Game Review: Septerra Core

Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.

A Decade in the Making

I don’t recall how I first purchased Septerra Core, as it was literally over a decade ago.  It was likely back in college, ordered off online before Amazon was ubiquitous, possibly from Ebay (though I believe I got it new).  It would have been before I got my now main email address at GMail, and definitely before I realized the importance of archiving all the old emails.  It definitely is amusing to think of all that has happened in the past ten years or more, but back to the relevance to my story.  Septerra Core is an old game, and while using DirectX, backwards compatibility wasn’t always the greatest in the earlier versions.  It is also a pretty long game (as they really could be back then, with lots of filler and backtracking and the like), so it took awhile to play through and probably got put to the side several times.  As a college student, I also was able to get new OS discs for cheap, and so would routinely jump to a new OS from Microsoft whenever I was able.  But at some point upon doing so, Septerra Core would no longer work, and so it was relegated to the “pile of shame,” referring to games you started but never finished.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying, as with upgrading to XP I would try compatibility settings in hopes that it would run and searched around for any new patches.  But with Valkryia Studios going bankrupt and closing their doors.  After a few years of trying, I eventually gave up.  Unbeknownst to me, a patch was eventually released in 2006 that would address these issues, but by then I had more or less given up, though I did still have the disc in my possession just in case.  Then one day several months ago, while looking through GOG, I happened to stumble upon the listing for Septerra Core.  I noticed in the compatibility that it only lists XP and Vista, but looking through comments I ascertained that it would also work with Windows 7 64-bit, which is what I have installed.  So, still unaware of the patch, I plunked down the $6 to purchase the game and blew the dust off my old saves (figuratively) and excitedly loaded up the game.  And behold, it all worked!  My last save file was dated October of 2002, meaning that almost ten years had passed since I had last been able to play this game, but due to the great people at GOG, I was able to finally finish it.

Western JRPG on PC

While coming from a western developer, this game has a much more feel of being inspired by Japanese style of RPGs, with strongly defined characters and a linear story.  Naturally, having not actively played the game in quite a long time, I was pretty rusty on the story and what I was supposed to be doing in the game.  Fortunately the internet is a great trove of information for this sort of thing, and after skimming through a few walkthroughs I was able to piece together most of the backstory.  So, with some sense of what happened and a few clues about what to do next, I was finally able to start playing again.

The way that you play the game is controlled entirely by the mouse.  You use it to lead your party around the maps and to give orders in battle.  Enemies are seen wandering around on the map and the battles also take place there, in difference to older Final Fantasy style games.  During battle, you have a gauge that fills up over time and has three levels that allow you to perform increasingly stronger attacks.  It appears that the strength increases linearly, so you get a little bit of strategy in figuring out if you want to save up for a stronger attack with the possibility that it could miss (I generally favored ‘mid’ level attacks).  You also have magic which is controlled by playing cards.  With three people in your party, you can play up to three cards together to achieve a variety of effects.  The main card determines the attack while the others act as modifiers, such as adding an elemental type or making it affect all.  The magic uses up a shared resource, so you don’t have to worry about managing the magic levels for each individual member.

Old School Problems

It is interesting to go back and replay older games, viewing them through the lens gained by experience with more modern games and their conveniences.  The pacing of this game definitely felt slow by today’s standards, with lots of waiting around for the ability to take turns during battle, followed by animations that seems sluggish and longer than needed.  Maps were also padded to be larger than need be, and there were many cases near the end where I had to get so many keys in order to unlock doors to get more keys, to finally get where I was going.  Plus after getting the treasure or killing the boss at the end, the wonderful walk of shame out of the dungeon (fortunately much faster in reverse, but with enemies re-spawning with each area change, still not pleasant).  It is a testament to the progress of games design that these stand out so much nowadays.

While I do appreciate the art and the confines of the screen from those days left not much to work with, it still felt cramped and wandering around the map wasn’t too enjoyable since you could only really see about ten feet in front of your character.  The particle effects were nice, but were pretty basic by today’s standards.  And the characters have a bit of a “plastic” look to them.  For the time it was really nice, but with all the advances in graphics we have these days it can be a little hard to watch at times.

Another Off the “Pile of Shame”

While the end was a bit of a letdown, I do have to say that I am glad I repurchased the game and was able to finally finish it.  It is a bit eye opening to think about how technology is progressing and how our medium of storytelling and experience is so very tightly coupled to it.  It is very likely that over time older games may become unplayable and it is a refreshing sight to see places such as Good Old Games working to preserve the history (and make a buck or two while they are at it).  I enjoyed having the experience of playing a game over such a long period, and giving me time to think about all that had progressed during that time.  Video games have come a long way, and I eagerly await to see where they will go from here on in the future.  Plus, that is one more game off my pile of shame.

Game Review: Dead Space 2

Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.

Platform Shift

I played the first Dead Space on 360 awhile ago, and enjoyed it, but not so much that I felt that I needed to play the sequel once it came out.  During a rush of Steam sales (a newfound weakness of mine) the sequel was discounted to just $5, so I figured I’d give it a shot.  I have to say, it was well worth the money.  I was a little worried at first about it being a console game first and playing that on the PC.  Typically, games ported over will feel like they were rushed and their control schemes won’t feel suited to a mouse and keyboard setup, but it seems like a good amount of care was put into this version as there were no serious issues and I didn’t feel hampered or wanting a gamepad instead.  There were a few default key bindings that felt a little awkward at times, but it didn’t bother my enough to change them.  It seems like PC is starting to become a well treated platform again, as the consoles are definitely showing their age so more people are opting to play on PC again so they can start seeing additional effects that some developers are using with PC DX11 versions of their games.  I also find that I am starting to prefer playing PC games due to the fact that it is away from the kids’ room near the TV (and I don’t have to compete for screen time as much if they are up).

The Setup

The basic gameplay twist that Dead Space has is that instead of the usual “shoot them in the head” strategy that most games employ, in this one the point is to shoot off the limbs of the enemies (shooting them in the head generally just makes them mad).  It is an interesting approach and I am glad to see games experiment with new approaches.  It helps that the enemies are hideously disfigured humans with splayed limbs to make your job a bit easier.  They were transformed this way by an alien virus that graphically configures human flesh into bizarre, twisted abominations that you get the joys of fighting through.

The plot also deals with religion, “markers”/artifacts, and government plots a little to give the plot some weight and context, though it isn’t entirely crucial to understand all of it.  A lot of this is revealed through text and audio logs found throughout the environment.  While I can appreciate that littering these throughout the environment helps put them in a context within the world and makes them optional for people that want to skip them, it does make everything hard to follow and a little hard to piece everything together as to what exactly is going on outside of what your next objective is.  But perhaps that is a weaker point of doing the story that way instead of a linear, cutscene-based approach (which has its own weaknesses).

The Horror

The Dead Space series is supposed to be all about horror, and I think they accomplish this to a pretty good degree.  I would definitely describe the game with words like suspenseful, intense, and scary.  Granted, as an adult who knows that all this is just polygons, textures, and lighting effects at its core, I wasn’t exactly kept up at night with nightmares.  But I did have to take a break after an hour or so to calm down my nerves.  Granted, as the game went on I suppose I got a bit more used to it as I was able to play for longer stretches without it bothering me.  Perhaps I slowly got desensitized to it.  Or I just acquired enough of an arsenal that I wasn’t too worried about what lurked around the corners.

That brings me to a point that I want to make when it comes to the idea of horror and how some games try to be scary but then undermine the atmosphere and enemy design with their gameplay balance.  The true enemy of horror is having too much power.  This power can come in a variety of forms, such as too much information about the enemy or too powerful of weapons, but regardless of the source it will lessen the terror that the player could feel.  In order for this to work, the player needs to have a feeling of helplessness and fear of the unknown.  Some of the most anxiety-inducing moments in games comes when you only have three bullets left, no health, and there is a big monster between you and the next safe room.  If you could just waltz in and blow everything away, then you don’t have much reason to be afraid.  If you know that enemy X will spawn at location Y every time then you don’t have much reason to be afraid (of course, if it takes almost everything in your inventory to get past it that could be pretty scary).

I am reminded of a time when I was playing the Resident Evil remake on GameCube when the game surprised me in a very scary way.  In old Resident Evil games, you have a variety of rooms that you go through.  An unstated rule of the game is that enemies don’t go between these rooms.  However, one time when exploring around near the end of the game there was a common but strong enemy (a hunter for those familiar) in a room that I decided to just avoid for some reason or another.  I went into the adjoining room and looked around for a moment until the enemy that I skipped broke through the door I had just used.  I remember being rather afraid at this moment since the game broke what I perceived to be an unbreakable rule.  While I was able to dispatch the enemy, the moment still stays with me.

That actually reminds me of another good horror technique that the Resident Evil remake introduced (sorry to drone on about it, but they made that game rather scary).  The regular zombies, once killed, stayed dead on the floor (no disappearing when you left the room), but then after an undetermined (by me anyway) amount of time, then could come back as a stronger, faster zombie.  You had a way to counter this by burning the downed zombies with oil and fire, but then you had to have additional stuff in your inventory (and a limited amount to boot).  I remember that there was even a zombie that was left outside a safe room that started dead, so you had to decide to if you wanted to use some of your limited resources on it.  I believe that I decided to leave it on one playthrough to see if it would ever get up (it didn’t), but that didn’t stop me from cautiously stepping around it whenever I wanted to go past it.

Which brings me back to Dead Space 2, and something I am glad they added in.  Near the end of the game, you are introduced to an immortal enemy (at least I could never figure out a way to kill it).  This actually helped offset the complacency that I was starting to feel with the game as I was to the point where I had a pretty strong offensive so I could blast through most of the enemies without too much of an issue.  They first introduce you to the enemy by itself, so naturally I sent a long time blasting it with everything I had before I realized that it just wasn’t going to die (you could incapacitate it for brief moments while it regrew all the limbs you blasted off).  This was then followed by a quick attempt at an exit (which was foiled by me be too slow and prompted a quick load to get my health and ammo back).  The enemy is then introduced again and again as it chases you to the end of the game, along with scads of other strong enemies that you have to deal with.  I didn’t even bother killing most of the normal fodder once the black invincible one showed up, and attempted to quickly exit any area that I was currently in.  This turned the endgame into a scramble towards the finish, blasting anything that got in my way and rarely affording me a chance to catch my breath.  So now even though I was brimming to the teeth with strong weapons, I was still unable to get comfortable since there were always too many enemies to deal with and then it would show up and I’d have no choice but to get moving if I wasn’t already.  So that introduced some of that horror back into the game at the point where you felt that you were finally safe.

The Signoff

Ending felt a little forced, not entirely sure what was going on, I’m not a horror-buff but had a good time, would recommend

Dead Space 2 ended fairly well as far as horror games do.  The rush to the end was met with a fairly unimpressive boss fight that led to a Isaac (your main character) pretty much sitting down and accepting his fate to die while the credits scroll by.  “Just kidding!” says the game as it bursts into the solemn moment with the other main character busting in and you are off on a quick, escape from the self-destructing facility end sequence before you manage to get away safely.  It was a little jarring at first, but the fact that it ends up with Isaac actually saving the girl (and in turn her saving him at the end there) actually ended the game fairly well.  Naturally, with all things horror, you find out that the facility and marker that were destroyed were only one of many, meaning that your job is far from done.  Good for sequels as well, of course.

I admit that I am not a huge horror buff, but I appreciate the interesting dynamics that they tend to employ from the usual “just blast everything in sight” that accompanies most action-based games.  Overall, I enjoyed Dead Space 2 a lot and would recommend it to other people.  I don’t believe it sold too well, but there was enough of an interest for a sequel (I have a few impressions about it that I will talk briefly about in a later post) and several other media spinoffs.  So here is to seeing if they can keep the horror genre fresh in the coming years.

Game Review: To The Moon

Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.

Stories Without Pages

To the Moon is another piece that I would file under being an interactive story as opposed to a game (to recap, my definition of a game is something with rules that has win and loss conditions).  It is a very linear experience where you only really participate by searching the areas for objects of interest that allow you to progress to the next story point.  It also doesn’t appear to have any sort of branching story or a way to get different endings.  This does give it a strong and consistent narrative experience, but I feel that it does limit itself a bit by doing so.  I’d like to see interactive media of this type use the power of the medium a little bit more in order to expand the art, but overall I was satisfied with how the story was presented.

The Mind is Malleable

The basic premise of To the Moon is that technology has discovered a way to view and alter the memories of people.  Instead of using this for some nefarious purpose, the application of this technology that we see is to alter the memories of people to give them more happiness about their lives.  Apparently this memory alteration is permanent, and so to be kind to the patients, it is typically done while they are on their deathbed and are unconscious.  This particular story follows a man who wants to go to the moon and the two specialists who arrive to fulfill his wish.  You get to see them attempt to go about this by gradually stepping back through his memories and looking for his reasoning for going to the moon in the first place.

It unfolds at a fairly predictable pace, with a few twists thrown in that make the story compelling.  Perhaps it is the Chrono Trigger inspired graphics that hearken back to some fond memories of mine that kept me glued, but I could easily see others wishing rather to read a book instead.  It is obvious this was done with minimal production values, as the movement is very grid based and confining, plus the “find objects of significance before moving to the next area” gameplay element feels a bit contrived, but the look is consistent and the music lends itself well to the emotion that it is trying to convey.  The banter between the two specialists is amusing, but there wasn’t really anything that I found to be particularly noteworthy with the writing (not that many games really do).

An Inbetween Experience

I’m still not entirely sure where To the Moon occupies in my head.  It was an emotional story that was presented in an interactive entertainment environment, but there was nothing that really made us of the medium.  It could easily have worked in a TV/movie just as easily, but the creators decided to use an interactive method instead.  However, I enjoyed the story and effort was definitely put into the areas that mattered most to enforce that.  I found it to not be particularly accessible (I played it with a gamepad), but it was serviceable.  It feels like they added some “game”-type elements to it in order to have it there to gate the players progression, so any exploration that you get feels like it is forced as you hunt down what you need to advance the plot.  There is also a simple puzzle component that you need to do between each segment, but after a few I figured out the trick and it wasn’t very challenging or interesting after that.  So overall I would have to say that it was a good story that you felt like you were a bit more of a part of due to the slightly interactive nature, but beyond that it left me feeling like I wanted more from it.

Game Review: Journey

Note: Game reviews will contain spoilers.

It’s not a Game, It’s an Experience

First off, I would like to state that Journey isn’t a game so much as it is an experience.  I think this is an important distinction when it comes to entertainment media.  To me a game has a collection of rules that must be obeyed and a definite win and loss condition.  I have only played through Journey once (though I plan to again), and as far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to lose.   There are enemies in the game that when they hit you it causes you to lose some of your scarf (more on that later) but I didn’t really notice any way to actually die or fail (and searching the internet backs me up on this).

Short and Sweet

Journey is an odd but beautiful game.  You are a wanderer clad in a red cloak with a black mask, no apparent arms, and legs that end at a point.  You start off walking up a dune in a desert and upon reaching the top you notice a large mountain in the background with a bright light emanating from it.  This is your destination and the only hint the game gives you about what to do to proceed.  You can slide down steep hills (and there are several segments of the game solely devoted to sliding) and soon you find red pieces of fabric floating around as if they have a life of their own.  You learn that you can “talk” to these pieces of fabric and they will propel you upward.  There are also glowing pieces of fabric that you can collect that will give you a scarf and allow you to jump as long as you have the energy to do so (represented by a pattern on your scarf).  As you collect more of these your scarf will grow, representing your ability to be in the air more often.

The world of Journey is very beautiful.  The environments start out as sand swept dunes that are littered with ruins of an old civilization.  There are stone monuments that remind me of gravestones littered throughout.  In addition to the smaller pieces of red scarves, you eventually find larger ones that help guide you and occasionally give you a ride.  You also come across some stone monuments that come to life and float around, their one eye sending out a spotlight that illuminates any loose scarves before they are devoured.  It is these stone monsters that represent the only enemy type in the game.  Even without their ability to actually kill you, their presence evokes some fear and caution, as the music changes its tone and you feel small and helpless as they scour the area looking for you.  Eventually you move into snow, where your ability to jump is gradually drained by the cold, and finally the sky as you soar to your final destination.

Along the way, you can come across other people experiencing Journey.  You can only communicate in the most primitive of ways, using the same method of talking (which is just a single tone emitted with a button press) as you do with the other inhabitants (if you can call them that).  You can also recharge each others energies by standing close, as it appears the rule is that being close to any of the red pieces of cloth in the game will grant you this power.  It is a nice touch that you can do so with a fellow player, giving you incentive to stay near each other in order to help out.  I have to say that I enjoyed this form of simple multiplayer, with no chance of “griefing” as any person you encounter can only help and never hinder.

It’s not the Destination, It’s the Journey

Along the way you complete each section by activating several pillars next to a stone tablet.  These conveniently have spots at their base representing the pieces of scarf you can collect in the level, and illuminate for each one picked up.  After the pillars are activated, you kneel down in a sense of prayer and get a vision from a much larger figure dressed as you are but in white.  These visions represent the only thing that counts as an overarching story for the world and they seem to detail the past that lead to your summoning and eventually what you will have to face in the future, as if ordained by a prophecy that you are carrying out.  You also find additional pieces in the forms of wall carvings throughout.  I am not entirely sure what all transpired (there is no actual text at all, which I’m sure made localization a breeze), but it seems to suggest that a civilization harnessed some sort of power from the skies that eventually led to their downfall.  Obviously somewhat cryptic, but I think it gives it a bit of extra mystery to the strange, wonderful world you are traveling through.

Each segment has a particular game play style, though there isn’t anything drastically different between them.  The main thing you do reach the end by navigating through the environment, but there are segments that concentrate more on sliding or flying, and you have to avoid the flying stone monster in some areas which gives it some stealth type gameplay as well.  Ultimately, it keeps it different enough that you never really get tired and it is always a new experience.  And once you finally reach the end after your 2-3 hour journey, you get transported back to the beginning to experience it all over again (culminating with a list of the people you met along your way).  Due to its short length, I would highly recommend experiencing it in a single sitting.

I have to say that I greatly enjoyed my time playing Journey and will likely pick it up again at some point (which is rare for me to do).  If nothing else but to gaze at the environments some more or spend a little more time exploring them.  Definitely a good place for relaxation and contemplation and I think something that helps expand the realm a little bit of what constitutes electronic entertainment.