Game Review #9: Emily is Away

As games progress in graphical quality to the constantly moving intersection of "more realistic" and "able to be complained about by immersion purists", there's something that can be said about games that just refuse to participate in the whole process and intentionally make their games look as though they couldn't be bothered to use more than two pixels per object, and that's half the reason the current indie gaming scene is drowning in rogue-likes. But then there's also some who just bypass the whole "graphics" thing altogether and call themselves "text-based" which at first glance seems a lot like saying "I don't know how to make any sort of graphics, so let me just tell you what's happening." But this isn't quite the case in Emily is Away, a free to play interactive story by Kyle Seeley that defends its lack of any visuals to shake a stick at by having the whole game take place in AOL instant message. Now for those of you who are asking your parents what that is right now because you're too young to understand how amazing this new-fangled instant communication through the Internets was back in 2002, do you think they'd mind explaining it to me as well? To tell you the truth, I don't entirely see why it needed to be such an outdated piece of technology. You probablycould've replaced it with text messages and it wouldn't have changed much. There may have at least been a couple of pictures here and there which the game probably needed seeing how the game has us attempting to date a girl that we never see and have no motivation to really go after. Come on, at least show us what she looks like! She doesn't even have to be that hot; just give us something to want. 

As I was beginning to explain, the game follows a young man named Yourname who is attempting to escape the friend zone with a girl named Emily by engaging in conversation over AOL instant message that definitely isn't digging him deeper into the friend zone. The plot advances through your various dialogue options which all have varying degrees of "Rogue Protagonist Syndrome." Several of them seem like they're about to be a great pick up line but then once you see the full thing, you're left scouring your entire keyboard to find the "Choose a Different Sentence" button. And you might be thinking "That couldn't be too much of a problem," but you're forgetting that you probably just finished criticizing some AAA game that happens to have a dialogue options system that isn't even close to its main gameplay feature for doing the same thing. And don't act like you don't know what game I could possibly be talking about, Vault Boy. So why should this game get a pass when you're barely giving one to this mystery AAA game that may or may not have Deathclaws? So is this game getting a 10/10? No. It never was. But is it getting a 0? Absolutely not. It still has a compelling story that keeps you playing until the final message is sent if for no other reason than you want to be able to think of your virtual persona getting some action from the hottest girl you know named Emily, and coincidentally, I happen to know some hot Emily's. Just saying. Hey don't judge me! Ok, fine the tone changed quickly and weirdly there; lets just pretend that never happened and instead admire how good I am at using semicolons. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go role play as Peter Griffin in a post apocalyptic Boston. The secret is dump everything in Endurance, Charisma, and Luck and never touch Intelligence or Perception. Do what you want with Strength and Agility.

Game Review #8: Undertale

So if you haven't existed in the last few months, I should probably fill you in on the fact that the parasite that is the Internet has found a new innocent host to feed off of, and believe me, Deviantart hasn't yet spared a single bit of the thing resulting in a Genocide run of your peace of mind. Although I may have not gotten the best representation of the community. All I really did was check its subreddit, and if you go on one of those, you need to have a Deviantart, the same way that you need to have an imgur, a tumblr, and a password that contains one letter, one number, 3 element abbreviations (which have to be separate from the letters you choose), 2 Old Spice products, and binary code that makes up a picture of your favorite animal, and if it isn't your favorite animal, we will know and we will hunt you down. Well, if you've forgotten the one hint I've given you hidden in that wall of text already, I'm talking about Undertale. 

Undertale is a retro style RPG and BINGO. I'm sold. If you don't know me, RPGs are sort of my thing, and retro is just always a cool thing to have especially if you intend to sell your INDIE GAME on STEAM. But if it still doesn't sound like your thing, you haven't see the whole thing yet. Whilst the battles maintain the traditional turn-based style that I personally love, a bunch of quirks and new ideas make it unique and ingenious. First of all, you don't have to kill a single enemy (keyword: have to). Instead, you're encouraged to strike up a conversation and spare your opponents. If you do, you'll still get money but you won't get EXP. "But LKIF, if I do that, I won't get any more HP, so I'll die quicker! This is dumb! Screw this game!" Well I'm so glad you decided to be a whiny bitch, because now I have an excellent segway into the next point. The battles also incorporate a system of dodging attacks in a sort of bullet hell mini-game. It's a hugely unexpected concept that really makes the whole thing feel more engaging. “But LKIF, if I can just dodge all the attacks then it couldn’t possibly be challenging! Boo! 7.8/10 too much dodging!” Well, apparently you’ve never played a bullet hell game before because if you did, you’d really understand how much precision you have to deal with, dodging out of the way of a plethora of missiles, bones, knives, and, of course, the all important palette swaps of vomit.

The story excels in both content and presentation. Characters are colorful, in and outside of battle, and have relationships that are interesting and fun to learn. The story starts with a fairly cliché backstory of a war between humans and monsters until the monsters were forced underground, but oh no! a human child of ambiguous gender has fallen into a hole and is trapped underground with all the monsters. And guess who you play as? So now you have to guide this little definitely female through the underground across perilous perils and such and—hold up a minute. This is an RPG; these characters aren't supposed to be memorable! They're supposed to be stereotypes and bores! This one must be defective. (Ok let's see here. I can't just take the cartridge out and blow on it. I could try uninstalling it and reinstalling it. Oh wait, I forgot to try turning it off and back on again! Wait, that didn't work? Ya know what let's just keep going and see what happens). Alrighty then, monsters will try to kill me to take my soul. No problem there. Hilarious skeleton brothers. Ok. Most meta RPG town ever. Fine. Catchy music the whole way through. Ya know I quite like this journ–HOLY SHIT EVERYTHING'S BLOWING UP. And that's all I can say before I get a bit too spoiler-y. 

Now while this may seem pretty underwhelming, bare in mind there's also the presentation that factors into it. There's three main ways you can play the game: Pacifist, Genocide, and Neutral. Pacifist involves sparing everything and never gaining a single EXP for a very specific reason that's very important and don't ask me what it is, go play it yourself. Neutral is sparing and killing as you so choose which is one of the easiest to do, but probably no one's favorite. And then there's Genocide where you murder everyone and everything because our minds have been programmed by every other game ever to believe that monsters deserve death. To tell you the full truth, I've never finished a Genocide playthrough, because I just couldn't bring myself to kill all these characters I grew so attached to in my other playthroughs. I got pretty far in one but, in the end, I just couldn't do it. And that's probably one of my favorite parts of Undertale, because it's the first game in a long time that's made me feel bad for doing something. It's been so long since a game has made you really feel bad for doing anything, especially killing something. I mean, video games are the only thing that will literally give you points for killing multiple people in a row. Have you ever gotten a kill streak while watching a movie or reading a book? I suppose you could get a real life kill streak but that is called BEING A FUCKING SERIAL KILLER. But while Undertale will technically reward you with an interesting new story for murdering everybody, it will call you out on how much of a psycho you're being the whole time right up to the end where you have to do the most intense final boss battle ever with some of the best monologues in gaming history that make you feel like an asshole. And that is Undertale.

Recently, Undertale received multiple nominations in the Game Awards including RPG of the year (but unfortunately it's up against Witcher and Fallout so I wouldn't think it's getting very far on that one) but it's also nominated for Games for Change, which it definitely deserves. Undertale truly is a game like no other. It brilliantly comments on the current gaming industry and simultaneously advances the industry through its own new ideas. Every moment you aren't playing Undertale, you're having a bad time.

Game Review #7: Skullgirls

While I won't go into much detail about my experience with six button fighters, I will tell you that Ancient Greek mathematicians can comprehend it. Ya see that's a reference to how Greeks had no concept of zero, but that's not for you. That's for the scholars who discover these reviews in a thousand years and wonder why this guy wasn't appreciated sooner. But back to the topic at hand, my only real fighting game experience is with the various renditions of Smash Bros. which are similar to six button fighting games the same way Abraham Lincoln is similar to Colonel Sanders. So I didn't go into Skull Girls expecting to be good. Instead I went in thinking "I spent $10.01 to get this game and six others off Humble Bundle, so I'm gonna get my (ridiculously small amount of) money's worth!" And I did.Skull Girls is an indie fighting game that uses mechanics similar to Marvel vs. Capcom with its own changes here and there. The controls are easy to get used to, unless you intend on using the special attack commands in which case you'll end up dying while figuring out how to do a quarter circle on a keyboard. You could of course use a controller, but then you have to deal with the unnatural control scheme of six button fighters on four button controllers. But hey there's always those bulky, expensive, and insufferably difficult to set up six button fight sticks that the pros use. Ya know what, why am I even complaining? It's totally worth it to get one of those things when I got this game from Steam's version of Goodwill. But enough about stupid generalizations. Let's get on to what this game does well. The actual fighting is intensely satisfying and feels like you're actually beating the crap out of your opponent when you are, unlike some games where you basically just have to know that you're winning. That type of game is something I like to call a "Numeric Showdown" wherein the only way you're able to tell that anything is happening is by seeing numbers go up and down, or sometimes hidden from view by the sight of people poking each other. The antagonist to this is the type of game where you can feel the game reacting to you doing well of tending by ramping up the action or making it easier for you to keep on kicking people's shit in. Skull Girls does both of these well, giving you easy access to huge combo strings without making inescapable combos. The characters each have unique ideas behind them each with their own back story that you can already tell a lot of from just their appearance, but gets revealed in further depth in the various renditions of the story mode. They also each have an outside the box moveset that usually involves several ideas that you'd never see in any other fighting game. Even the DLC characters (which I got for free #humblebundledealhunting) have a ton of thought put into them to the point where they're nearly indistinguishable from characters available at launch. To demonstrate this, let's take my main, Beowulf, and look at him from a bunch of perspectives. His character design is interesting along with his moveset design (I mean, he hits people with a folding chair in so many different ways); he has an awesome backstory in his story mode; his voice acting is exceptional; he has noticeable work put into his animation; and his personality is a high point of the game. Just look at his lines:"I'm 287 pounds of folded steel, and sex appeal!""Step on board the AROO train!""The line for autographs starts here!""Say your vitamins and eat your prayers!""Everything I say is a catchphrase!"This, ladies and gentlemen, is DLC done right.As I'm writing this, Skull Girls with all its DLC is still on Humble Bundle for a few more days, so I'd check it out if I were you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have like 5 other games to play. All in the name of charity of course.