Saturnalian wrote:
1. The Evil Within (PS4).
2. Rogue Legacy (PS Vita & PS4).
3. Far Cry 4 (PS4)
4. Transistor (PS4)
5. Valiant Hearts (PS4).
6. Heir (Browser?)
7. COUNTER Spy (PS4).
8. Apothena (PS4)
9. Oddworld: New & Tasty (PS4).
10. Bloodborne (PS4).
11. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (PS4).
12. Burn it Down (iOS).
13. The Evil Within: The Assignment DLC (PS4)
14. The Evil Within: The Consequence DLC (PS4).
15. Bayonetta 2 (WiiU).
16. The Tender Cut (PC).
17. Monsterbag (Vita).
18. Murasaki Baby (Vita).
19. Super Mario 3D World (WiiU)
20. Resident Evil: Revelations (WiiU)
21. Infamous: First Light (PS4).
22. Towerfall: Ascension (PS4).
23. Betrayer (PC).
I love Monolith cause they've made two of my favourite games of all time: Blood and FEAR. This ain't made by Monolith. BUT it is made by some chaps who worked for Monolith and then set up their own company to make their own games. I believe this was their first.
Betrayer gets three things so very right, right off the bat:
1) I plug my 360 controller in and it works. No faffing about. It works.
2) The atmosphere is fantastic which is due to 2 things:
a. GRAPHIX. The black and white aesthetic is startlingly gorgeous (with smatterings of red here and there), and the graphics look tremendous as a consequence. It's mainly trees, forest and wooden shacks and outposts but the way in which the trees bend in the wind is just mindblowing. It's such a small trick as every tree starts to shift with the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves but even after completing the game I was never less than impressed at bendy trees. It just gave the place more life when, for the most part, there's not a lot going on.
b. SOUNDZ: There's no music. There's no, erm, nothing really. A few birds here and there. If you're near a beach (which is only at the beginning) you might hear the water a bit but the main sound is the sound of silence (and occasional gust of wind as aforementioned). Other sounds stand stark in contrast: the sound of a distant gun firing as enemies are alerted to your presence, the clang and smash of a bell which teleports you to the spirit realm, and in the spirit realm the dull ringing of the bell until you mute the sound to return to the real world. The absence of sound works in the context of the game which is supposed to be a bit mysterious.
3) There's zero hand holding. You arrive washed up on a beach. You collect your thoughts and off you trot. Why? Who knows? Where is everyone? Who knows? Why is every area map covered in red circles? Let's go off and find out.
That's the good stuff. It's kinda downhill from there.
The combat is at times piss poor and others quite thrilling. It takes forever to load a musket so combat can be spent backpedaling as much as shooting stuff. The baddies are vicious and once you've been spotted they'll be on you like a tramp on chips. An endless procession of baddies will follow you forever. And they will follow you because no matter what you do you'll always get spotted since they all have super vision apparently.
The game is meant to be played stealthily but the vision on these guys is ridiculous. They appear as tiny specks on the horizon and you're meant to hit them at that distance with a bow and arrow. I got quite good at it but I can imagine that some would get too frustrated by the pin-point precision needed. Plus, everyone is jolly awesome at hitting you with a bow or a pistol or musket round. I also got good at timing my jump dodges or running away but, by-gum, they aren't 'arff good at hitting you.
The cool thing is that you're supposed to run in when the wind blows through the trees to muffle your footsteps - and it works for the first map - but after the first two areas it stops being a viable way of going around and once you've got a few good weapons onboard you'll risk the larger fight than take all day waiting for the wind to blow.
Worse still is the spirit world which is populated by rubbish skeletons and flying skulls. They aren't scary. They are annoying.The spirit world seems woefully under developed too as while the real world requires a bit of skill and stealth, the spirit world has none of that since some fights you can't avoid. And it's all grey and black which ain't anywhere near as good as the real world black and white aesthetic. I feel like they did the main game but didn't have much time to spend on the spirit domain. Which was a shame. They should have made it rain. On the plain. In Spain.
Anyway, the combat is good but mainly rubbish and so is the set-up of the game structure. It follows this pattern once it gets going: Hunt all the red circles, dig up all the clues, find the bell, transport to spirit world, find the spirits and give them the clues, they might send you somewhere else to get another clue, find it, bring it back. Maybe repeat it again until you run out of dialogue. Repeat for several spirits. Once you've done about everything in the area move to the next area and do it again.
Moving about the map is a ball ache too since you can't set waypoints so you are constantly in and out of the map every few seconds. Bit silly but at least it doesn't interrupt the clean UI. Actually, I kinda appauld them for this decision. One of the few times that design triumphs over ease of use.
Anyway, I'm boring myself now but the thing that made me stick to the end were the stories of the spirits. They are all delightfully dark and usually about murder, death, rape, lies and deceit; someone always dies; usually everyone. The stories are told well through basic text. The spirits can't remember what happened to them until the clues jog their mind and then sometimes it only jogs half a memory or they are lying so you don't get the full story and the next clue can yield a completely different story to what you were expecting. I really enjoyed this most about the whole game. No reams of Fallout style books. Just little tales told as a person would tell it.
I'mma score it 6/10. It would have been 5 but I liked the stories. No, hang on, I didn't like the ending much as it was too much like FEAR. Back down to 5 you go. I still really enjoyed it, mind. It ain't an easy game, in fact you can turn on Dark Souls style death drops if you wanted to since it's Dark Souls style difficult, you see, but it is very interesting and I want the Monolith people to keep making games cause there's greatness to be had from those folk. I can tell.
24. Thirty Flights of Loving (PC)
It's not really a game is it? It's a five minute trailer for a game that will never be made. Fun but not even worth my £1.49 I paid for it.
25. Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC)
It's not the worst game in the world, it actually looked kinda alright on my PC. And, yes, I did just run through whole sections of it because it's so fucking tediously dull. It has all the worst FPS tropes mashed into it:
Do x task z times in a row.
Shoot bazooka at y number of big guns z times in a row.
Go to A then to B then back to A. Then to B. Again.
Bad cut scenes.
Identikit corridors. Endless corridors.
Bad voice acting.
Bad dialogue.
Bullet sponge boss fights.
Boss fights where you do x task z times in a row before pressing button.
A boss fight where your actions directly kills the boss. Then it is revealed in a cut scene that it ain't dead and so someone else kills it off in that cut scene rendering everything you've done pointless.
Steam pipes. In space this time.
Endless door opening scenes. Every other door has to be cut open seemingly as everywhere was welded shut at the beginning of the game... Utterly fucking pointless. It serves nothing in the game. No tension can be granted by watching someone cut open a door . What does it do? Slows the game down and frustrates the player as they watch the same animation for the 30th time.
And so on.
1/10 for the pulse rifle noise. And that using the shotgun is alright. Oh, and that it gives you all of the weapons from the beginning was a really really smart choice. It's just a shame that the gun radial bollocks is fiddly to use and looks like dog shit.