Waltorious Writes About Games

Game-related ramblings.

Author: waltorious Page 19 of 34

The Witcher Adventures: The Price Of Neutrality

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On August 6, 2014

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I’m playing through the bonus Adventures included with The Witcher. Read about the first, along with an introduction to the game, here. Also remember that you can click on images to view larger versions.

The Price of Neutrality, the second Aventure included with The Witcher, was made by original developers CD Projekt RED to accompany the 2008 release of the D’Jinni Adventure Editor for the game. As such, it acts as a demonstration for the capabilities of the editor, and is certainly a much larger production than the minimalist fan-made first Adventure, Damn Those Swamps!. In fact, the quality is more or less identical to that of the original game, with full voice acting (and here’s one more reminder to use the original Polish voices if you play), a new location to explore, monsters to hunt, and difficult decisions to make. After Damn Those Swamps! helped me get back into the swing of controlling Geralt, The Price of Neutrality provided a sizable helping of everything that I liked about the main game.

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The Witcher Adventures: Damn Those Swamps! (Plus An Introduction)

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On July 28, 2014

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As always, you can click on images to view larger versions.

So, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is set to release in February 2015, and I’m pleased to see it’s among the most hotly anticipated upcoming releases. I wrote briefly about the Witcher series more than two years ago, largely to encourage readers to check out The Witcher 2, and noted then that I needed to play through it again. Well, I never did get around to it, and the imminent sequel means I need to get on the ball (no, not that Ball). But before doing that, I decided to revisit the first game. Not to play through the main story again — I remember it well even after several years — but to try out the bonus adventures that now come with every copy of the game. Created by both fans and original developers CD Projekt RED using the game’s D’jinni Adventure Editor, they offer small, standalone stories of Geralt of Rivia, recalling Andrzej Sapkowski’s original short stories.

While playing the first adventure of the bunch, entitled Damn Those Swamps! (renamed from Blight of the Bogs), I was reminded of just how interesting the first Witcher game is. So I decided to start this post with something of an introduction to the game as a whole, before writing about this specific Adventure. Read on!

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Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’: The Ball

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On July 21, 2014

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As always, you can click on screenshots to view larger versions.

Those who read my Indie Platformer Marathon series may remember my post about Unmechanical, a lovely game that turned out not to be a platformer after all. In that post I mentioned that before Unmechanical, developers Teotl Studios had released The Ball, a game I’d been wanting to play for a while. Now, a mere year later, I have finally played it.

Inspired in equal parts by Indiana Jones and Portal, The Ball is a first-person puzzle game about rolling a giant ball around some ancient Aztec ruins. Which is kind of awesome.

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Wishful Thinking: Han Solo Simulator

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On July 16, 2014

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As always, you can click on images to view larger versions.

Writing my recent post about The Precursors, and how it attempts to be a dream game by coupling a free-roaming space sim with a first-person shooter/role-playing game, reminded me that I’d started a series about dream game designs over two years ago. I never got around to writing any more entries, which is too bad, because one thing I’d intended to write about is exactly what The Precursors attempts; namely, a Han Solo simulator. I touched on that a bit in my post about the game, but I wanted to clarify exactly what this dream game would be for me, and the ways in which The Precursors (and other games) succeed and fail in achieving it. Read on!

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Another Link In The: RPG Maker Chain Game

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On July 7, 2014

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Longtime readers may remember that I wrote about the “chain game” Chain of Retribution a couple of years ago. It was developed by seven people in succession, each handing the game off to the next after their portion of the design was complete, and I was fascinated by the strange result. Well, now there’s another chain game, also made using RPGMaker, with the imaginative title RPG Maker Chain Game. I knew I had to try it out.

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From Russia With Bugs: The Precursors

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On July 1, 2014

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Remember that you can click on screenshots for bigger versions.

There are some games that achieve such cult status that people still play them years, even decades after they were released. Often, this devotion is reserved for the catalogs of specific developers known for creating a certain type of experience. Looking Glass is one example: their System Shock and Thief series are so beloved that fans took it upon themselves to modify these games so they can still be played on modern operating systems with modern graphical resolutions. In fact, these fan-made fixes are incorporated into the recent releases of System Shock 2 and the first two Thief games on GOG and Steam. Troika are another example, known for creating deep, reactive, highly ambitious but bug-ridden games. Their steampunk-meets-fantasy role-playing game Arcanum inspired a fan known as Drog Black Tooth to work on an unofficial bugfixing patch for years, one that is regarded as essential for any new player. Their adaption of the World of Darkness pen-and-paper role-playing game, Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines, is so revered that a fan known as Wesp5 is still actively working on an unofficial patch, ten years after the game’s original release.

But that’s not the only game that Wesp5 is working on fixing. Wesp5 also has an unofficial patch for The Precursors, from Ukrainian developer Deep Shadows (yes, they’re Ukranian, not Russian, but their game is in Russian and I couldn’t resist that headline). I’d heard that Deep Shadows are also known for incredibly ambitious but buggy games, and I’d heard good things about The Precursors specifically, but it was Wesp5’s attention that really sparked my interest. I played for a surprisingly long time before The Precursors played its trump card and I discovered why Wesp5 was so inspired. It’s a genuine attempt at a dream game: a first-person shooter coupled to a free-roaming space flight game, letting players fly wherever they want, scraping together a little cash, and then land on planets to explore, chat, and shoot some people. It’s a Han Solo simulator.

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Perchance To Dream: Proteus

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On June 21, 2014

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Ed Key and David Kanaga’s Proteus is the kind of game that sparks heated debates about whether or not it is actually a game. Personally, I think such debates are silly. Who cares what we call it? The important questions are whether Proteus is worth playing, and why (or why not). To decry it as not being a game is to name it unworthy without providing any reason. I know that humans are wont to label and categorize everything, but when this leads to argument over the labels of things rather than the things themselves, we’re missing the point. But I digress.

The reason Proteus sparks such debates is that it lacks the standard goal-oriented design that most players expect in games. There are no enemies to kill or challenges to complete. Proteus is, essentially, a surreal island to wander and explore, with a striking visual style and excellent sound design. It has also earned gushing praise from nearly everyone who’s played it, which caught my attention. It has inspired poetry. But the real reason I decided to play it now is a passing comment I saw, describing Proteus as a meditative experience, something to play at the end of a long day to de-stress and relax. Given how busy I’ve been lately, some zen relaxation sounded pretty good.

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Hold Fast To Your: Labyrinthine Dreams

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On June 5, 2014

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In my last post I was lamenting how far behind I am when it comes to posting about games. But now I’m posting about a game a mere week and a half after its release. That’s nearly instantaneous, by the standards of this blog. What’s going on?

What’s going on is that the game in question is the latest (and first commercial) offering from Solest. Longtime readers will remember that I’m a big fan of their first game, Master of the Wind, and may also have read my thoughts on the still-incomplete X-Noir. So I definitely wanted to give Labyrinthine Dreams a spin.

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Samorost 2 Is A Quick But Beautiful Adventure

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On May 21, 2014

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Whew… I’ve found myself very busy once again, so I’ve been slow to post. But I have managed to write this short post about a short but very pretty game.

Amanita Design, the small independent game developer based in the Czech Republic, is most famous for their point-and-click adventure game (a genre for which I gave a brief historical summary in this post) Machinarium. Or perhaps for their next game, Botanicula. But before those, Amanita Design made a pair of short, charming and beautiful adventure games, the first of which, Samorost, is completely free and can be played in a web browser. And I did, a long time ago. The second, Samorost 2, is in the same mold, with the first part available free in a browser but the second part costing a modest $5 (and including the excellent soundtrack). In my typical fashion of playing games in order, I’d intended to play Samorost 2 before Amanita Design’s more recent games, and I finally got around to it recently.

But, in a sense this post is timely, as Amanita Design recently (well, sort of recently) released a trailer for the third Samorost game. So I’m actually totally on the ball with this, right?

Right?

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History Lessons: Call Of Juarez

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On May 11, 2014

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New readers may wish to read my History Lessons Introduction first. Previous History Lessons posts can be found here. Also remember that you can click on images to see larger versions.

How old must a game be before it qualifies for History Lesson treatment? I’m tempted to say that it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want, but I actually do think I’m justified in this case. While Call of Juarez is only seven years old, playing it felt like revisiting an earlier generation of design, one that corresponds to a gap in my own gaming experience.

I wish I could say that the positive response to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, the latest entry in the series, motivated me to buy the original. But that’s not the case; I bought it because Kieron Gillen told me to. I further wish I could say that the positive response to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was what motivated me to finally get around to playing the original game, but that’s not true either. I had just finished the melancholy and thought-provoking Anodyne, and decided I needed something a little lighter and more action-packed to play next. After realizing that my backlog contained a distressing number of huge role-playing games and puzzle-focused indie offerings, I spied Call of Juarez on my shelf and decided that a Western romp would fit the bill perfectly.

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