A while back, I was asked if I wanted to review an upcoming point and click adventure game called The Blackwell Deception. Before deciding, the first thing I did was check out the trailer for the game. Twenty nine seconds in, I said “holy crap, did that ghost just shoot that other ghost?! Sign me up!”
Unfortunately, the ghost shooting is not as rampant as I was hoping, but The Blackwell Deception is still an interesting and visually striking supernatural adventure.
The return of the infamous 2009 Wii addition to the House of the Dead series represents the latest effort toward Sega’s goal of preparing gamers for the zombie apocalypse a significant number of scientists cite as inevitable. Perhaps more importantly, the PlayStation exclusive HD revisit offers those gamers who invested in the PS Move fresh reason to charge their glow sticks.
This extended cut of Overkill supports both the Move and the standard PS3 controller, but honestly, the idea of playing it with the latter loses plenty of the fun that justifies giving up standard movement controls to the rail that controls the camera and guides players through this mutated funhouse of horrors.
Flying over the rooftops of Gotham’s urban mega-prison, the ringing of a payphone breaks through the music and radio chatter, interrupting the primary pursuit as I drop to the street to answer another call from Victor Zsasz.
Gotham’s more notorious super-villains are waiting for my arrival, but I seem incapable of passing on another opportunity to lose myself to Zsasz’s side-quest. There’s a game he’s playing with me, challenging me to reach another phone at a different location before time runs out and he kills the hostages he claims to have. It doesn’t really matter if he has hostages or not, since Batman can’t take that chance, and so I race to the next ringing phone, attempting to triangulate Zsasz’s position a bit more with each new conversation.
Those conversations are entirely one-sided, as Zsasz recounts the misfortunes that led him to where he is today – a serial killer who liberates the living from the burden of life, and keeps score of that crusade by carving a running tally on his flesh.
The reason any of this matters owes to the way I’m taking an active interest in a character I was unaware of before the Arkham series. Rather than simply reaching phones as a fetch-quest, I’m learning more about the character I’m trying to apprehend with each new stage in the game – listening to his madness and sorrows while tracking down his location. That’s seemingly central to the energy behind all of Batman’s opponents, a game where the constant is the challenge to understand motivation – cause and effect. It’s also one of the little touches that reaches into the source material to create the depth of game you’re likely hearing plenty of people heap praise on this week.
Arkham City is a game with an expertly crafted primary narrative, spread across a cityscape where it is just as pleasurable to stop and listen to the chatter of criminals – thugs who discuss their personal lives, as well as the major characters that have so much impact on their current situation. While I still have plenty of Arkham City to chew through, it’s clear already that a significant achievement is the way Rocksteady has created a space that not only convincingly feels lived in, but invites the player in via the subtle ways the signs of life are offered up for consumption, and could be missed entirely if one didn’t occasionally stop to smell the sickly scents of Arkham City’s mean streets.
The U.S.S. Sulaco drifts silently through space, short on a flight crew but freshly infested with those iconic monsters that mostly come at night.
Mostly.
Without Ellen Ripley to save the day, the task of investigating and once again attempting to exterminate the alien menace falls on a new squad of marines – four to be exact. The initial lineup of characters offers the typical bravado, and includes an obligatory “Vasquez” character. And that initial tip of the hat is only one of the many ways Infestation illustrates a profound love for the James Cameron film. From an early cat cameo to an additional mini-game that challenges players to stab the DS stylus like a knife between on-screen fingers, this is the Aliens game that never arrived when 2D was the norm and not the occasional throwback treat.
Poor Mother Earth! We humans have been treating her badly for far too long. But at least one good thing has come out of our mistreatment of the planet: it inspired the creation of the lovely Okabu.
With a strong ecological message, the game puts players in charge of halting the industrialized takeover of a blissful wilderness by a thoughtless empire, the Doza. But who possesses the power necessary to stand up to the might of such a mechanized menace? Cloud whales, of course!
Okabu does not take place in our world, even if its message reflects the perils we are currently facing. The game’s fantasy realm immediately brings to mind The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, particularly Link’s home village. Okabu’s gorgeous, flat-shaded visuals leap off the screen with an abundance of color and detail. Zones within the game range from grassy lakesides to illuminated forests, and a good chunk of Okabu’s enjoyment comes from simply exploring every inch of these beautiful stages. The accompanying soundtrack, which mixes traditional African music with jazz, adds even more vibrancy to the already rich world.
To my amazement and despite some initial concern, Sideway: New York didn’t make my head hurt. The main hook of the game is that you play as a character sucked into the 2D world of graffiti art, making your way from one point to another by moving along, up, and over 3D buildings. It’s an atypical game design concept, and quite difficult to explain in words. Imagine sliding a Shrinky Dink through a maze that runs over all sides of a box and that should give you a start.
Thankfully, what I figured would be a confusing, infuriating nightmare turned out to be clear-cut and easy to navigate. Color me impressed.
A long time ago, before Tetsuya Mizuguchi created a bunch of synthesthetic puzzle games, he worked for Sega, where he created Space Channel 5. The crazy retro-futuristic style made it one of the most iconic titles for the now-defunct Dreamcast. Last year, when Sega announced that it was going to re-release a series of the Dreamcast’s most popular games in HD for XBLA and PSN, it was only logical that they would include Space Channel 5…
…Part 2, the sequel which was only available for the Dreamcast in Japan. Well, I guess it technically counts, even though a lot of the world knows it better as a budget PS2 release. I suppose the fact that all the backgrounds in the first game were pre-rendered in 480i disqualifies it from being released in HD. Space Channel 5 Part 2 is also a far better game than the original, but it’s still a bizarre choice for a collection that seemed like it was made to bank on Dreamcast nostalgia.
But alas, this is not a review of Sega’s handling of what could have been a great series of downloadable titles – this is a review of a classic rhythm game. Unlike the current wave of peripheral-based rhythm games, in which the goal is to make a small band into a very popular band, older titles of the genre always had a story to tell – though it was usually a completely messed up story.
The story of Space Channel 5 Part 2 features a futuristic news reporter who follows reports of bad guys who take innocent people hostage and force them to dance – which requires out-dancing the bad guys to save the hostages, who then show their appreciation by dancing in line behind her as she continues reporting; this is how you earn TV ratings in space. The game’s heroine, Ulala, does play a guitar and the drums as well, but only to demoralize rival reporters and to fend off the space police (yes, in the future, if you beat the police in a drum battle, they have to let you go – it’s the space law).
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