Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Jamestown

Ah! I completely forgot I beat this game, and only remembered because I keep a group of "Beaten" in my Steam categories. I picked this up from one of the Humble Bundles, so it came cheap, and made me feel good about donating to charity and indie developers.

So, the story of the game is simple, shoot things and ignore the story screens. The ships you get to pick are unique, with enough variation to allow picking a ship that suits a level quite well.

The real nice part of this game is that you can have four people connect 360 controllers and play multiplayer on the same machine. Essentially allowing me to die repeatedly in a blaze of glory while other people are responsible for keeping us alive, since you only lose a continue if everyone is dead at the same time.

Would I recommend it? Yes. Did I play it for hours during lunch breaks? Yes. 'Nuff said.

ICO

I picked up the ICO and Shadows of the Colossus pack for PS3 and started up ICO, since I beat SotC a year or two back.

The story is good. The game starts with a decent length intro cutscene, with very little dialog. From there, you're on your own to explore and figure out what's going on. You quickly discover a girl, Yorda, and the two of you continue your attempt at escaping, with you being the main driving force behind that.


The gameplay blends seamlessly with the story. Most things you can do, she can't without your help. The special doors you need to get through, she can open but she can't reach them on her own. This goes all the way down to the save mechanics. To save the game, you have to bring her to a stone couch, where only after both of you are sitting does the game allow you to save. Oh, did I mention she's being hunted by weird shadow creatures you have to to fight with a large stick?

The music plays a really important role in setting the tone, as neither character speaks the other's language. The rest of the tone is carried by the limitation of communication, and how you convey the tone through your decisions and facial expressions.


The controls are what you would expect from a climbing puzzle game, and I rarely ever cursed the controls. I did get upset at a few puzzles that were needlessly difficult, but almost in the tone of Braid, the puzzles are unique and you have to bring new ways of thinking to the table to solve them. All while not leaving Yorda behind. If you leave her behind in a room for any decent length of time, the shadow creatures will come steal her, and then you die. So... don't do that. Very rarely you will have to leave her alone for a short while, but if you get too far away, you're doing it wrong.

I would highly recommend this game. The only regrets I have is that I do not have a 3D TV to play this on, and the other regret is that it took me this long to play this game. It was amazing.

Shank

So I got the itch for some side-scroller, beat-em-up, simple, linear action.

Shank met that desire for a scratch with a blood stained shiv. Everything from stabbing people in the face, shotgunning people in the face, or impaling them with the various sharp objects you easily hold on your back. Oh, and you can throw people off cliffs, which I resort to if I'm trying to replay an area quick, because I died, or if something is lobbing grenades at me.So without a question, the gameplay was solid.

The controls were a little finicky at times (aiming up in particular), but once you got used to their nuances, it wasn't a big deal. Just plug in the 360 controller, and go crazy.

The story was good enough to keep me thinking without having to go too deep. Yep, people are going to kill you, but you have pointy things to stop them. If only you could remove the required number of gallons of blood from their body so they stop getting up... but how...

The boss fights were really unique and interesting. I died multiple times at almost every boss fight, but since there was learning to be done (and obvious hints given to you after multiple deaths), I got past them eventually.

For game length, it took just shy of four hours for me to beat the entire game, which was fine by me. I came to this game with an itch, and left quite satisfied.

I would definitely recommend it, and have already queued the second one on my list for a good playthrough when the itch comes back.