Cry me a river.

Okay so in the past four months or so I have had two games make me cry.  I have become a total wuss apparently because I am now getting emotional over the interactive digital medium.  I guess I'm not as worried about this as I would have had I been a weeping over games say 5 years ago as I'm at a more stable point in life and I don't need to prove anything with gallons of testosterone.

 Lee and Clementine

The first game that had me balling was the Telltale Games masterpiece The Walking Dead.   I might give the game a review later on but in the broad strokes the game is about redemption  and fatherhood.   You play as Lee a convicted murderer who has a second chance at life when the zombie uprising goes down.  You meet and become the caregiver to a little girl Clementine.  

The Walking Dead is written in such a way so that Clemy a little girl who should be annoying never comes off as a burden.  Your constantly watching out for her but in a fatherly way and it feels natural.  This game has actually stirred unused paternal instinct in me.  Towards the end of the game Lee is bitten unfortunately and it is Clementine who must finish him off.  This scene had me in tears because I knew that I had taken her this far and that everything I had taught her during the game would help her survive in a world that I had myself failed to survive in. 

The second game and one that I just finished a few hours ago is indie developer Freebird To the Moon.   It's made in a JRPG art style but isn't an rpg its a point and click adventure like The Walking Dead.   To the Moon has a silly sci fi story about two scientists who go into dyeing peoples memories and change the memory for the client so that they will remember fulfilling a lost dream.  It should also be mentioned that this game really has excellent music that is used extremely well to be able to help emote a reaction out of the player.

The game is about a the client John and we travel backwards through his memories and we see his life with his wife River.  The story is really about John and Rivers marriage.   The ups and the downs.  Also before I forget it's implied that River has aspergers syndrome which hits home for me because my big brother has a high functioning form or aspergers.   Also another side note River is a redhead which also hits home to me as my darling fiance is also a ginger.  The game really abuses your emotional state and those little details really helped bring me to tears the first time.  

Stuff happens that I wont spoil as it really should be experienced but in the end I was in tears again.  To the Moon has me in such a weird emotional funk but I think that its a good thing.  It has me thinking about how I'm going to spend my life with my future wife and how I'll look back at our time together.  

I asked my fiance to marry me next to a lighthouse.

So there you have it two games that at least for me turned me into a sobbing quivering baby.   I loved them both.  The Walking Dead had me really thinking about what it means to be a father, make tough decisions for those who can't, and to care for a family.  And To the Moon with the themes of love, marriage the ups and the downs, and will you be satisfied with the life you led. 

Cthulhu Saves the World

So I picked up the indie game Cthulhu Saves the World and I've got to say its fucking tight.   Its an old school RPG that doesn't get bogged down by grinding.   The brilliance in the game mechanic is that the combat is incredibly fast and the combat animations don't take more than one second vs five seconds.  When you actually think about if your in a fight and your combat animations take 5 seconds each it will really drag out the fight, and considering its an RPG and you have to fight multiple randomly encountered enemies it will really bog you down and frankly waste your time. 

Fan girls everywhere can't get enough Cthulhu

Cthulhu saves the world is a game where Cthulhu arises just to find that all of his powers have been taken from him and to earn back his power which of course can destroy the world he must first become a true hero and do heroically good deeds.  The game is played off for humor and at least I appreciate it.   Cthulhu builds a party of followers that of course help him out on his journey, it is an RPG after all.  The enemies are fun with opponents taken from Lovecraftian lore and more silly outings like snails and wisps of wind.

Cthulhu starts off his epic quest of awesome

After you beat Cthulhu Saves the World you unlock extra modes like my personal favorite which was Cthulhus Angels where you play the campaign with hotties doing heroic deeds in Cthulhus stead.  All in all I really liked this game and considering its one dollar on Xbox Live and three dollars on Steam as a two pack with Zboyd games Breath of Death.   Its well worth the chump change in your pocket to have an extremely fun old school RPG.  Honestly I wish RPGs of old were just like this game because I would have spent far more time playing them then I actually have.

My Feelings On Fez...

Okay so it looks like I want to make this a gaming blog, I don't know if this is where I want to go but all my ideas are gaming related so there we go.   I do feel that I need to really get my ass in motion and actually create content for this blog because I just do and am going to atrophy if I don't.

Anyway so after much hemming and hawing I broke down and picked up Polytron's puzzle platformer.  Yes I have seen Indie Game: The Movie, so I know the creator Phil Fish is a drama queen and an egomaniac.  However I decided to let the highly praised indie game a go because I'm on a kick to give Indie games a try.

So Fez is a game about a little pixel man named Gomez who has to put the world back after this evil cube thing comes to the world and turns a 2d world 3d.  Gomez needs to change the perspective of the world around to be able to platform up this new 3d world where we have now 4 persepctives instead of one, to gather golden cubes so that the evil cube can be restored and he can save his world.

Now I was impressed by the atmosphere of Fez, its very calming and happy.  Its got the bright happy colors you expect from games like Mario but without any of the challenges of battling enemies.  I am perfectly happy with this.  There are times where I really just want to go into a world and not have to dodge baddies, if anything really I prefer this in a platformer.  I'm pretty terrible at puzzles and platforming so its nice to not have to deal with enemies for once while I try to get through the game. 

Now what about the 3d world switching dynamic?   It works pretty damn well.  I enjoy being able to swtich up the world to get to the higher parts of the level.   So I guess in short I enjoyed the game for the low stress happy atmospher and the fun world shaking dynamic.   On that alone I would say that if your not bothered by droppind ten dollars on a game then its worth the purchase.

So why do I have mixed feelings if I just thought that on the merrits of the game that its worth buying?   Well it falls to the bull shit that Phil Fish the creator keeps on spouting.  He released a patch last summer for Fez that had a glitch that would delete less than one percent of all users save files.   According to Fish MS charges around 40k for any patch after the first one which is free and its too expensive to fix the game so he would leave the game unpatched. 

Mind you MS did make a statement that they were willing to work on the price of the patch so that they could fix the game.  Fish has not fixed the game as of yet.  Now that's just dickish on Fish.  MS has high prices on patches but that's to cover the costs of implementing the patch which apparently costs money and to encourage relatively bug free games on launch.  Fish signed a contract with MS and the price for patches was all up front.  He shouldn't try to make himself the victim because the cost of operating your business is high.  

Now I believe in developers giving us relatively functional products and to not bitch if they have to fix something because hey its your product it should work, I get that you cant find all the bugs but hey its the cost of doing business.   I work a retail job and there are times where I have to give into my customers so that I keep them happy even if it costs me money.  Thats just how it works Phil Fish get over it.  Phil you make good games so just do it and take this as a learning experience.

Getting Started

Okay so this is the first post on the new blog.  I'm a dumb ass and completely locked myself out of my old blog pwningindahood.net but that's cool because now we have a new start and I can always hyperlink to the old blog so its all good.  Anyway I'm going to try and be more diligent and write more shit down for posterity since I think I'm the only one who would be reading my blog anyway.