game like this to be very fun and engaging. Sadly, this game is freaking boring as sin. The levels are HUGE, everything looks the same as everything else, your character is too tiny (I'm not exaggerating, it occupies roughly 10x10 pixels) and moves too slowly. Looking for the teleporter in the beginning of each level is a groan inducing chore every single time. Your character just slides boringly across long, long platforms and way too tall ladders and ropes. And even though the screen is zoomed WAY the hell out, you'll still have to explore every nook and cranny of the level, as the teleporter can be anywhere. Yes, as difficulty ramps up, enemies will start to spawn more often, making things a little active, but the pattern is that either no enemy spawns at all, or way too many spawn at once in the same place. And the enemies, as well, are boring as sin. They only really range from "dull" to "annoying", and that includes the bosses. There are way too many enemies whose shtick is to constantly stay on top of you, either by moving faster than you or by constantly teleporting. How cheap is that?

One way in which you make actual progress in this game is by unlocking new characters, each with a different set of abilities, either by completing in game "achievements" or by, I think, hitting certain landmarks in the game. Unfortunately, the characters mostly suck, and their abilities just make them incompetent in various ways. You can also unlock customisation options, which allow you, for example, to choose your upgrades instead of being given a random one every time you open a chest. The problem, again, is that this game is so boring and uninteresting that I don't feel motivated to see everything there is to unlock.

I find it really unfortunate that this game is in this state. It could have worked, if only the game itself was as fun and interesting as its music. I fully admit that I'm a sucker for games that are based on unlocking stuff and making slow, gradual progress, so I really wanted this game to be more enjoyable than it is; i.e., to be enjoyable at all.

[c_nordlander]

Damn. Sounds like that set-up could have made for a very nice game.

I'm a roguelike fan, but I think I've been lucky in that the ones I've played have been fair (tough, but fair), instead of using difficulty and randomness as a crutch. Speaking of which, maybe I should go and check out We Happy Few...

[Nidotamer]

So does it ever really rain?

Ah, the ol' roguelikes. Funny you mention Meat Boy since the same team did The Binding of Isaac. However, to me it seems a lot more structured compared to what you mentioned. Like it has a fairly short level setup (about 6 by default iirc but can be extended depending on how you play) and, well the base difficulty itself is pretty consistent and even, generally stages will have a consistent pool of foes it draws from. Then again, I'd say a lot of the fun in BOI is getting upgrades in a run and seeing how they mesh together. Such as, say, a powerup that replaces the usual projectile tears with infinite bombs meshed with a powerup that makes bombs only explode when remotely detonated tend to mix together or goodness knows what else... not sure it'd be up your alley but hey, nothing is for everyone.

[SirMustapha]

I'm eager to try The Binding of Isaac someday. Having watched Steve play it, it indeed does not seem to have the problems I've noticed in games such as Risk of Rain. If anything, it's very interesting to look at, and the gameplay feels very lively. Also, I think top-down shooters are a better medium for roguelike elements than platformers.

[gkscotty]

I can recommend The Binding of Isaac, though that comes with the caveat that there seem to be precisely 0 games that both Fernie and I like, so take that with a grain of salt