Sequence, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Splice, and Auditorium

It's been a while since any of us have written, oops. Summer is unexpectedly busy. However, to celebrate me getting a shiny new computer to play games on, and the Steam summer sale, I'm going to talk about three games today! As you may have guessed, these games are Sequence, Splice, and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. Let's make this fast, I want to get back to playing asap.

Sequence I actually got quite a while ago, and I could have sworn I had already written something about it. But then I searched through our post archives and couldn't find anything, and was immensely disappointed in my past self. For some reason I still feel like I've written about this before though, so in case I missed it in my search forgive me if I'm rehashing old territory. Sequence has you playing as Ky, who wakes up in a strange tower filled with dangerous monsters. You are led through the tower by Naia, striving to make it to the top and escape. Along the way, you'll level up, learn new tricks, and all that typical RPG jazz. What spices things up though, is how the battles work. These are far from the standard turn based battles, and are instead rhythm based. Each battle has three screens, each of which has its own set of falling notes a la DDR and those similar games. One screen dictates enemy attacks, another is where you activate spells, and the third allows you to regenerate mana. Miss a note in the enemy attack screen and you'll take damage, or activate a spell and then miss a note on the spell screen and the spell is wasted (thankfully, no penalty for missing anything in the last screen).

Every battle becomes a frantic juggling act balancing defending yourself from enemy attacks, gathering the resources to counterattack, and finding the time to actually counterattack. You've activated a basic spell, but the enemy is making an attack at the same time! Do you sacrifice the mana to defend yourself (and spend some time on the mana screen later earning it back), or do you take the hit and focus on casting the spell? In addition, you only have a limited number of spells you can bring with you into battle. Do you want to bring only attack spells, and end the battle as soon as you can? Or do you just take the most basic ones, and bring mostly healing spells for when things get out of hand? Sequence is practically the only game I can think of that brings me to a state of 'flow' like how Shoofle's mentioned before. When it's going good, I am easily juggling the three screens of falling notes, easily blocking enemy attacks and countering with my own. But all it takes is a single fumble, and suddenly everything falls apart. And it's absolutely amazing. Even though the story and art didn't grab me (not to mention everything is just a static sprite anyway), gameplay is king. The battle system alone was more than enough to keep me playing this game for hours.

Next up, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet! This one's a strange one. I've gotten to a point where I'm entering some water, and was instantly reminded of Aquaria. And it's pretty easy to see why, too. Both are Metroidvania style games that forgo the usual platformer aspect of the game, with Aquaria taking place entirely underwater, and Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet having the player be a free flying UFO. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (I'm just going to call it ITSP from now on) plays essentially like a dual stick shooter, though the player has to constantly juggle their abilities to select the best one (or the required one) for the situation. The game has a very unique aesthetic, but honestly that's all I really have to say in favor about the game. It follows the Metroidvania style of blocking off passages and forcing you one way until you have the prerequisite item that allows you to pass the other way, but I didn't find it as fun as I usually do other Metroidvania games. Fighting felt dull and boring. The upgrades didn't feel like they were granting me very much power, and the environments felt too constrained. While there were aspects of exploration involved, there are few of them and the rewards for venturing off the path are meager. The aesthetic is interesting, but not enough to hold the game up on its own, and pales in comparison to the absolutely gorgeous aesthetics of Aquaria. I don't know. I really wanted to like this game, and it sat near the top of my wishlist for a while, but honestly I'm disappointed.

This is Auditorium

Thankfully, I saved Splice and Auditorium for last. Splice and Auditorium are by Cipher Prime. I played Auditorium quite a while ago and absolutely loved it, and it looks like Cipher Prime has managed to duplicate the magic with Splice. But first, I want to talk a bit about Auditorium. Auditorium is a very simple puzzle game (originally a Flash game, now available on mobile devices and Steam), where you use manipulators to direct a flow through some containers. Early levels are extremely simple, but later levels add multiple colors and get deviously difficult. But the main reason I loved Auditorium is the music. The game is silent at the start of each level, but as you redirect the flow to pass through the containers, the music starts to build up, one part at a time. The music is slightly repetitive, but I think the tracks are absolutely beautiful. I highly recommend this one (and they're working on a sequel!)

This is Splice

Ok. Now for Splice. Splice is a cell based puzzle game of sorts. You start with a tree of cells, and have a limited number of splices to make in order to reach a target tree that has a certain configuration. The game itself is also extremely simple: activate a cell 'mutation' by clicking on the cell, splice by dragging cells around. But like Auditorium, this game also absolutely fantastic music. Actually, as we speak (er, as I write this), I'm searching for where I can download the entire damn thing, because I want it now. And actually, I don't have much else to say about Splice. I've never seen puzzle mechanics quite like Splice before, so the novelty is extremely appreciated. I haven't played enough of the game yet to say for sure, but the puzzle mechanics seem extremely solid, and the game feels like it's going to ramp up in difficulty fairly soon. I'm excited, so I'm going to end this post now so I can go play. Peace!

Assassin's Creed II: A Treatise in Nine* Parts, Written While Watching Assassin's Creed II

*actually one.

So I'm finally jumping on this Ass Creed bandwagon and actually playing one of these games. I played the first a bit on my brother's computer, and it seemed dreadfully fun but simultaneously incredibly boring. I grabbed Assassin's Creed II during the recent Steam sale, and I'm hunkering down, dropping the graphics settings to something I can manage, and playing this bad boy. Here will follow some choice remarks written down in the copious free time I have while waiting for things to occur.

0) Is it just me, or is it painfully unpolished when a game on Steam requires you to copy and paste a multiplayer CD key into the game? That really seems like something that should be taken care of by, you know, the whole 'Steam' thing. And while we're on that page, can we just excise once and for all the entire phenomenon of developers wanting you to sign up for their proprietary service? No, Ubisoft, I do not care about "UPlay". I will never think about it again.
1) That was a nice pan down to Lucy's breasts. You know, when he's saying how he met her and befriended her, and the camera lingers for half a second on her face and for three seconds on her boobs? Subtle, guys.
2) Let's talk a little bit more about Lucy's character design. I can guarantee you (as of five minutes in) that she will also fit all the Good Girl tropes. You can tell from her appearance, on top of everything else - it's so nice how instead of actually showing us that a character has traits, they can just make her blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, with her hair up in a ponytail, dressed in tight-fitting white clothes which obscure her cleavage with a high neckline... And we know everything we need to know. I bet that at some point, Desmond will want to do something and she'll say it's too reckless. She's also a total sidekick through and through, in painfully obvious fashion.
3) And now I write something I have never before written: This is the most awkwardly long birthing scene I can remember being a part of. I'm just glad they didn't go for a first-person camera view while the main character is born - playing my way out of my apparent mother's birthing canal was not what I was expecting when I signed up for Templar-stabbing action.
4) That's not a very useful movement tutorial when the instructions ("move legs" "move empty hand" "move armed hand") both don't make sense *on a baby* and seem to have little correspondence to what they will actually do when running around as a full-fledged human being, renaissance Italian or not. While we're on the subject, can you please tell me what the buttons are? Your color codings do not correspond to my mouse buttons.
5) I appreciate that you've got a respected and well-loved storyline, but... You're telling it in a painfully boring manner. I get that we're escaping from this huge sprawling techno-industrial complex, but... I just sprinted through this cubicle farm full of Animus-plurals, and no one spotted me - while my chaperone was tensely ducking around corners and crawling her way through.
6) I am rapidly finding myself not caring what Lucy is talking about.
7) "Apple" is the best synonym I've heard yet for "McGuffin".
8) Oh, look! It's a punky, hackerish girl with headphones and a low neckline. I wonder if she'll be a counterpoint for Lucy, possibly by any slim chance? Also, their visual designs seem identical to two women in Uncharted 2 and 3. I'm not sure if that's just me... but seriously. Can we get some more interesting female character designs in the video game industry? Desmond's not much better.
9) A British librarian? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT
10) I am Desmond. Watch me SWAGGER.
11) ... Where did Headphones Punk stick that connector below my chest? ... I am concerned about how the Animus works.
12) Okay, I'm only going to say this once, because this would be boring as fuck otherwise: THAT IS NOT HOW BRAINS WORK. THAT IS NOT HOW GENETIC MEMORIES WORK. Okay.
13) While we're on the topic of things Not Working Like That, I don't know that Italian actually sounds like a bad imitation of Italian. Not sure about that.
14) Okay, this fight scene is terribly entertaining. I half expected these two gangs to start snapping their fingers and singing at each other, but no - I have to say, the combat engine in this game is really nicely tuned. It suffers a bit for my hardware, but it's satisfying to try to balance between a large number of attackers... Even if it is a bit easy; one man should not reasonably be able to take on five attackers. A little more difficulty would be well appreciated in terms of setting up your fights. That's a thing that old-school stealth games did much, much better than modern times - in Thief, you pretty much never wanted to go into combat against even one person, and instead you had to carefully plan your approach to everything. It's interesting that even though these games have such intricate AI and movement systems, they fall prey to being too easy - they never force you to really *use* those strengths.
15) Mmmm, delicious free running! Harder than Infamous, more vertically mobile than Doom. I really like it, from my tiny experience thus far - it's tinged with a little confusion because the game still won't tell me what buttons to press unless I go into the kinda-clunky menu. Clunky's the wrong word - it's incredibly smooth and pretty, it's just... bad at being a menu.
16) I'm pretty sure doctors mostly wore plague masks during the black plague.
17) Bet you five bucks that this zero-dimensional brother of mine is going to die. He cares about you... in a BROTHERLY kind of way! Brotherly love is so beautiful.
18) No but seriously? This is awesome. Climbing onto these towers and then jumping off is so much fun! These games are awesome. I rib because I'm having fun. I can't take this game seriously, but it *is* fun.
19) Quicktime events for sex! Haven't seen that since God of War. I want to see more of what happens when you miss it - don't click fast enough and you kind of awkwardly fumble with her bra, press the wrong button and your teeth click together when you kiss, miss a spinner and you both forget to take your glasses off, don't hit the buttons in the right sequence and you don't communicate right and no one really gets what they want from the night...
20) Picking pockets is HELLA easy. I had no idea you just had to punch someone in the gut, and their florins would magically appear in your hand!
21) Ahhh, renaissance architecture. Flying buttresses, peaked roofs, and buildings inspired by porcupines in placement of lampposts and other replacements for the gymnast's high bar.
22) Honestly I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. It's just too much fun to go to the highest point I can see, find new highest point, and go there! It makes me wonder if it'd be fun to structure an entire game or a sequence of levels in some larger game around it - maybe you're stranded somewhere and need to find the way out, so you need to find the highest point to see farther... Seems cool.
23) Races! It's just like my favorite parts of Infamous! Except, with a slightly higher tendency to leap off a building into an alleyway.
24) I still have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I guess I could be paying attention, but I'm too busy writing. With that in mind, I might just wrap this up without having even gotten to the stabby bits. I'm kind of tired of this game already, actually. Eh, decreased stamina in my old age, you know how it is.

Humble Voxatron Bundle Impressions

The Humble Bundle is a great idea. Indie game devs allow buyers to pay any price for their games, and the revenues are split between the devs and not-for-profit organizations (I'm not sure if this changes with each bundle, but the current bundle donates to the Child's Play charity, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation) however the buyer wants. Money gets donated to some good causes, gamers get some neat indie games for typically less than they usually sell for, and while the devs probably don't make as much of a profit, they definitely benefit from their time in the spotlight. So, long story short, you should go buy the humble bundle!

Before I get into my impressions of the games, I should probably mention what games are even part of the bundle. The bundle this time consists of three games. No matter what, when you purchase the bundle, you will receive the alpha version of Voxatron. If you pay over whatever the current bundle average is (around $5 last time I checked), then you will also receive the games Blocks That Matter and The Binding of Isaac, both of which are also available on Steam for $5 each. There is no DRM, so you can install these games anywhere you want as often as you want, and all three games are cross platform, so you can get it regardless of whether you're running Windows, Mac, or Linux. There's even an option to get Blocks That Matter and The Binding of Isaac added to your Steam account. Now, onto the actual games!

Steam Summer Impressions III

Sadly, I'm going to have to remove one game from my list for now. I tried to boot up Magicka, and it was really pretty but running painfully slowly. I double-checked the system requirements (which I'm in the bad habit of not checking) and discovered that my graphics card is just slightly underpowered. :-( I'm researching workarounds. Otherwise, this may have to wait until I get a more powerful computer. However, on to happier subjects, namely, games I've quite enjoyed playing:

Steam Summer Impressions II

On to the next games I promised to review!

Steam Summer Sale = Impressions!

Let's get this straight from the beginning: I'm not a computer gamer. While I did get my gaming start on RTSs such as AOE and AOM and played my first Legend of Zelda on an emulator, hardcore PC gaming has never been my thing. I got a copy of Steam when they had Portal for free as a promotion, since I don't own an Xbox. Because I am more competent with a controller than with a keyboard and mouse, I ignored Steam for a few years. I got a real profile when Jeremy gave me Super Meat Boy (fantastic game, btw) and in the past few days, he pointed out to me the Steam Summer Sale. Now I have 11 games in my profile and am happily checking back every day when the sale games change. An addict in the making.

So, similarly to what Jeremy did over winter break, I'm going to give some initial impressions on the games I picked up. Here's the list:

1. Obulis
2. Chains
3. Vigil: Blood Bitterness
4. Gumboy: Crazy Adventures / Crazy Features
5. Braid
6. Magicka
7. Torchlight
8. Trine

Winter Break final

The last of the winter break games!

Winter Break part 4

6 games in today's update!

Winter Break part 3

Four games this time since I forgot to update yesterday.

Winter Break continued

Continuing the updates with Super Meat Boy and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom.

Winter Break 2010-2011

Winter break has its ups and downs. On the up side, there are no classes, no homework, no exams, just relaxation (at least, so I’d like to dream; applying to internships kind of ruins the relaxation a little). On the down side, traveling to the other side of the world sucks when you’re flying economy, and what sucks even more is Chinese internet. In lieu of other internet things to distract me while I’m in China (aka Facebook and Youtube), I’ve been making my way through the plethora of indie games I have on Steam. I was going to update them all in one big chunk, but there are actually a lot, so I’ll do it a few games at a time. These are the games that I'll cover, in the order that I'll cover them:

1.       RUSH

2.       VVVVVV

3.       Super Meat Boy

4.       The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

5.       And Yet It Moves

6.       Blueberry Garden

7.       Puzzle Bots

8.       Deathspank

9.       Shatter

10.   World of Goo

11.   Toki Tori

12.   Audiosurf

13.   Windosill

14.   Shank

15.   Zen Bound 2

16.   Blue Toad Murder Files- The Mysteries of Little Riddle

17.   BIT.TRIP BEAT

18.   Machinarium

19.   AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity 

20.   Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes

So. Here we go.