Recent reviews by no shirt

I sat down to play Stories Untold one night when I wanted to stay up late instead of going to bed. I told myself I'd just play for a half-hour or so, but I ended up playing all the way through the game in one sitting.

Stories Untold is an experimental text-adventure game divided into four chapters, each of which is built around a slightly different mechanic from the other chapters. Mastering the different mechanics isn't particularly challenging, but challenge isn't really the point of a game like this. The point is to play a primary role in unfolding a story. Stories Untold handcuffs a set of clever, well-executed ideas to a just-above-mediocre story. The game is surprising and affecting in non-jump-scary ways (which I always find refreshing), and for the bulk of the game, the stories are mysterious and intriguing. But there are two main problems with the story that negatively impacted my experience.

First, the technical aspects of the story (spelling, grammar, consistency, logic) contain many errors. Characters' names change spellings, some text (unintentionally) contains typographical errors, and there are a couple character behaviors that don't make logical sense and therefore break my suspension of disbelief. I see errors like these often in video games, and I guess that's what happens when the market becomes flooded with games by indie devs who, understandably, prioritize critical game design elements over minutiae. I also know that storytelling isn't everyone's strong suit. But for a game like Stories Untold where the mechanics are simple--just complex enough to keep the player engaged and progressing the story at a good pace--the story is the main focus, and that means it had better be a good one.

Second, the story builds in scope and intensity, and then resolves into something underwhelming and domestic, so I guess you could say it has a kind of flawed narrative arc. The story kept me engaged all the way up until the very end, where it promptly fell flat. Although I could tell the writers were trying to do something really cool with the narrative, it didn't work because the story didn't have a strong enough resolution to support their ideas.

These problems aren't enough to label Stories Untold a failure, though. As I said, it's an experimental game, and that means that the creators are trying to do new, clever things with the medium. On that front, Stories Untold is a huge success, offering the player a series of totally engaging (and yes, scary) scenarios packed with killer audio/visual/ludic design through-and-through. I would love to see a sequel to this game--one where the writers could take a bit more time crafting the narrative and playing around with the limitations/affordances of the text-adventure genre.

I bought First Winter because I was drawn to the game's aesthetic, which is odd because lately I've been getting pretty tired of games that offer a cool visual style but no substantial story or worthwhile experience. There's something about First Winter's lo-fi graphics that seem ultra-realistic to me. As if underneath all of those big blocky pixels is the real world. But I shared this thought with my wife and showed her the game, and she had no idea what I was talking about, so maybe don't listen to me.

I've also been getting tired of modern "horror" games that just consist of one jump scare after the next. And I know I sound like some crotchety old man here, complaining about jump scares and "those damn modern video games," but I'm starting to think most of the horror games I've played recently (indie and mainstream) seem to be designed with livestreamers in mind. The strange philosophy of 21st century media is that we're entertained by seeing people react to things--scary stuff, gross foods, generational differences, etc. I guess that's alright, but it just seems kind of shallow and unsubstantial to me. Yeah, yeah, I get it--you can make something jump out at me and consistently trigger a physical response and now we can all have a good laugh about it. Maybe I'm just a square, but I don't really want to have a laugh when I'm playing a horror game (at least not at the parts that are supposed to make me scared). I want the game to reveal something to me, either about myself or about the world, beyond the fact that I'm programmed to react to sudden, loud noises.

Luckily, First Winter feels more like a video game than a "MEGA Burning Hot Mouthful of Hottest Hot Sauce Challenge Must Try!" experience. The game has jump scares, yes. But the jump scares tend more towards the subtle, Silent Hill-style "I was startled that this door opened on its own" hair-raising event, rather than the "distorted, screaming face w/ toothy grin" jump scare. I think it also helps that the game is, as other reviews have noted, a "walking simulator," so I always felt that the scares were part of the scripted experience of the game, rather than randomly emerging progress resetters.

First Winter is really short; I probably spent more time writing this review than I did playing the game. But that's alright--there's no rule that games all have to be long, or that the length of the game correlates with its potential, although length probably ought to correlate to price (and this game is super cheap). The game has a story centered around Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation. There's some imagery in the game that seems to be hinting at some deeper ideas, and I have some vague theories about what's going on in the game, but I'll need some time to reflect on it before I start to make any insightful connections.

I don't know what kind of games you like, but maybe you should give this one a shot. It's good. I recommend it.

I have played through Resident Evil 4 probably fifteen times, and before I die I will probably play through it fifteen more. It's the kind of game that always feels good to play--it has challenging but masterable combat mechanics, an addicting weapon upgrade system, and most importantly, wonderful level design and environments. There's no respectable story to speak of, which makes the game all the more remarkable since it manages to snare the player solely on the merits of its design and mechanics.

The main reason I keep playing Resident Evil 4 is because I enjoy being in the game's environments. Sure, there are a lot of locations in the game that are absolutely miserable, but those locations are an essential half of a contrasting environment dynamic the Resident Evil games have always deployed. To build tension and horror, Resident Evil games cram the player into dark, cramped, filthy places, and it's only after the player has managed to make it through these uncomfortable spaces that they are rewarded with a "safe" space, usually an area with a typewriter (for saving games) and no enemies. I've always liked the atmosphere of these areas, but in Resident Evil 4 they are especially wonderful. Often these safe spaces appear outdoors after the player has been trudging through some claustrophobic indoor location, and the experience can really feel like a breath of fresh air. This tension-and-release dynamic also makes the game really satisfying to play, because the player feels like they've earned each moment of peace and safety.

The combat mechanics in Resident Evil 4 took some flak when the game first launched in 2005 because Leon can move and attack, but he can't do both at the same time. Of course, anyone who understands the need for tension-building in horror will recognize the ignorance of those complaints. One of the big reasons RE4's combat is so compelling is because of Leon's mobility handicap; it feels really stressful to be anchored in place while a horde of enemies creeps ever closer, and it feels really rewarding to survive a hairy encounter by skillfully knowing when to move and when to shoot.

As I said before, RE4's story is pretty terrible. Still, the game has excellent pacing which is set by the level design and enemy frequency. Unlike earlier Resident Evil games, there's not a lot of area recursion in RE4, so the game feels like it's always progressing quickly even though it takes nearly 15-20 hours to complete.

Resident Evil 4's weapon upgrade system functions in tandem with a simple yet addicting in-game economy based around treasure hunting. Unique treasures are hidden throughout the game world, and players who find them can sell them and purchase new weapons and upgrades. The game economy is well-balanced, and the weapon upgrades always feel like they're popping up at just the right moments--more evidence that the game was meticulously planned out. I always like my survival horror games to be on the difficult side, and from my experience, the original GameCube version of RE4 had lower values for treasure items, making the upgrades slightly harder to get and the game more difficult. The PS2 and Steam versions of the game seem comparatively easy to me, even on Professional difficulty.

There are some things I've found in this world that, despite their dark themes and focus on death, give me a surprising feeling of calm and comfort--the now defunct band "The Paper Chase"[thepaperchase.bandcamp.com] and the YouTube channel "Ask A Mortician" are examples. I also add Resident Evil 4 to this list. Yes, it is the game where my heart races as I carefully count the number of shotgun shells I've unloaded into the chainsaw-wielding monster trying to decapitate me, but it is also the game where I step out onto moonlit castle battlements, my footsteps on the cobblestone breaking through the quiet night and startling a murder of crows away from a gem-filled fountain. Resident Evil 4 is a game full of spaces and experiences to which I will always return.

I originally played Dark Souls on the PS3 years ago. It was wonderful. Recently, a friend started playing the game and I thought I would play through it again on PC. The first thing I noticed was the terrible framerate. Apparently there is a patch to fix the framerate issue, but I'm a weirdo and I only download official patches for games, so I suffered through the terrible framerate for 2.5 playthroughs (necessary to get all of the achievements), and it was still an amazing experience.

The thing you've probably heard most about Dark Souls is that it is a difficult game. It's true. The game is tough. But for me the most significant characteristic of Dark Souls is the game's subtle narrative. After playing through the game several times, I started to develop a new games literacy. In Dark Souls, everything means something, but the game rarely gives up its secrets. Dark Souls is an interpretive experience. On a first playthrough, you will probably fail to notice many of the story elements, even though they're in plain sight. The game revolutionizes videogames as an artistic medium by using visuals and interactivity to construct a narrative instead of relying on dialogue-driven cutscenes or text-based journal entries to progress the story.

The first time I played through the game I played as a knight, and this time I played through I chose to be a mage. The game felt difficult and well-balanced for each of the classes I chose, and playing through as a different class made the experience totally fresh again. Understandably, the multiplayer mechanic seemed less lively than the last time I played the game several years ago, but I still had some memorable encounters with other players (a player who tried to punch me to death, another who invaded me just before I could make it to a much-needed bonfire). Luckily, Dark Souls is still very much alive.

There are several video series on YouTube addressing the "lore" of Dark Souls, and I recommend you watch them after a playthrough of the game. You'll be surprised at how much you didn't pick up on in the game. I think the deep yet subtle narrative makes the game more immersive, because there are still so many unanswered questions about the game that it feels like an expansive and nearly limitless world. The DLC is also really quite good.

I could go on and on about Dark Souls--it's one of my favorite video games--but I just want to comment on one last thing: the environment. After the difficulty and the unique narrative approach, probably the most well-executed aspect of Dark Souls is the world. Lordran looks and feels enormous. The game does amazing things with spaces and it is exremely mood-driven. From the first real bonfire, the player has an expansive view of the land, and it is far-reaching. However, the world is not just expansive but deep. I compare the level design approach to Silent Hill 2, because there is often an unexpected logic to the world, where enormous-feeling descents end up recursing the player back to familiar spots. The environments of Dark Souls constantly evoke feelings of awe, then wonder, then surprise. The environment is just one more aspect of the game design that teaches a new videogame literacy; one may be very skilled at videogames, but such skills are not necessarily translatable to Dark Souls, because it challenges us to play on its own unfamiliar terms.

My experience with Blackwell Unbound was completely different than my experience with The Blackwell Legacy, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the problems I had with the first entry were remedied in Blackwell Unbound, while some of the shining points in the first game were surprisingly absent from this game.

The story premise has really started to interest me. I think it has the same kind of longevity as some template-based TV serials like X-Files or Star Trek. In his commentary track, Dave Gilbert discusses the "lingering ghost" trope and why it's interesting, and he's right--it is interesting. As far as the story goes, I am now "on-board" with the Blackwell games (although the final scene of Blackwell Unbound posed a huge moral problem for me). It was really cool to play as Lauren; she is an interesting character, especially alongside Joey. I wish I could have seen more interaction between them.

The gameplay of Blackwell Unbound differs from its predecessor by allowing the player to switch between playing as Joey and playing as Lauren. I think this is and always has been a cool mechanic. Unfortunately, unlike some other successful adventure games who have used this mechanic, like Maniac Mansion and The Cave, Blackwell Unbound doesn't really make good use of the ability to switch characters. Joey is only necessary for a couple of small actions, and he is otherwise unnecessary. However, Gilbert does explain in the commentary track that Blackwell Unbound was meant to be a short project to tide players over until the more ambitious Blackwell Convergence was finished, so I assume that the character-switching will be put to better use in the next game in the series.

The graphics and voice acting are other pieces of evidence that Blackwell Unbound seems to have been given less thought and attention than the first game (I have not yet played Convergence, so I can't compare). I was really impressed with The Blackwell Legacy's graphics and voice acting; everything looked really painstakingly drawn, and the voice actors gave great performances. Although some of the environments in Blackwell Unbound look really great (Jambalaya Records, Lauren's apartment) some of the environments looked pretty rushed (the map screen, the construction site), and there were a couple times I turned down my speakers because I was embarrassed that someone might hear the terrible voice acting. The problem with the voice acting seems to be that the actors were not very well-matched for the roles they played. Three of the characters (The Countess, Harriet Sherman, and Joseph Mitchell) are 50+ years old but are voiced by young people trying to imitate "old" voices, which makes for some really cringe-worthy moments. Another character, Dwayne, has a pretty embarrassing Jamaican accent and in the credits he appears to be voiced by a white guy. I hate to criticize peoples' acting abilities, especially since I'm certain I'd be absolutely terrible at it, but I feel like the voice performances in Blackwell Unbound really got in the way of my enjoying the game.

The puzzle logic in Blackwell Unbound really irked me, too. Obviously, in a series like Blackwell, the player needs to discover clues to progress. In Blackwell Unbound, there's a really cool mechanic that tasks the player with remembering and manually entering into a phonebook names that other characters mention in dialogue. I love it when games make me pull out a pad of paper and a pencil to solve a puzzle. My problem is that most of the "clues" seem really obvious and unnaturally forced into the dialogue ("That's how we treat your kind at Johnny Ivory's!"), so it felt like Gilbert left a really obvious trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow.

The commentary track this time features Gilbert alongside one of the game's artists. It is sometimes interesting to hear about the processes they went through in designing the game. Dave Gilbert wasn't as annoying to me as he was in the commentary for The Blackwell Legacy; maybe he's growing on me.

In summary, Blackwell Unbound was a much more interesting game than The Blackwell Legacy, but I think The Blackwell Legacy had a greater level of polish and seemed more like a complete game. I'm excited to play Blackwell Convergence, and I hope it has some decent voice-acting.

Ever since I noticed it in my games library, something kept pulling me toward playing The Blackwell Legacy. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe the art style? I'm kind of a sucker for pixely AGS games. Maybe the excitement of having a multi-part narrative experience? After all, I love the episodic Telltale games and Kentucky Route Zero. I don't know what drew me to The Blackwell Legacy, but I've just finished the first installment and I wasn't super impressed.

This isn't to say that I didn't like the game--as is the case with most adventure games there were really only a couple of things I really *disliked* about the game, and they were silly puzzles. For the most part, though, the puzzle mechanics, which often involve using an in-game notebook of "clues" that trigger dialog options, were particularly fun to play around with. But overall, the experience didn't grab me like other point-and-click adventure games have in the past (for me, Yahtzee's Chzo mythos games stand out the most).

While playing The Blackwell Legacy, I didn't have any of the laugh-out-loud moments, goosebump-/tear-inducing emotional moments, or "I'm so proud of myself for solving this clever puzzle" moments that have characterized this genre for me. My experience playing The Blackwell Legacy was, in all honesty, kind of boring. And yet there's still something about the story that makes me want to continue playing the Blackwell games, so even though The Blackwell Legacy didn't make a strong impression on me, I'm completely willing to keep going with the series. The Blackwell Legacy probably works well for what it is: a writer's early attempt at creating the introduction to what seems to be an ambitious series.

Some other noteworthy aspects of this game include the visuals/sound design and the commentary tracks. The game looks great. The settings and character animations are really impressive, and they were definitely instrumental in keeping me playing the game. Similarly, the sound design was pretty well done. All of the lines are voice-acted, which is great since most of the voice actors are actually good at what they do. More often than not I would actually sit and listen to the complete dialog rather than skipping through it and simply reading the text.

Finally, the commentary tracks. Normally I wouldn't think to comment on some weird, optional aspect of a game like this, but I feel like the commentary tracks revealed a couple of interesting things to me. The commentary gave an insight into the game creator's personality, and that's something I'm really interested in. I like to connect unique game narratives with unique personalities. I do the same thing with the creators of music and movies, too. But there was something about Dave Gilbert's personality in the commentary that just seemed so at-odds with the tone and attitude of the game, I had a hard time listening to all of his commentary (I skipped some of it). On the plus side, the commentary tracks verified a lot of my suspicions that the game maybe didn't represent the creator's best work. In the commentary, Gilbert often critiques his design choices, which is both really interesting and heartening. I expect that the other Blackwell games will be better than the first.

In conclusion, my biggest takeaway from The Blackwell Legacy is the ability to look in on the process of creating a video game. That kind of insight has always been interesting to me. In this way, The Blackwell Legacy seems like a sort of prototype game. I expect the next games in the series to really improve on the first.

LYNE is a fun, simple, and good-looking puzzle game. I'm normally not a huge fan of straight-up, narrative-less puzzle games, but there was something about LYNE that hooked me from the first time I started it up. It's really smooth, responsive and snappy, and it has a really satisfying set of feedbacks; it seems like it was initially designed for mobile phones, so even with the mouse the interactions feel really tactile. The game is surprisingly challenging. During my average play session I was usually able to clear 6-7 puzzles before I got stuck and had to take a break. It was satisfying to get stuck on a puzzle and then come back to it the next day and solve it immediately. Like most video games, LYNE gets more difficult as it goes on, and the final set of boards is a real challenge. I usually played in the morning, listening to podcasts instead of the game sound. It was a good way to wake up my brain in the morning. I recommend LYNE if you have any interest in puzzle games. Even if you don't normally play puzzle games, you might like this one.

A Bird Story is a good, short game. I really appreciate stories that treat me like I'm smart enough to pick up on subtle cues, and this game is definitely subtle. Aside from the title screen, the game contains no written words, which means that all of the character behaviors, attitudes, and emotions must be conveyed visually. I've always been a fan of the old SNES JRPGs because they were able to convey such rich characterizations with such limited graphics. A Bird Story accomplishes a similar end; although its graphical resolution is admittedly finer than the old SNES RPGs, the game's visuals still manage to convey a similar charm and humor. I'm always impressed when an artwork can make me laugh out loud and cry. There were several opportunities for the designers to include some skill-based challenges, but that never happened; I was surprised and pleased to make it through the story without feeling like there was a videogame in my way. I should also mention that the music and sound effects were really great. The whole experience reminded me of these really peaceful Ferry Halim flash games [www.ferryhalim.com]. I recommend A Bird Story if you feel like being moved by a sweet story. Actually, if you're bummed out this game might make you feel better.