After mentioning the VVVVVV soundtrack in a recent post I thought I might carry on inflicting my musical tastes on an imaginary readership. So, in the first of a semi-regular feature on my favourite game video game soundtracks and general spamming of Bandcamp links, let’s kick off with… Bastion.
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Game music: Bastion
Sui Generis
Yesterday I mentioned that Sparki was the second Kickstart project I’d backed, and I thought it was worth pointing to the first. Sui Generis is, to quote the project page”an original open world RPG for the PC featuring dynamic story and physics based gameplay.” So what made it stand out from the crowd?
Kickstarter: Sparki
For only the second time I just backed a Kickstarter project, this time “Sparki – The Easy Robot For Everyone“. With luck it will manage to get the second half of its $60,000 goal by the end of May 2013.
So why Sparki?
The Letter V, Six Times
VVVVVV is at once utterly charming and controller-snappingly difficult. Retro graphics, exquisitely responsive controls, a single gameplay mechanic and a pitch-perfect chiptune soundtrack come together to form one of my favourite games of all time. Certainly, my 3DS has been used for little else. Let’s talk completion and speed.
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On the subject of Ironman…
A while ago on Reddit someone joked that they’d just written a 4,000 word essay without saving until they were done.
My hero. I can barely write this post without saving.
From save-scummer to Ironman
Let’s start with a confession, shall we? Ladies and gentlemen, I am a save-scummer. Yes, I will shamelessly abuse save mechanics to achieve goals, to ghost a level, to make the best kill, to keep that health bar full or – depressingly frequently – just to beat the #£%&ing level at all.
Stealth games are my biggest failing here. Love a good stealth-em-up, me. Thief, Commandos, Deus Ex, Hitman, the whole slippery, shadowy lot of them. Even Dishonoured when the voice acting manages to not induce crippling boredom.
The problem is, I’m really just a bit crap at them. Commandos was an exception there, but when you consider that the player had total situational awareness and combine that with the slow, careful pace it was often more a logic puzzle than a combat game. Other than that, call me Captain Ineptitude. Skulker McDeadthief. Agent Clompenboots.
Hence save-scumming, the ancient and noble art of mashing the reload button until you make it another five pieces down the corridor and saving again. Save-scummers. You will know us by the trails of faded F5 and F9 keys.
But perhaps there is hope…
Why I stopped playing BioShock Infinite
Let’s start by acknowledging that the latest entry in the series, BioShock Infinite, is a pretty game. Really pretty. Staggeringly pretty. The use of colour and depth, the tiny details and the sweeping vistas, it’s one of the best looking games to come along in a long while.
So why, with such great graphics, and what by all accounts is a story and an ending worthy of discussion and dissection, did I stop playing after only an hour, well before reaching the game’s main hook? Two reasons.
Some musings on Limbo
A friend bought me Limbo for Christmas and according to Steam I finished it in four hours. For significantly more than four hours the game has sat in the back of my mind, refusing to settle, and I’m finally able to articulate why.
And now for a slight change of tone…
When it comes to gameplay styles anyone who knows me will tell you I’ll take the stealth option (if necromancer isn’t available, obviously). Actually, anyone who really knows me will tell you that given the chance I’ll dismantle the game mechanics and play a naked 92 year-old unarmoured woman wielding game-breakingly powerful magic. While we’re on the subject of Elder Scrolls games, I got Skyrim yesterday, but since it won’t get through the tutorial without crashing I’m having to make do with other, less broken games until one of two things happens:
- Bethesda release a patch
- Diablo 3 comes out and all other games are rendered irrelevant
In the meantime I present Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole, a retro-style 2D stealth game that proves once and for all that stealthy doesn’t have to mean slow. In fact, given the seamless integration of online leaderboards driving even casual players to shave milliseconds off their level times, Stealth Bastard proves that stealth games can be downright fast.
Most levels will begin with you cautiously edging around figuring the route, discovering traps, learning the rhythms of robots (with lasers), turrets (with lasers), cameras (with lasers) and lasers (with, oh…). Once you’ve finished the level though, once you’ve seen the path, the level really begins. What started as hesitant, uncertain movement becomes a rapid dance of running, jumping and crawling through the shadows. Even the early levels lead to intense bursts of satisfaction as you watch your little pixellated infiltrator pull off a slick sequence of actions, making it look effortless. The first time you manage to catch that moving platform on the first pass rather than having to hang from a ledge, watching the timer tick by, waiting for the platform to come round again… no, stealth doesn’t have to be slow.
You’ll be zapped, lasered, chunked and squelched, dying over and over and over, but you’re thrown back in so quickly, resuming at intelligently-spaced checkpoints so death is rarely frustrating. That Stealth Bastard manages to remain a stealth game at all – this being a genre where players are willing to sit in the shadows for minutes on end, watching and waiting, choosing their moment – is an amazing feat.
Stealth Bastard is fun, charming, and free. Play it.