999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - Nintendo DS Review

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is a visual novel / adventure game that combines an interesting premise with solid puzzles that will keep you engaged for hours on end.

If you've never played a visual novel before you might have seen pictures of one on the internet. They usually have a big eyed, huge breasted anime girl with a large text box taking up the bottom half of the screen with her telling you about the depraved sexual acts you are about to perform. These games are made up of mostly text with small player decisions along the way that change the outcome of the story. The main focus being the plot and characters you interact with.

Like this but with much more item hunts and much less bukkake

999 is much like this but with point and click / "escape the room" scenarios in-between the dialogue. The story of 999 follows a group of nine characters that have been kidnapped and brought to an empty ship resembling the Titanic with the goal of solving puzzles to reach the final ninth door exit.

Each character is assigned a wrist band with a number from 1 to 9 and only certain combinations of numbers are allowed to enter certain doors. This is based on a digital root system where a numbers are added together until the last digit remains 3 + 5 + 8 = 16, 1 + 6 = 7. So a team equaling 7 can go through the appropriately marked door.

Behind these doors the player will find standard point and click adventure puzzles with the main goal of opening the exit. Items will be gathered and combined and are manipulated in 3D in the inventory screen to gather more information. The player will solve puzzles ranging from finding the correct key for a lock to math based number input devices. The puzzles are for the most part interesting with the common hurdles of point and click adventures present (pixel hunting, bizarre logic), but the real draw of the game is in the story.

While the characters themselves are mostly stereotypical (the huge strong man, the pigtailed lolita) the mystery around them and why they have been brought on this ship is always able to keep you interested. Without spoiling too much, the story involves such topics as Morphogenetic Fields (fields that connect all living things allowing transfer of information), Kurt Vonnegut and philosophical paradoxes like Locke's Socks.The story is surprisingly mature and is definitely not for younger audiences, not due to the graphic content (which there is) but the themes and ideas dealt with in the game.

The way the story is presented is also quite unique. Because of the requirements of entering the doors, it would be impossible to see everything on the first play-though. The player will ultimately fail during their first attempt to finish the game, usually resulting in death. But, after getting a "Game Over" screen you return to the beginning of the game to try a different path. With six possible endings in total (the final one being the "true" ending) players are allowed to try out different puzzle rooms and interact with different characters on each play-thorough. To speed up this process, text already read in previous games can be fast-forwarded though by holding right on the D-Pad.

While this is a better solution than having to sit through story parts you have already seen, it is still very slow considering the amount of text in this game. You'll be holding the right button for upwards of five minutes to skip dialogue and some rooms (especially the first one) will have to be played over and over again.

 

Despite this, finding out new aspects of the story and seeing parts unfold where you where previously absent is extremely entertaining. There is always some new twist or revelation and, this can't be stressed enough, without giving away anything, the entire multiple play-though mechanic is integrated amazingly with the gameplay and story.

BOTTOM LINE:

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is an excellent adventure game with well thought out puzzles and one of the best stories presented on the Nintendo DS that will keep you up for hours on end to see its conclusion.

8.5/10

Hotline Miami - PS Vita Review

Hotline Miami is an ultra-violent top-down shooter whose incredible style and play mechanics make it one of the must unique games ever made.

 

In Hotline Miami you play an unnamed protagonist who receives messages from a shadowy organization of masked men telling him to infiltrate buildings, killing everyone within. The game constantly has you questioning your characters motivation and sanity as the lines between fantasy and reality are always being blurred. Are the masked men real? Why do you always meet the same store clerk after every mission who gives your superfluous items such as free pizza or video rentals? Many of these questions are never fully answered and are left to the player for interpretation.

The story is presented with dialogue boxes from various characters whose cryptic messages drive the main character on. Character progression can be gleaned from visual cues such as the state of the protagonists apartment changing over the course of the game. The main character will usually start each mission with a phone call in his apartment telling him to pay certain people "visits" which results him going on a murderous rampage in several different, multi-leveled locations.

The game is played from a top-down perspective and involves the player going from room to room in a gang infested building killing everyone in sight before being allowed to progress to the next floor. The game is presented with a 2D pixel art style that while retro in feel, can display insane amounts of violence. Your character will stomp on heads, gouge out eyes and slash throats that will results in streams of pixilated blood and viscera. The entire game is heavily influenced by the 2011 film "Drive" (so much so that the developers thank director Nicolas Winding Refn in the credits). This influence can not only be seen in the violence and presentation but also the amazing 80s themed, dark sythn soundtrack, whose thumping baseline and high-pitched whines will get your thumbs moving and your eyes twitching.

 

The player is given a limited view of his surroundings and is able to see an overhead room layout of the immediate area around him. Guards patrol in an ordered fashion and it's up to you to decide the best course of action to take on a room. Death will come swiftly to both the player and enemies as most attacks result in one hit kills. A large arsenal of firearms such as shotguns and assault rifles are at your disposal although you will have to pick these items off of fallen enemies as you usually start the level unarmed.

Smart planning is important to survival and Hotline Miami lets you take on the carnage in whatever way you deem fit. Should you go into a room, grab the nearest guard as a human shield, throw a knife at an attack dog, kill the shield, grab his weapon and quickly blast the two other baddies in the next room before they have time to react? Or should you wait until an enemie's patrol route passes by a door, kick down said door stunning the guard, pick up a baseball bat and smash open the head of the next guard as to not alert anyone else with the sound of gunfire? The choice is up to you.

 

This flexibility is what makes Hotline Miami such a joy to play. The visceral impact of bullets and streaks of blood keep you pushing forward toward the next kill. While this feeling is very empowering, you will die, over and over again. Sometimes hundreds of times during a level. An enemy out of your view will shoot you unexpectedly or a dog will charge down a hallway and rip out your throat before you have time to react. Luckily pressing "X" immediately after dying will instantly restart you at the beginning of a level to try a new method of attack.

One of the biggest problems with the Vita port of the game has to be the controls. Hotline Miami was originally made for the PC with a keyboard and mouse setup for extreme precision. But on the Vita, the twin-stick/lock-on mechanic is just not fast enough to deal with multiple enemies coming at you when a single hit means your death. The way I would have to take on rooms was to rotate my character in the direction I wanted to be facing, then run in with guns blazing hoping the spotty auti-aim mechanic would take out the enemies in a general direction.

While this lead to many more deaths than on the PC version, the fact that it never got frustrating is a testament to the games addictive, fast-paced gameplay.

BOTTOM LINE:

Hotline Miami is a truly unique action game whose variety of killing mechanics along with an incredible sense of style make for one of the most intense action games on the console.

8/10

Gone Home - PC Review

While Gone Home's mechanics and story telling are nothing new, it is a fine example of how gameplay and plot can be melded together.

Gone Home is a first person adventure game where you play the role of Kaitlin, the eldest of two daughters, who is returning home from a yearlong trip abroad. You enter a new, unfamiliar house your family has moved into during your absence, and you slowly discover what has happened during the time you were gone.

The game is set in the mid-nineties and the house is full of items befitting the time such as VHS tapes with episodes of the "X-Files" on them, cassette tape decks, and Super Nintendo cartridges. You enter into the empty house during a thundertstorm and the unlit rooms set the tone perfectly.

Collecting and examining objects to progress is the entirety of the gameplay in Gone Home. Several doors will be initially locked, but finding maps and notes left around the house yields new passages to different rooms. You are able to pick up and manipulate items and several key items will produce a voiced diary entry from your younger sister Sam.

And this is the best part of Gone Home, the story. Without any previous knowledge of the people who live in this house, you are put right in the shoes of the main character. You discover an interesting story of your sister's first love which is both unaccepted by your parents and society. You find your fathers struggles to return to writing and your mother's attempts to keep the marriage together despite some possible infidelity.

 

Apart from the diary entries from Sam, this entire storyline is derived from objects found around the house. You mother's schedule with couple's activities crossed out and your fathers boxes of unsold books are all you need to build up these characters you will never see.

The story of Gone Home could never be told in any medium but a videogame. The feeling of being alone in a strangers home while riffling though their personal belongings brings on a uncomfortableness along with giddy voyeurism. The items are laid out perfectly for you to find in an order that serves the narrative.

 

The biggest knock against the game would have to be the length for the price. The entire game can be completed in 1-2 hours. I actually went back to play it again before writing this review and was able to finish it in 20 minutes. While there is nothing necessarily wrong about a short game, Gone Home's initial asking price of $20 is insane. While it can be found for sale on various sites, there is no way I could recommend this game for anything over $5.

 

BOTTOM LINE:

The developers at The Fullbright Company have created a great story in Gone Home that is sad and bittersweet dealing with themes of teenage rebellion and a collapsing family. It is a game that should be experienced by anyone interested in how story and gameplay can compliment each, but it's incredibly short length doesn't make it worth the reccomened price. Wait for a sale and then definetly get it.

7/10

Guacamelee! - PS Vita Review

Guacamelee! is an excellent 2D action platformer whose unique visual style and combat system make it an incredibly fun entry into the "Metroid-vania" catalog of games.

In Guacamelee! you play the role of Juan Aguacate, a simple farmer set with the task of rescuing El Presidente's daughter from the evil skeleton Carlos Calaca. To acomplish this task you become a luchador and gain the powers of Mexican Wresting.

The world of Guacamelee! is inspired by traditional Mexican art, folklore, and music. The environments and characters pop with bright neon colors and the Mariachi guitar music is lively and pushes your forward on your quest. While the characters models are relatively simply in design, they are fluidly animated and expressive in their performances.

The humor also shines in the game. Dialogue is funny and self referential with seveal nods to older games like Mario and Zelda. The characters are also quite memorable from a crotchety old shape-shifting goat man who explains your new powers as you collect them (one time giving you the "Congratulations! You've earned NOTHING!" line) to a fire breathing, tequila drinking gunslinger who would fight you if it were not for him wasting all his ammo shooting his pistols up into the air. The jokes and sight gags really are refreshing for a game in this genre which is usually filled with Gothic castles or abandoned space stations.

The base of Guacamelee!'s gameplay is combat brawling and dungeon exploration. Your character moves around in an open world consisting of several different environment types (desert, ice, castle) and then trekking into dungeons which are broken up into small, closed off arena battles, puzzle platforming rooms, and boss fights.

Like the world itself, the fighting in Guacamelee! takes it's cues from Mexican Wrestling. You have your basic punch/kick combos along with throws and suplexes. You are often faced with multiple enemies at a time which makes tossing foes into each other to stun them imperative toward survival.

Combat has a nice flow to it, allowing you to rack up large combos by mixing up different strikes and special moves. These special moves, which come in the form of attacks such as shoulder dashes and rising uppercuts, are gained by smashing orb holding Chozo Statues, which is a direct reference to the Metroid series.

 

Certain enemies will be shielded different colors indicating the special move needed to defeat them. This has you using all of the moves in your arsenal and gets to even more complicated levels in boss battles. The special moves also come into play when solving the game's many puzzles rooms. These rooms are a real treat to play and have you wishing there were more of them. You are often faced with what seems like a completely impassible set of platforms and walls between you and a chest but after several attempts and a clever use of the directional boosting abilities of your special moves, you'll end up feeling like a genus.

The character building aspect of Guacamelee! comes from item and gold collection. Collecting sets of hearts or skulls expand your maximum health and stamina respectivly. Defeating enemies will net you gold which increases with the execution of longer combo stings. This gold can then be traded for more item sets or stronger strikes and throws. The progress comes quickly and has you searching every part of a level for that next item.

While there is some backtracking in Guacamelee!, it is no where near the level of a game like Super Metroid. Usually after gaining a new ability in a dungeon a simple detour will allow you to collect everything in an area. This makes for very quick passage though the game without having to worry about traveling all the way back to a spot now that you have a special move that allows you to pass through a colored door. While there is a fast travel system in place using giant Olmec heads, I found myself not using them at all throughout my playtime (I used them once after completing the game to get an achievement).

BOTTOM LINE:

Guacamelee! is an amazing ride for any fans of Metroid-vania type games. While the playtime is short (5-8 hours) the game is constantly pushing you forward with it's fast and deep combat and awesome, hilarious presentation. A perfect fit for the Vita platform.


8/10

The Last of Us - PS3 Review

 

When The Last of Us was first announced back in 2011, I was highly skeptical of how it would turn out. From the initial footage it just looked like another zombie based game which was (and you could say still is) the fad at the time. But, the game had a good pedigree behind with developer Naughty Dog (Crash Bandicoot, Uncharted) and as more media came out it would seem that the story focused more on the human aspects of an undead apocalypse with action that looked very realistic. After finally completing it I can say that the studio has created one of the finest stories presented this generation, even if it the same can't be said of the gameplay.
 

The Last of Us, begins with our protagonist Joel and his daughter during the beginning of a fungal outbreak that turns it's victims uncontrollable monsters. After a tragic set of events we falsh forward 20 years and find Joel a much older and more curmudgeon smuggler living in a world post outbreak. The uninfected are quarantined off in shanty towns controlled by the government and rebels who call themselves "The Fireflies" offer a hope to thoes in the wasteland yearning for freedom.

After a deal goes bad, Joel finds himself charged with the care of the teenage Ellie, who it would seem is immune to the virus. Together they travel with the hopes of finding a Firefly controlled hospital and potentialy discovering a vaccine. 

This relationship between the two characters is at the center of the story. Joel has seen the world crumble around him while Ellie was born into it. Joel is disillusioned with life while Ellie brings a hopeful and youthful optimism as this is all she has ever known. On their journey we see these two very real characters develop and grow as they witness the absolute collapse in humanity. The people they meet along the way run the gamut of hermit weapon-smiths, heavily armed militias and cultist cannibals. And the ending? Absolutely perfect.

One thing that has to be mentioned is the presentation. The Last of Us is the finest looking game of the seventh generation of consoles. The faces express so much emotion and are dirt smeared and haggard avoiding much of the "plasticy" fakeness of most human models. Locations of abandoned houses and metropolitan cities over come with decay and natural rebirth have you stopping to admire the scenery. The voice acting is absolutely spectacular from the entire cast and the music scored by Gustavo Santaolalla (The Motorcycle Diaries, Brokeback Mountain) provides beautifully muted acoustic guitar melodies that fit perfectly for the setting.

Despite all this, the core gameplay itself fails to meet the level set by the story and presentation. The Last of Us is a third-person shooter/action-stealth game. The flow is this: watch some great story moments between the characters, move to the next area and encounter a bunuch of baddies to sneak around, go to the next story section. 

While these areas of sneaking and shooting are often tense, it is more due to the very slow movement controls of the characters and the often unreadable perception cones of the enemies. The enemies of the game consist of basic infected, who will run at you on sight, further infected, blind "clickers", who wander around only reacting to load sounds, and human foes who are often armed with long range weapons.

There is some fun to be had in sneaking up behind an enemy and delivering a stealth kill but more often than not, a baddie from across the level would spot me resulting in a one-hit kill and game over. And while these encounters usually take place in varied environments, calling for the smart use of cover, toward the end of the game I found myself just running past scenes as fast as I could to just get to the next story point. The gameplay is simply not "fun" resulting in too many deaths without any of the interesting traversal or puzzle solving of the studio's Uncharted series.

There is also a crafting and upgrade mechanic as well, having you finding scraps of rags and tools to boost the effectiveness of weapons or make traps, but the traps and bombs are too unwieldy to use as they usually attract all the enemies in a level on to your position and the weapons have barely perceivable benefits. While by no means the worst action-stealth gameplay, it definitely was not enjoyable.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

The Last of Us succeeds in having one of the most amazing stories of the entire generation. With the character development and believable world at the level of a Hollywood film. But the gameplay in-between the plot is simply too clunky and frustrating to be enjoyed. My recommendation is to set the game to "easy" and run past all the zombies you can to see the journey of Joel and Ellie. Despite all of it's flaws, it remains on the of greatest examples of story telling ever brought to video games.

8/10

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - Nintendo 3DS Review

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was my first ever Zelda title as well as one of my favorite games for the SNES. Now, 22 years later, Nintendo has released a sequel to the game on the Nintendo 3DS, set in the same world with the same top down gameplay. While this may not have topped the original, it still is one of the best titles for the system.

STORY:

If I was asked to tell anyone what the story of the game was, it would probably go something like this:

I had to look it up. This guy is called Yuga.

"This scary clown man starts to stir shit up by kidnapping the Seven Sages of Hyrule to revive Ganon. Link collects items while traveling back and forth between Hyrule and the dark "Lorule" (Fucking genius), completing dungeons to rescue the Sages and defeat the final boss."



Out of all the Zelda games I have played, the story in Link Between Worlds is probably the most inconsequential. Story was never a strong point of the series and Link Between World's narrative falls flat when compared to other titles in the franchise.

While this may be due to the more free-form nature of the gameplay, much of the feeling of being on an epic quest to save the land is lost and broken down into simply completing dungeon after dungeon to move closer to the ending (but it does wrap up quite nicely).

PRESENTATION:

Taken at 4AM after completing the game.

Link Between Worlds goes back to the top down 2D perspective of Link to the Past while updating everything with 3D models. The colors are bright and all the familiar elements from the original game, such as the red and green enemy knights, are brought out wonderfully in 3D. The game keeps the basic layout of the over-world from Link to the Past and it feels great to revisit these familiar locations.

The music this time around is a fully orchestrated, and while no new song particularly stands out, the music never gets tiring to listen to while hacking away inside the dungeons.


GAMEPLAY:

cr. Kotaku

This is where Link Between Worlds departs most from other Zelda titles. Instead of the regular game progression of "go into a dungeon", "find an item to solve specific puzzles in the dungeon", "defeat the boss" and "move on to the next dungeon", Link Between Worlds allows you to purchase almost all of the classic Zelda items from the begining (hookshot, bombs, hammer) and take on dungeons in any order your wish.

The items are all up for grabs in your home, in which after starting your quest, is converted into a store by a purple bunny man (I don't remember his name either). Items can be initially rented for a fee and then bought for an even larger fee. Rented items are lost should you ever fall in battle, but bought items are permanently kept in your inventory. These items can later be upgraded to more powerful versions with a collection side-quest.

So many elevators. So many floors.

It seems that Nintendo has taken a cue from the recent explosion of rogue-likes with this new open-ended as well as more punishing gameplay system. This also shows in the complete lack of tutorials that constantly bogged down other Zelda games ("HEY! LISTEN!). By this point you should know what an arrow does, if not, try it out.


 
The star of any Zelda game has always been the dungeons, and Link Between Worlds does not disappoint. The puzzles are truly clever, requiring multi-step and multi-layered thinking. The most interesting aspect of these new dungeon puzzles is that as you can bring in almost all the items into any dungeon, many of the puzzles have multiple solutions. There were several times I definitely "brute forced" may way past a spot using an item I'm sure was not supposed to be there.

Walk like an Egyptian

Another new mechanic brought into this game is Link's ability to flatten himself onto walls and become a living painting. This allows him to shimmy to places he was unable to reach before as well as travel back and forth between worlds. This is one new feature that must constantly be kept in mind after hours of trying to figure out a puzzle where the solution is to simply use your flatten power to slide around the outside of a building and through a crack.

BOTTOM LINE:

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game. While the story might disappoint, the ingenious puzzles had me playing almost non-stop during my 15 hour completion time. It's the classic Zelda formula distilled into its most basic components and given a fresh new spin for the more mature audience who grew up with the games.

8.5/10

LIMBO - PS Vita Review

After a recent sale on PS+ I decided to pick up LIMBO again for my Vita after playing about half way and giving up on my Steam copy.

STORY:

LIMBO is a 2D puzzle platformer with no story to speak of. Your character is a small boy who is only seen as a silhouette in a completely black and white world. You wake up and proceed to run right with no other motivation than to complete the puzzles and not die. While there are some hints at plot with hostile native children carrying spears, setting off traps to impede your progress and the appearance of a small girl, there are no dialogue or cut-scenes that give any explanation to who or where you are.

Presentation:

LIMBO is presented completely in black and white which lends to the feeling of isolation and fear throughout the game. You will see things such as giant spiders, corpses of those who came before you, and backgrounds ranging from fairytale forests to the insides of loud industrial factories. If there was one drawback to this visual style, it would be that sometimes puzzle elements are hard to make out unless you are really looking. You can often miss a bear trap on the ground or improperly judge an angle of a slope that will send you careening toward your death. The sound an music are too, kept to an appropriate minimum with the sound of your crunching bones accentuating the silence.

Gameplay:

And you will hear this sound of death, a lot. LIMBO is a game that isn’t afraid to teach you how to overcome it’s puzzles by killing you. You’ll solve one section of the game only to run head first into a spinning saw blade or spike-filled pit. Through this punishment you are taught slowly to respect everything in the environment as dangerous and to pay close attention to the things around you. While the puzzles can be punishing, luckily this is off-set with an extremely forgiving checkpoint system that restarts you immediately before the challenge you just failed.

The puzzles in LIMBO are excellent as well. Starting off from simple platforming and block pushing, and ending on some fiendish timing based puzzles, the difficulty curve is perfect during the games 4-6 hour campaign. While never reaching the “I’m a genius” level of Braid’s puzzle design, there will definitely be times where you will have a satisfied grin on your face after cracking an especially devious, multi-tierd section.

While the game is fairly short, I did enjoy most of my time in LIMBO’s dark and twisted world. And for the price I paid ($3.45), there was nothing to complain about.

Bottom Line:

LIMBO is an excellent pure puzzle-platformer whose truly unique visual style along with dark sense of humor make it a must play for those who like to flex their brains while not minding having them repeatedly caved in by a giant falling block.

8/10