Ethan Carter is a, as another reviewer said, walking simulator. It's the type of game where you're thrown into an environment and tasked with figuring out what happened in it. There's no real gameplay to speak of, rather you're tasked with triggering cutscenes and voiceover, to progress the story along. If you like such a mechanic, you might like this game. But for me, I never enjoyed wandering aimlessly in a sprawling environment, where most of the environment is unimportant - wallpaper, and the story I'm discovering is set in stone. Nowhere in this game is there an attempt to get the player invested in the story. Investment is rather a happy accident. If the story was structured in a different manner, I might have been invested, or at least pulled along from discovery to discovery, but the story as it is is fairly vanilla. It's a story type I've seen done elsewhere before. You do get some beautiful empty repetitive scenery to trudge through, but seeing as all you do is walk, its beauty is unimportant. It doesn't help that it all looks fake. I guess lighting effects are to blame, but playing a game like this, you constantly know you're playing a game. It's the problem of 3D - the more it tries to be realistic, the easier it is to spot its flaws. Also, for a wander-around-aimlessly game, you're punished for wandering around aimlessly. You'll constantly encounter invisible walls, and the game only offering a checkpoint system seems to be done in order to save you from wandering aimlessly. Being able to save whenever would have been nice, but I guess it saves you from getting stuck. Regardless of it all, I have a hard time taking the game seriously when my character has that stereotypical gruff detective voice, and the ability to deduce out of thin air a-la Sherlock Holmes. But liking mysteries, I rarely enjoy when the supernatural is introduced into them. I prefer logic, and a supernatural element takes it away.
Sim games have always intrigued me, yet I never really got into them. Apart from running a zoo, running a theme park, and controlling the lives of a small family, their subject didn't interest me. I have no desire to build or maintain a city, fly a realistic looking airplane, or make trains run on time. I do however want to run a business. Working retail for most of my life, the divide between a worker and a business owner always intrigued me. It seemed like a big leap to go from one to the other, although it really isn't. But playing Capitalism Plus, I figured I'd get to experience it without having to, you know, go outside and actually try. Sadly, for what it is, Capitalism Plus is extremely low in options. You only get a few businesses you can run, and in all of them you fairly much build everything there is to build, and watch the money pour in. I never felt like I was building a proper business, but rather that I was given a template. I guess it's the difference between starting a business, and opening yet another store in a franchise. Success isn't very hard, and any action you make doesn't seem to have much effect on the course your business takes. Although I don't enjoy the over-involved over-complicated simulation games, I wanted a bit more. Success or failure seemed to be down to luck, and having a slump sometimes, it seemed like I could simply wait it out. Every department in your business is well defined, every employee knows what they are doing, and your business runs itself. You're not needed. It just isn't very fun.
Having grown up on point & click games, it's nice seeing the genre get a resurgence nowadays. But most point & click games being done by small studios nowadays, a lot seems to ride on the plot of the game. Sadly with The Shivah, being Jewish, I'm far too close to the material to enjoy it. I simply can't avoid seeing all its faults. The story is interesting, dealing with a jaded rabbi investigating the murder of a congregation member he drove away, but it isn't dealt with in the most subtle of ways. The rabbi being more interested in kicking ass and taking names, and the game using a mouse pointer that spells out "chai", the game veers off into Hebrew Hammer territory. It doesn't help that the rabbi doesn't really feel like a rabbi. As if his part was written by someone who never actually met a rabbi. I tried to overlook the cartoony depictions, but I was never invested in the story - the game is simply far too linear & short. Getting stuck in this game isn't really possible, seeing as there is only so much you can do in it. And although this game isn't bad enough to be considered an interactive movie, it's damn near close. The game does try to appear non-linear by giving the game multiple possible endings, but only one of those endings is good. You are given the illusion of choice in this game, but you get to choose between two bad options. I constantly wanted to add a third option - to go the route a normal human being would go. The main character is simply far too crazy for me to be invested in his story. It could be chalked up to him battling his demons, but I get the feeling he wasn't all there to begin with. So all I had to enjoy was the murder mystery, which makes a basic mistake - turning an obvious suspect into the culprit. Funnily enough when murder mysteries are concerned, being proven right isn't fun.
Having loved most of what the GTA series has to offer, & wanting more of the same, I was getting sick of waiting for new games to get released. Hence why I knowingly played a GTA clone. Problem is, Driver is a GTA clone that desperately clings to its racing roots, making the entire experience unsatisfying. The driving is arcade-style & very fun, but being a GTA clone, it's easy to total your car, & have to get out & find another. You can also drive like a madman through the streets, but being a GTA clone, the streets are filled with traffic, making the experience not as satisfying as it ought to be. And the maps are too small for pedal-to-the-metal driving, anyway. Weirdly enough, for a GTA clone that desperately clings to its racing roots, the racing aspect is fairly basic. You don't get a large selection of cars, & about half of them are forgettable. And trying to customize them, you can only do so much - mechanically & visually. And the GTA portion of the game is equally lacking. GTA games being known partly for their interesting plot, it's weird seeing Driver not even try. It seems you're a wheelman in the 70s, doing jobs for the criminal underground, because money. And being a GTA clone desperately clinging to its racing roots, every mission you'll get will have cars shoehorned in. Such as driving around to pick up packages someone drops from a helicopter. Missions go between extremely boring & extremely tedious. You can do side-missions, but they're repetitive & not very fun as well. Driver is simply no GTA. The map isn't big enough, the city isn't varied enough, & much of it is non-interactable. And the game being car-centric, there isn't an incentive to roam the city on foot. Add to that various bugs and gripes, & the countless crashes I encountered, & I abandoned this game having finished only 29 percent of it. It's a jack of all trades - a racer beaten by the worst Need For Speed has to offer, & a GTA clone that changes what made GTA great.
There aren't many indy games deemed must play, and Papers, Please seems to have reached that level. Sadly, I'm the obligatory naysayer - the one who doesn't get it. Not to say the game is bad - it has a decent enough base to expand upon, but as it is now, there's very little incentive to keep on playing. Playing as a border crossing officer, it's your job to decide who can pass and who can't. And living under an oppressive regime, you'll encounter countless people looking to cross simply to look for a better life elsewhere. Sadly, you're one of those oppressed people, and if you'll lose your job due to letting the wrong people through, you won't be able to support your family. It's an interesting mechanic, but the game is taken to too much of an extreme. So playing it, I had a hard time relating. It seems like no matter what you do, your family will start getting sick, inflating your bills. Don't pay your bills, and you'll be thrown to jail. It's just simply a cartoon version of an oppressive regime, rather than the real deal. The simple graphics don't help, either. Deciding on who to let through, you need to check their details very carefully. Sometimes the only problem with a person's papers are that their listed gender is the wrong one. Looking at them, you wouldn't really know. It makes Papers, Please into a game where you'll lose countless times. It's impossible getting past the first few stages of the game without failing over and over again. I don't mind learning from my mistakes and starting over, but sadly, starting over you'll encounter the same people and the same problems, making the game more a game of memorization. At least in the first few stages. Had there been some randomization, I think this game would have worked out much better. As is, I find it hard to play the same sections for the umpteenth time, just to get to a part I didn't get to see yet.
Having played the shareware version of this game as a kid, buying it for me was compulsory. I simply needed to know what the entire game felt like. And having played it, I'm glad to say that Hocus Pocus aged well. Largely due to its colorful cartoony graphics, I imagine. Sadly, Hocus Pocus remained what it once was - a mediocre-at-best platformer with wafer-thin plot. It seems back then that all you needed was a decent mechanic, passable level design and nice graphics and you had a game. And Hocus Pocus is simply that. It doesn't excel in any way, and although it is still fun nowadays, play one level, and you played them all. The level design seems to drive the story, rather than the other way around, meaning the entire game feels like a hodge-podge of ideas. It isn't bad, but the game not taking any chances in its level design - repeating levels, I have a hard time remembering any of it. And playing the entire game once, I have no desire to play it again. Hocus Pocus just feels like a hesitant first step. Like a game waiting for a sequel to actually show us what it can do. So although playing it now you will have fun, albeit mindless fun, I can't recommend it. Since its release dozens of better games were released for countless systems, and this one simply doesn't stand out. If it weren't for my nostalgia, I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much as I did.
Return to Mysterious Island is pretty much the definition of a budget adventure game-graphics are poor, menu options are non-existent, animation is rare, & you spend your hours moving in a slideshow, searching for hotspots. In fact, graphics are so poor, you rarely know what's interactable, forcing you to comb the screen. Some things look like you need to collect them, but are scenery, & certain seemingly reachable areas are blocked off by invisible walls. As far as path selection goes, the game is incredibly linear, but the bad graphics means you'll backtrack a lot having missed something. A decent plot could have saved me some aggravation, but there isn't any. This game is a mindless collect-a-thon. Granted, you can solve puzzles for the fun of it, but the puzzles are fairly straightforward, not offering much reward. You do become better at the game as you progress, but it isn't any less frustrating. Trying to solve a simple puzzle, I had to solve it exactly the way the game's creators intended me to. Granted, this game has a crafting system that allows you to use several items for the same purpose, making the game less difficult, but not less rigid. Finding a shallow pool with a fish in it, it looked like my character could grab it by hand. But instead I needed to create a rod & bait it. And having collected about 20 items I could use to catch that fish, I'm still missing the one item I need to create my fishing rod. It seems that this game being a slideshow, the character can't even try alternative solutions to the puzzles, or even comment on them. It's the game's way or the highway. Getting so frustrated, I ended up trying everything on everything else, to try to advance. After all, the puzzles may be simple, but their solution lacks common sense. E.g., seeing a broken staircase, instead of climbing, you need to fashion bricks & rebuild the stairs. It's a shame, since the inventory is fairly well designed, with separate areas for items & semi-crafted items.
Only getting into pinball as an adult and not having much experience with it, I can't fully review this title. But I hope my two cents will help. First of all, the resolution. As other reviewers said, it isn't that great. Does a pinball game need amazing resolution to be enjoyable? In my eyes, not really. The problem is that when you look at the table from a top-down perspective, the table seems blurry - each area isn't well-defined, making it unplayable. In other angles it isn't perfect either, but still playable. Also, much to my chagrin, there are only 4 viewing angles, and only 1 I could play at. Maybe I'm spoiled, but I much prefer setting the angle myself. Also, the physics seem a bit broken at times. Several times when a ball traveled so slowly it seemed like it ought to fall, it got a second burst of energy, as if pushed by an invisible hand, and started flying across the table. As far as the table goes, it's fairly generic. I couldn't distinguish it from dozens of others. It doesn't help that the table has the most generic, boring & repetitive music available, which only masks the sounds of the board. Luckily you can turn it off. Also, the table is a bit too colorful for me - so many colors make it hard for me to focus, or actually look at the table. Also Timeshock seems to be one of those tables that hands out points fairly easily, a thing I dislike about pinball. I much prefer points to showcase skill, instead of have a game hand me an extra million points just because. The only other problem I have is the limited field of vision - meaning you only see the play area, and not the display area. Granted, it isn't that important, and it was probably left out to allow for as much table detail as possible, but I can't help but miss it. Playing pinball on a computer, I don't want to know I'm not playing the real thing. But it seems no matter which angle I chose, I never got a view of even the entire playing field, let alone the entire cabinet.
Playing Anodyne, I couldn't help but feel like it's more a proof of concept than a game. A game with stand-ins, until a plot is decided upon, & the game gets a complete overhaul. Because although the mechanics at the base of this game are good enough, playing it leads to a hodgepodge experience. Nowhere in the game do you get a reason to keep on playing. And the more you play, the more difficult it becomes, & the more it requires backtracking. Which makes it hard to continue, considering the game's bad controls, generic enemies & the empty & somewhat linear world you're forced to explore. Some areas in this game are beautiful, & some enemies are interesting, but they're greatly outweighed by repetitive levels where the only thing unique about them is that they contain yet another dungeon. Enemies range from inconsequential to extremely annoying, but most of them you can simply avoid. In fact, it is better to avoid them, since the more annoying ones will push you into pits, causing many cheap deaths. You'd do much better by running through levels & avoiding conflict, rather than slowly exploring. But cheap deaths can't be avoided completely, due to this game's bad controls. It seems the interaction & attack buttons are the same, meaning that trying to attack an enemy, you'll sometimes find yourself doing anything but. Luckily your character has lots of health, & save points are scattered throughout the levels, but it doesn't make the experience any more fun. It simply avoids making the game unplayable. The creators do try to make the experience better, by adding humor throughout the game, but most of the time it's cringeworthy. All in all, Anodyne reminds me a lot of Evoland - a game that's more an homage to games of its ilk, rather than a game. Anodyne apes Zelda so much, you can't avoid thinking about it. Especially since Link makes a cameo during the game. Frankly, I'd much rather see Anodyne stand on its own two feet.
