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It gets a lot of poo poo, but Slender: The Arrival is actually pretty scary in parts. It knows how to build a good atmosphere. Even though I’ve played it enough to know exactly what happens and when, I still get kinda antsy even during the parts where you won’t actually be attacked. Unlike what some goons suggested, I didn't try to figure out the mechanics of Amnesia's enemies; it just becomes immediately apparent before long. Spawns via trigger, walks set path unless it sees you, despawns at end of path. Plus the enemies look terrible and they’re jankily animated. Of course, there’s the invisible water monster, which is basically nothing other than moving damaging floor tiles. Someone went into the editor to see if it has a character model, and it’s just a big blue sphere. The Shadow sounded really cool, like an invincible monster that follows you around. Made me envision something like Nemesis. But it’s just red damage tiles that eventually show up if you spend too long in an area. I had no idea that was The Shadow; I thought it was just something Alexander was doing to piss me off. That’s not scary. Then there’s the sanity stat, which does nothing other than give you SPOOOOOOOOKY shaky vision for awhile if it hits zero. Once I figured out that that was all it does, I spent a lot less time bothering with lighting areas up. I think what’s going on here is that PC gamers are gigantic babies.  “Scariest game ever”, my rear end.
...! fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Oct 13, 2017 |
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Oct 13, 2017 22:11
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I still think Penumbra Overture was the best of those games. The spider nest ball trap chase scene where you had to split second problem solve was great
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Oct 13, 2017 22:18
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Oxxidation posted:TCR straight-up admitted that the project wasn't a good match for them in a later interview and that it had probably been a bad idea for them to take it on. Even more than the writing, they were especially disappointed in themselves for bolting all the doors and drawers shut. Machine for Pigs was a perfectly competent walking-and-rattling-drawers simulator! I was quite surprised when it actually introduced an enemy that could kill you half way through, up until then I thought it was basically going to be spinning valves and answering phones. Never finished Amnesia but there was way more to actually do in the half I did play than there could possibly have been in AMFP.
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Oct 13, 2017 22:25
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Diabetic posted:The IDEA of it is fantastic. A psychiatrist reads your responses and based on that the game changes, the implementation though, is something to be desired. Silent Hill has always been known for its unique monster designs but Shat Memz has one type of monster with tiny variations. If Team Silent got a hold of this and made it, it would've been fantastic. But sadly, gently caress Konami forever, since we'll only see Pyramid head from now on and as a guest character in other games. At this point, I'd really love to have known just what the gently caress Silent Hills would've been story-wise. Shattered Memories was originally supposed to be Silent Hill: Cold Heart and by looking a the original design pitch, was going to be much more ambitious than what we got with SM. http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2014/12/09/Silent-Hill-Cold-Heart-pitch.aspx
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Oct 13, 2017 22:27
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Yeah, Amnesia the first makes more sense once you remember that they ran outta money and started by stripping out combat. And once you shouldn't be seeing the enemy, there's less of a need to make it look good.
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Oct 13, 2017 23:32
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Vakal posted:Shattered Memories was originally supposed to be Silent Hill: Cold Heart and by looking a the original design pitch, was going to be much more ambitious than what we got with SM. If nothing else, it's a better title.
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Oct 13, 2017 23:47
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Vakal posted:Shattered Memories was originally supposed to be Silent Hill: Cold Heart and by looking a the original design pitch, was going to be much more ambitious than what we got with SM. It certainly sounds better on paper than what we got.
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Oct 13, 2017 23:59
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Diabetic posted:The IDEA of it is fantastic. A psychiatrist reads your responses and based on that the game changes, the implementation though, is something to be desired. Silent Hill has always been known for its unique monster designs but Shat Memz has one type of monster with tiny variations. If Team Silent got a hold of this and made it, it would've been fantastic. But sadly, gently caress Konami forever, since we'll only see Pyramid head from now on and as a guest character in other games. At this point, I'd really love to have known just what the gently caress Silent Hills would've been story-wise. Team Silent is just sorta the umbrella term for whoever was working on SH 1-4 and wasn't really consistent between titles at all. I doubt that a new Team Silent in 2014 would have anyone that worked on SH 1-4.
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Oct 14, 2017 00:20
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Improbable Lobster posted:Team Silent is just sorta the umbrella term for whoever was working on SH 1-4 and wasn't really consistent between titles at all. I doubt that a new Team Silent in 2014 would have anyone that worked on SH 1-4. Fully aware, there is no real way of knowing what made everything click the right way for those games, let alone get everyone in the same room with a decent budget to strike fire again. Much like the dream team of Enix and Square that created Chrono Trigger, right time, right place.
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Oct 14, 2017 00:43
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siren was mentioned earlier and i honestly can't recommend that game series enough. even surpasses silent hill for me, personally. egomaniac has a good series of lps for it (https://lparchive.org/title/siren) the first listing of the original game in all caps is the redone version he made of silent 1 with better video quality. if the video links in siren 2 and siren: blood curse are for dead video hosts then just check out the red strip near the top of the page for them that says the videos are hosted on the internet archive and click that to reach a working playlist
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Oct 14, 2017 00:47
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catlord posted:I absolutely adore the FEAR franchise. Of the games, I feel that Perseus Mandate and 2 did the horror best, and I consider those two my favourites in the series. Reborn was pretty poo poo though, and while I liked 3 for the most part, Steve Niles can't end a story to save his life. gently caress, that end is so bad. This is pretty interesting, I never got around to Perseus Mandate but (as you're about to read) I thought the horror in 2 was a huge step back, with scares even more telegraphed than in the first game. 100% agree about the ending of 3 though, Jesus Christ.  SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin    The original F.E.A.R. would be a tough act to follow for any game, not just a sequel. Between the intense, engaging gun battles and the kitschy but ultimately effective scares, it was a unique delight built from familiar parts. It would only make sense to carry over the incredible enemy AI and oppressive atmosphere and god-killing shotgun to build an even bigger, bolder game. And perhaps that was what they intended, but it’s clear right from the start that something was lost in translation. F.E.A.R. 2 never quite manages to rise above the basics of the genre the way its predecessor did, but that’s still enough to make a competent shooter. Let’s start with a spoiler alert for the original F.E.A.R., because it’s going to be impossible to talk about the weird poo poo that happens in this one without it. You play Michael Becket, Delta Force operator, on a mission to extract background villain Genevieve Aristide from certain death at the hands of an angry Armacham. This happens just a few minutes before the end of F.E.A.R. 1, meaning you get a front-row seat to the ghost nuke from the end of the previous game. The rest of your adventure is through the bombed-out hellhole Alma has turned the city into, murdering your way through Armacham troops, Replica forces, and wilder things in the hopes of somehow stopping scary ghost lady. One thing I will give F.E.A.R. 2 credit for is running with the bugfuck ending of the first, Alma stinger and all. The spirit bomb not only hollowed out the city but turned the living to ash, leaving ghostly projections and even some reanimated corpses to battle. It’s a far cry from the mostly grounded foes of F.E.A.R. 1, leaving you in doubt of what you may encounter around the next corner. Several levels feature wall-crawling zombie test subjects that creep me out something fierce, while in other places you fight charging specters or scampering corpses that possess others like grim puppet masters. These encounters give the game some much needed tension, though at the cost of making it feel a bit cheesier. I say much-needed because the scares of the first game are largely absent here. Well, maybe not absent but not nearly as competent. Don’t expect any stand-out spooks like Alma in the vents or at the top of that one ladder. F.E.A.R. 2 happily ignores loads of prime opportunities to scare in favor of obnoxious new visual effects painted over your screen. Terror time is telegraphed with red flashes around your vision, followed by some flickering lights or Alma appearing for a second or something else subdued. The tension is further eroded by the presence of your team in a number of areas, fighting alongside you and quipping about dead chicks and sticking it to some motherfuckers. It still tries though, and the same can be said about the combat. F.E.A.R. 2 is still built around a foundation of slo-mo combat, but some subtle changes have wiped away some of that immortal badass feel from the first game. You seem to move slower and engage enemies at greater ranges, eliminating a lot of fun melee opportunities. The weapons are balanced differently, with the standard assault rifle and submachine gun proving to be reliable but boring workhorses throughout the game. Meanwhile, the two shotguns take more hits to kill enemies and the exotic weapons are dialed down in power and impact. Supposedly the masterful AI of the first game was brought over as well, but if that’s true then I’d have to guess that level design holds them back from actually showing what they can do because they feel no different from typical CoD fodder. Hopefully I’m not giving too negative a vision of the game, but viewing it through the bloody lens of the first game makes it hard not to miss the omissions. This remains a quality FPS, just one that veers more towards something like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor than the grim and gritty horror shooter that came before. Kicking in slo-mo to pound bullets into heads and then returning to normal time as the bodies hit the floor is still a crowd-pleaser, and there are a few additions like turret battles and two giant mech rampages to help break things up. They certainly don’t help the atmosphere much but I can’t deny the fun in mulching waves of soldiers with a rack of chainguns. The graphics also skew more towards modern shooters than the sharp contrasts in the first game, featuring plenty of brown-brick walls and rubble and gratings. It’s the icing on a purely perfunctory cake, one that does everything it needs to without owing too much to its predecessor. I’m sure you must be sick of hearing about the first F.E.A.R. by now but that’s because there’s never been a proper follow-up or competitor, just this functional successor with decent combat and a wild story. F.E.A.R. 2 is plenty fun as a shooter, it just lacks the magic which made the first F.E.A.R. a classic.
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Oct 15, 2017 01:22
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FEAR 2 is definitely engrossing, I'll give it that. It may not be as classic as the original, but it really nails a unique atmosphere.
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Oct 15, 2017 02:50
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Too Shy Guy posted:This is pretty interesting, I never got around to Perseus Mandate but (as you're about to read) I thought the horror in 2 was a huge step back, with scares even more telegraphed than in the first game. 100% agree about the ending of 3 though, Jesus Christ. I felt like, even though it didn't have as many notable scares as the first one, that the atmosphere was just really oppressive, things felt horrifying in a way that you don't normally see, even in the streets when the action's kicking off, it felt like things were closing in on you. Plus I felt like Alma felt like a presence, always lurking about which I thought tied in well with the atmosphere too. I just wanted to mention the ladder scene from the first one, because the first time I played it I stuck around on the top of the ladder for a bit being unnerved before continuing, and the second time I just slid down, turned around, and actually jumped because the first time around I missed Fettel's appearance there. It was great.
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Oct 15, 2017 03:01
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Is the ending of 2 the bit where the ghost does the thing.
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Oct 15, 2017 07:04
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Bogart posted:Is the ending of 2 the bit where the ghost does the thing. yes. she does the thing hard.
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Oct 15, 2017 07:15
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Johnny Joestar posted:siren was mentioned earlier and i honestly can't recommend that game series enough. even surpasses silent hill for me, personally. egomaniac has a good series of lps for it (https://lparchive.org/title/siren) Siren is an excellent game mixed with a terrible game and I always mention it when discussing terror but with the caveat of "I don't know if you would like playing it though". It seriously has some of the best atmosphere and the gameplay hijacking mechanic is still fresh even after all this time but drat. It can be a very obtuse game.
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Oct 15, 2017 15:16
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CharlestonJew posted:yes. she does the thing hard. And in FEAR 3, Beckett is basically left permanently pissed off because of it.
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Oct 15, 2017 15:21
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Meallan posted:Siren is an excellent game mixed with a terrible game and I always mention it when discussing terror but with the caveat of "I don't know if you would like playing it though". It's a shame because Siren 2 showed that they only needed a bit more tweaking to make a game that works perfectly well as a game but it also kinda misses the atmosphere of the original slightly. Still good though.
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Oct 15, 2017 16:04
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Sakurazuka posted:It's a shame because Siren 2 showed that they only needed a bit more tweaking to make a game that works perfectly well as a game but it also kinda misses the atmosphere of the original slightly. Still good though. Siren 2 also never saw an American release. I need to play my that game.
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Oct 15, 2017 16:06
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The PS3 Siren game is cool too but doesn't have the weird nonlinear structure of the first two games that I liked.
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Oct 15, 2017 16:08
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it manages to do some neat things on its own at least, which is why i generally recommend checking it out as well after the first two games
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Oct 15, 2017 21:12
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SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3    The first F.E.A.R. is a genre-straddling classic, combining intense and engaging firefights with some jarring scares. The second F.E.A.R. tried to follow that act with more refined graphics and gameplay but lost something in the translation, managing only to be a competent shooter with incompetent spooks. Following that downward trajectory you will find F.E.A.R. 3, an even stranger mish-mash of concepts than its predecessors. It makes a surprising attempt at keeping true to the lore of the series while further refining the gameplay into something almost unidentifiable as a F.E.A.R. title. While not terrible on its own, this discordant mess proves hilariously stupid to play through until it stops being hilarious. If you’re willing to put time into F.E.A.R. 3 then I’m going to trust you’re already done with 1 and 2, because we’re taking a crashing helicopter ride into Spoilertown. Alma’s psycho-nuclear emergence at the end of the first game has left a lasting mark on the city of Fairport, turning the skies red, the residents mad, and the ghosts angry. She’s also in the family way, if you remember the insane ending of the second game, and her labor pains are literally tearing the city apart. In the middle of all this appears The Point Man from the first game, along with his dead ghost brother Paxton Fettel, to do… something? F.E.A.R. 3 has a lot of problems but one that drives me crazy is how pointless the whole game feels in terms of narrative. It opens with Fettel helping Point Man break out of an Armacham-run asylum and escape through the favelas of… somewhere just to return to Fairport to watch Alma go horror-monal on the city. Point Man seems to want to stop her, Fettel just wants to hang out with Mom, but there’s nothing that really drives the plot anywhere. Your useless teammate Jin from the first game shows up and Point Man is very strong and silently concerned about her, and SHE wants you to stop Alma, so… okay? These dudes are her sons so at this point I’m really unsure why any of Alma’s zombies or demons or hellspawn-things want to eat their faces anyway. Beyond that though, it’s quite a spectacle to see how insane the series has gone from it’s origin. In a perfect world we could have kept the moody halls and sudden scares of the first game, but there’s a certain mad appeal to fighting techno-magical soldiers through a disintegrating, blood-soaked city to stop an apocalyptic ghost baby from being born. I’m not kidding about the soldiers, either. Armacham’s still got the powered armor and high-tech weapons from before but added phase casters, field commanders who can open portals for themselves and other troops. It feels like a bridge too far for the already-strained credibility of the series, and honestly they’re annoying as gently caress to fight, too. Firefights should be the strong part of any F.E.A.R. game, and while they’re more dynamic here than in the second game there are new factors that can often make them more frustrating. F.E.A.R. 3 loves to chuck you into arena situations with enemies spawning in all around you, rather than giving you squads to ambush or defined battles to weigh in on. Some of these enemies fall more on the aggravating side than interesting, like the crazed citizens who take tons of hits to drop and love strapping bombs to themselves to show you how much they care. Phase casters can drag fights out far beyond what is reasonably fun, and new riot shield enemies seem to exist just to take the enjoyment out of going melee on hapless soldiers. Your weapons have again been remixed, and again they’re more interesting than the bland F.E.A.R. 2 versions but feature new limitations. The assault rifle, for example, is way more powerful here but fires in three-round bursts. You can get dual uzis for wasting large groups of runners but they drain ammo way too fast. And the shotgun is back to 1-or-2-shotting foes but suffers an appalling redesign that makes it look like a gas station sushi display. You’re not even going to get to play with some of these much because your ammo reserves cap out at absurdly low levels and you lose all your weapons at the end of each level, which is going to be agonizing unless you’re the kind of person who pistol-starts every map of DOOM. All of this pales in comparison to the major changes in the gameplay, though. Gone are medkits and health bars, replaced with regenerating health. I’m not a hard-liner against regenerating health by any means but it’s a knife through the heart of any game with horror leanings, removing any and all tension from monster attacks and big brawls. There’s also a cover system that gave the developers cause to fill levels with chest-high walls and place enemies far outside normal engagement range, further limiting slo-mo melee shenanigans. Biggest of all, though, is the rating system that constantly pops up accolades for killing X enemies with Y weapon, or staying in slo-mo for Z seconds. This system earns you points to level up and unlock new bonuses like more health or holding more clips or other quality-of-life elements that should have been in from the start. You may have realized this by now, but the compartmentalized levels and limited weapons and regenerating health and rating system all combine to make a score attack game set in the F.E.A.R. universe, instead of whatever you’re imagining F.E.A.R. 3 should be. These elements put the emphasis on gamey mechanics that detract entirely from the ham-fisted attempts at horror that the developers still tried to include. On top of that, you can play the entire game co-op with one player as deadly ghost guy Fettel (or you can play him solo after beating a level as Point Man) who possesses and explodes enemies with reckless abandon. There are also multiplayer modes where you battle waves of enemies or outrun death clouds or perform other random tasks to score points. None of this is actually bad, mind you. The shooting still works in a Call of Duty way and the monsters add some variety and the backdrop is absolutely wild Akira-style apocalypse stuff. But it’s so far from what F.E.A.R. and even F.E.A.R. 2 are that it’s almost shocking they share the name. I know the effort was put into linking the stories but that hardly matters if you’ve jettisoned even the most basic levels of tension from the game design. It’s fun in a goofy, mindless way but not in the ways you’re probably here for. Also I lied a little before, there are some seriously bad parts near the end of the campaign with some awful bosses and forced arena fights. The graphics are very fitting for what this game is, sharp and colorful but with a certain cleanness that makes it all feel like a knock-off of what it’s supposed to be. Sound design is fine as well, and they got the actor for Fettel back to do some terribly out-of-character quips at the player, but if you’ve made it this far that’s the least of your concerns. Don’t go into F.E.A.R. 3 expecting horror or tension or brilliant gunplay or anything that made F.E.A.R. F.E.A.R., really. If you’re going to show up at all, come either for the score attack aspect of the game, the completely bugfuck story spiraling off the others, or just some competent shooting. Maybe they were aiming for something more with this one, but I tell you now that competent is as high as they got.
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Oct 15, 2017 21:51
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One thing about fear 3 is that it added a survival horde mode. It was fun online.
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Oct 15, 2017 22:55
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All the FEAR chat has made me revisit it for the first time in a hell of a lot of years and yeah it is fantastic. I'm making my way through the Extraction Point expansion now. I've never played the sequels but it sounds like the series falls into the trap that quite a few sci-fi/paranormal-flavored games make where it feels obligated to have more enemy variety than dudes with guns. Like I could fight replica squads forever and not get bored because they're so drat fun to fight but the ghosts and flying drones you encounter with increasing frequency as the game goes on put me to sleep. They're not too bad because they never become too common and you still fight plenty of replica/security guys but I can definitely imagine the trend dragging down the sequels.
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Oct 15, 2017 23:10
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Yeah, there's a lot of things I like about 3 but also a lot that doesn't work nearly as well, and the way that encounters are designed is definitely one of them. I also agree that the regenerating health was a poor idea, because I feel like those two are both connected, since with regenerating health there tends to be a tendency to just throw enemies at you since you can just duck behind something and heal up. And, of course, I hate how the story ends, basically from the end of Interval 7 on the story just goes all to Hell. I just recently replayed 2 and 3 back-to-back (I'd have done 1, but my new computer doesn't have a disc drive and I haven't transferred it over from my old hard drive, I should do that, or just rebuy them on Steam). I've only played single player, but I have more time in 2 than I have in some open world games.
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Oct 15, 2017 23:27
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Too Shy Guy posted:F3AR What a weird game. I kept playing it just to see where the hell the story was going. It just kept ramping up. I liked that Point Man and Fettel had slightly differing play styles. Also it had a great frantic multiplayer game mode called "loving Run!" where you and your partners are chased by that Death Wall. It was definitely a console game first and it had one of those "competent but not outstanding" PC ports that were all the rage during that time. Also it had some good promo art for it.   I guess it's damning with faint praise if I'm bringing up the promo art  Oh well, I enjoyed my time with it. Also, got it on discount so that colors my view.
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Oct 15, 2017 23:32
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The description of Fear 3 sounds like a (much) better version of what happened to Dino Crisis 3. Its a weird progression but apparently one that has happened more than once...
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Oct 15, 2017 23:42
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fear 2 wasn't perfect as far as atmosphere goes but i definitely did enjoy bits like the school segment and whatnot. 3 really seemed to lose something along the way
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Oct 16, 2017 00:18
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The good thing about the co-op mode in FEAR 3 is that Fettel is unkillable. So if you have a friend that is terrible at videogames/shooters they can just play as him and still contribute without dragging the Point Man player down.
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Oct 16, 2017 02:59
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And co-op, if I remember right, had a hidden feature where the ending split based on who did better at the game!
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Oct 16, 2017 05:11
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Is there a thread for Little Nightmares? Thanks
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Oct 16, 2017 05:18
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Bogart posted:And co-op, if I remember right, had a hidden feature where the ending split based on who did better at the game! It does, the score you get at the end of each chapter that seems really weird in single player makes much more sense in multiplayer when it's an actual competition.
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Oct 16, 2017 05:43
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the end of the fear 3 campaign also has that little 'struggle' cinematic where it flips between the brothers and says who did the best in certain aspects, to tally up the final result and determine whose ending comes on top it's a neat idea, if a bit wasted in a way
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Oct 16, 2017 06:02
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I'd never play any of the Siren games but I love watching them being played.
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Oct 16, 2017 10:54
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Siren and Silent Hill 2 are two games I tried so hard to get into, but man I just couldn't do it. SH2 because I keep getting bored before getting to the good part, and Siren because I can't see poo poo and there always seems to be some jackass sniping me with a loving pinpoint accurate musket 
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Oct 16, 2017 11:15
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I'm watching the Best Friends play Home Sweet Home and yowza it looks absolutely terrifying. I gotta pause the vid every few minutes and take a break
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Oct 16, 2017 11:27
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Vakal posted:The good thing about the co-op mode in FEAR 3 is that Fettel is unkillable.
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Oct 16, 2017 16:09
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Johnny Joestar posted:the end of the fear 3 campaign also has that little 'struggle' cinematic where it flips between the brothers and says who did the best in certain aspects, to tally up the final result and determine whose ending comes on top I thought this was hilarious for single player because Point Man pretty much schools the poo poo out of his ghostbro like he could have done so whenever he wanted. It's also extra dumb because Point Man never says anything the entire game so it's the climax to Fettel being a smug dick for hours and then being absolutely shocked his brother isn't totally on board with him. So now let's talk about the polar opposite of F.E.A.R., a game about going for a walk in the mountains and looking at trees and just watching ghosts be lovely to each other instead of shooting them. Note that this review is for the Redux version, which is included with the regular game. SPOOKY G4MES: The Ghost Dimension 1. Stories Untold 2. Rusty Lake Hotel 3. Rusty Lake: Roots 4. Left in the Dark: No One on Board 5. Daily Chthonicle: Editor's Edition 6. Eleusis 7. Dead Effect 8. Dead Effect 2 9. State of Decay 10. Dead End Road 11. Goetia 12. EMPORIUM 13. F.E.A.R. 14. F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin 15. F.E.A.R. 3 16. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter    “Walking Simulator” isn’t a pejorative to me like it is to some. Honestly I think the term has been mostly reclaimed by a flourishing genre of environmental exploration games that arose in the wake of Dear Esther and Gone Home. I seek out interesting walking sims, ones that promise interesting scenery and clever storytelling, and while they may be rare they do indeed exist. Much of their appeal hinges on their graphics and environment design, and that’s where The Vanishing of Ethan Carter shines the brightest. In fact it might just be the Platonic ideal of the genre, considering how much of its appeal hinges on graphics and story as opposed to actual gameplay. You play world-weary baritone detective Paul Prospero, a veteran paranormal investigator in search of missing child Ethan Carter. The boy has vanished somewhere in the pastoral fields and forests of Red Creek Valley, and immediately upon arrival it’s clear that the picturesque landscape hides a great evil. Paul’s supernatural attunement allows you to uncover the truth behind a string of gristly murders and the strange events surrounding them, eventually revealing the nature of the place and Ethan’s disappearance. It’s a beautiful and disturbing journey, and one with more than a few surprises in store. The game is quick to inform you when you begin that it’s a free-form story, one that you’ll need to piece together yourself. This doesn’t mean you need to pore over scattered notes or audio logs, it means you literally need to go out and find pieces of the story. Red Creek Valley is a vast, open place that hides many secrets along the path to your destination. The main story beats are centered around the murders which are usually central to an area but there are other fragments of the story scattered in the far fields and crumbling buildings of the valley. You won’t get the full picture without finding them, and they tend to be far more interesting in nature than the murder investigations. Those investigations and the additional story fragments are the only breaks in the wandering you’re going to get, and I’d be lying if I said they amounted to much gameplay. The murders require you to locate bits of evidence in and around the scene and then number the sequence of events when presented with their ghostly echoes. There’s no challenge to these sequences, as getting the order wrong does nothing but waste time. For the story fragments every one is different, from pursuing a fleet-footed stranger to rearranging the rooms in a house, but these are still only brief respites from the wandering at the core of the game. The fragments DO reward you with some fantastic scenes though, definitely the creative high points of the title and absolutely worth seeking out. So yes, the rest of the game is just walking around the valley, and if it weren’t such a lovely valley that might be a bad thing. But my God, even two years out the Redux version looks absolutely incredible in all its vibrant details. Flowering bushes waft in the breeze, leaves flutter down from autumn branches, water splashes over glistening rocks, and the valley itself stretches out to a golden, sun-touched horizon. As far as environments go it’s one of the most immersive around, with convincing flora and realistically-weathered buildings. It does make the characters stand out, though, as their art style doesn’t carry the same masterful touch as the environments and their animations jerk and slide around in unnatural ways. They don’t kill the atmosphere entirely but they certainly do no favors to the otherwise expert presentation. All that walking will get you through the story in around three hours or so, and between the lovely scenery and simple puzzles you shouldn’t get too bored as long as you’re down with the whole walking sim concept. Some titles like SOMA have enough going on to fully break free of the stigma but The Vanishing lives comfortably in it, challenging you to derive your enjoyment from hours of hiking and sightseeing. There’s very little that happens during your sojourns, limited almost entirely to the optional story fragments. And while some of those include some striking and occasionally terrifying elements, they’re such small, temporary parts of the game that you can’t really expect them to carry the rest. Then there’s the story, steeped in mysticism and blood. I won’t delve into spoilers but know that right from the outset strange, nigh-inexplicable events will take place alongside the gruesome murders that line your path. It all means something but it won’t be clear until the very end, and that conclusion will take a pretty sharp turn away from what you’ve experienced up to that point. Ultimately it’s a story told heavily through symbolism, and while I appreciate what it represents I also recognize that some will regard it as a bait-and-switch. My advice then would be to proceed with an open mind, and prepare for what you see to not be the whole truth you are chasing. Put simply, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is an excellent walking sim but a very thin game. It elevates the genre to one of its ideals, a game so beautiful and meaningful that the act of wandering around in its confines constitutes a complete game. But as complete as it is it may not satisfy, either for lack of depth in its systems or lofty narrative concept that may not have the intended impact. If you have the patience for slow, meandering games then it should not be missed, but its limitations cannot be ignored no matter how good it may sound.
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Oct 16, 2017 16:35
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Too Shy Guy posted:I thought this was hilarious for single player because Point Man pretty much schools the poo poo out of his ghostbro like he could have done so whenever he wanted. It's also extra dumb because Point Man never says anything the entire game so it's the climax to Fettel being a smug dick for hours and then being absolutely shocked his brother isn't totally on board with him. Maybe he took Point Man's silence as complacency
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Oct 16, 2017 17:09
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Drunken Baker posted:I'd never play any of the Siren games but I love watching them being played. I would recommend playing through maybe the first 4 missions or So, before the game gets too obtuse. Just to get the sense of dread. But knowing exactly what you have to do will probably ruin that a bit.
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Oct 16, 2017 19:24
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