The February Retro Haul

I made a video of all the retro stuff I bought this month! Enjoy!

Tau Plays Outlast Part 7

Sewer levels are never good....

Jamestown

The top down shooter and the side scrolling shooter are both genres that I really enjoy.  Yes, back in my day when you said "shooter", you weren't referring to a silly semi-realistic military game, you were talking about driving in a spaceship or something and blowing the FUCK out of everything on screen.

However in recent years, the "shmup" as it's now known has kind of died a bit.  Very rarely do you see any of these kind of games get released anymore, and when you do they are almost always small downloadable games that aren't very good.  Either that, or they are Japan made ports of arcade games that are so niche that the only people who play them don't want them for a console or PC because they are too busy in a game centre enjoying it there instead.

Jamestown is part of the small downloadable title camp, but instead of being sort of rubbish it's actually rather good.  To sum up the whole review of the game for those in the know, it's kind of like Donpachi.  For those that don't know I'll go on a little further to explain what that means.

In Jamestown you play as a ship and you are tasked with blowing up anything that moves.  At the start of the game you have access to one ship that has a standard rapid fire button and a slightly stronger beam move but firing this makes you move slower.  As you play you can buy other ships that are all slightly different but if you have ever played a game in this genre before then the selections are going to blow your mind; however the favourites are all there.

Now every shmup has a gimmick to set it apart from the rest and in this game we have something called a "vaunt".  As you blow stuff up, you collect little gold cogs which fill up a gauge and when it's full you can activate your vaunt.  This causes a circle to appear that cancels out all the enemy shots for a short time and during the vaunt you're damage goes up and you get twice the points.  Once the metre drops to 0 you are given a point bonus and you start all over again collecting cogs or you can cancel it early to deflect a few more shots so this whole system does add some strategy to each stage.

In Jamestown there are 5 stages and you can play them all individually or back to back in what the game calls Gauntlet mode.  On top of that there are some bonus stages to play that task you with fulfilling certain goals and some unlockable difficulties for those who enjoy a bit of the old bullet hell.

The game also comes with 4 player co-op which is nice but if you're like me and don't have any shmup friends then there are also online leaderboards to keep you entertained.

So if you're a fan of shmups I'd give Jamestown a go, it's not going to set the world on fire but it's a fun game and it's a good break from a lot of the harder games in the same genre.  If you DON'T like shmups, then give Jamestown a go anyway, it's a good entryway into the series and clearing the higher difficulties will make you feel like a complete boss.

Paying to NOT Play with World of Warcraft

Well I didn't think I'd ever be talking about this game again.  I still remember back when I was in high school, just after I finished my GCSE exams, coming home and loading up WoW for the first time.  I remember back during Burning Crusade, when I said "fuck it" to study during my A Level study leave and just whittled away the hours on this game.

Now, World of Warcraft is a completely different beast.  From what people who still do play have told me and from what I've read, it's been dumbed down a great deal and it's only a mere shell of that game that I once had rather fond memories of.

I suppose this post is a kind of extension of the money grubbing rant I made a while ago, so before I even start talking about this stuff, if you want to know how I feel about cash shops and microtransactions, then you can get a general idea from this video.

Now, World of Warcraft isn't exactly new to the idea of nickle and diming its customers.  I remember just after I stopped playing Blizzard released some kind of mount that looked like a bunch of stars in the shape of a horse or something.  People were laughing at it and calling it a piece of shit because there wasn't any way to earn it in game, you had to BUY it from a cash shop.

The reason it was met with such negativity from the player base is because the whole reason you play subscription based MMOs is so that you don't have to deal with this cash shop dog shit.  You buy the game and pay £7/month or something and you get access to everything for that.  In a genre like this where the developer is CONSTANTLY expected to create new content for an ever expanding world, then I won't begrudge them for a subscription fee, but a cash shop is taking the piss.

But times have changed and by the looks of things it seems like all the smart players have fucked off to other games because recently THIS happened.

That picture is from the in game cash shop and is giving players the option to BUY a max level character for $60!  Why would anyone do this, really?  You could buy a NEW game for that much money but Blizzard expect (and people will) people to shell out $60 for a max level character, I mean Jesus Christ.

But I'm not mad about this, why would I be? I don't even play the game anymore.  I'm genuinely confused as to why this is even a thing though.  Part of the fun of playing an MMO is the journey to the end game.  Levelling with your buddies, doing quests and learning the lore of the land as you go, it's great fun.  But instead Blizzard are expecting people to just cut ALL of that shit out and just jump straight into level 90.

I get that people want to PVP and stuff, but what's the point of playing an MMO if you're just going to skip the levelling?  Especially when your skipping out on this much content, it's like your paying to not play the game, I'm genuinely confused as to why anyone would want to skip it when they are already paying a pretty sizable amount of money just to play.

Maybe one day someone will explain what the appeal is, but until that day I'm just going to blanket label you all as nut jobs with more money than sense.

Electronic Super Joy

How in FUCK has it taken me this long to talk about this game?  Well probably because it's really good and I can't stop playing it.

.ESJ is an indie platform game on Steam created by a guy called Michael Todd of Michael Todd Games.  In it's story you play as some guy who has had his ass stolen by a disco wizard or something insane like that but fuck the story just shut up and start jumping!

Yes, ESJ doesn't give a flying fuck about plot and instead it just has 3 worlds worth of really solid platforming to enjoy.  You can jump and you can also do a sort of ground pound move as your most basic methods of getting around a stage but as the game progresses it adds other little things such as double jumping or flying or even one very short level where you pilot a ship and shoot at a guy in another ship.

One thing this game has in absolute spades is variety with almost every level having something unique about it.  It prevents the game from ever becoming stale because you know as soon as you jump through the end of level portal you're going to get another level that's vastly different on the other side.

One of this games strongest points by far though is it's sound design.  It's kind of a weird way to phrase this but right now I can't think of a better way to describe it. It sort of feels like ESJs world is made of music;  If you play it you'll know what I mean by that extremely stupid sounding line.  The sound track is fantastic consisting of all these thumping electronic/techno tracks that get you all fired up and then on top of that you have the slightly sexual "oh yeah" sounds when you hit a check point which are both satisfying to hear and rather funny.

I can't really do this game a decent amount of justice with words, I implore you to go and play it.  Playing Electronic Super Joy is like having a really nice burger.  The appealing visuals are like the bun while the sound design functions as the trimmings with the core gameplay acting as the delicious juicy patty..........that didn't really make much sense either, just fucking play the damn game.

Outlast Part 6

I'm going to be blunt....I don't like this game really.....still, I don't want to leave a playthrough unfinished!   Hopefully the ending will be so crazy good it makes my opinion do a 180.

Serena (Plus Small Rant About Gone Home and The Stanley Parable)

Every month I try to play at least one game released this year to add to my list of Awesome 2014 releases so that I have a nice pool of games to choose from when it comes to picking my top 5 in December.

This month I went with free Steam indie title, Serena and let me tell you, it won't be making any "best of" lists any time soon.

Serena is a very strange game, just because it's a free game that is never announced to you.  I saw it on Steam one day and when I clicked it to get more information, it said "You Already Own Serena".  This confused me since I hadn't bought it, or pressed any download button and it wasn't sitting in my library, but I went with it and gave it a download.  Checking the store now it's clearly labelled as free but I'm sure it wasn't when it was on the front page, but whatever.

According to the blurb on the store page for steam, Serena is an adventure game but that couldn't really be any further from the truth.  Serena is one of those "games" that keep popping up recently.  Absolutely 0 gameplay to be had, just story, more like interactive fiction than a game.  So that must mean the story is pretty good right?  Well no, it's not

The game starts out and your character is sat at a table.  The first thing you are presented with is a photo of him and his wife, but his wife has a scratched out face and he comments about how he can't remember anything about her.  You then walk around his log cabin, clicking on things and listening to him ramble about fond memories of her.  The next few paragraphs contain spoilers, I'll mark them and then you can skip past them if you actually give any kind of crap (you shouldn't)

SPOILERS

As you find items, he starts to remember some kind of argument they had and his ramblings go from fond memories to rants about how much he hates her.  You keep clicking around and in a pretty predictable twist you find a dead body in a cabinet which I think is the protagonists body (you're playing as his ghost or something, who fucking knows), then you get a scene with his (ex) wife and her new lover burning down the log cabin to hide the evidence of her killing you.

END SPOILERS

It sounds like an interesting premise to be honest with you, but it's so poorly presented that it failed to really grasp me.  Straight away I have no idea who anyone is, where I am or why I should care about this guy and his fucking problems.  He can ramble all he wants about his wife and how much he loves her whenever I click on a chair or a dinner table but at the end of the day I just don't give a flying rats arse.  The game presents me with no reason to care about these characters and there isn't really any conflict to resolve, I'm just listening to memories and watching events play out and I have absolutely 0 input.

So, it's a badly presented story with 0 gameplay, puzzle solving or brain power required so calling it an adventure game is a bit of an insult.  If you want to play a real adventure game with a vague plot about a man who can't remember a person who may or may not be his lover, play fucking Anna

http://identitygaming.blogspot.jp/2013/10/anna-extended-edition.html

Now, what does Serena, Gone Home and The Stanley Parable all have in common?

They aren't fucking games.  Now Gone Home and Serena are complete dogshit on a stick, but The Stanley Parable proved that you can have a game like this and make it entertaining at the same time, but I think the definition of "game" is a bit stupid.

Another title that proved you need minimal game play to be enjoyable is the Silent Hill Play Novel, a Japan only book version of Silent Hill which tries to expand on the game by going into great detail about Harry Mason's thoughts and feelings during his adventures through the haunted town.

But in Japan, people KNOW this shit doesn't really qualify as a game, and thus has been assigned it's own genre title of Sound Novel or Visual Novel.  I would stop getting so upset about Gone Home or Parable being praised so much if they weren't praised as being games.

The derogatory term I keep seeing get thrown around for these games is "walking simulator", which is kind of funny but a little unfair.  Give them a name fitting of their content, like interactive fiction or something then maybe I'll stop being so upset when they keep winning awards that they don't fucking deserve.

Interactive Fiction award?  Sure I can handle that
Adventure game award?  Get fucked and go play Monkey Island or Beneath a Steel Sky and learn what a REAL adventure game is you brain dead bag of shitty tissues.