Playing A Game Underhero PC

Underhero has a pretty neat premise: you're trying to save the world, but you work for The Bad Guy. The Good Guy died, so you loot his magical equipment, and go on a sabotage mission within the Bad Guy organization.

Unfortunately Underhero's storytelling isn't creative enough to live up to that premise. The game brings a light sense of humor to this role-reversal setup, but at least within the span of the demo, it didn't sell me on the characters, the world, or how the plot might turn out.

Its storytelling techniques are... well, they're blatantly inspired by Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi games. The protagonist is mute, while real exposition is delivered by an annoying companion, to whom the protagonist reacts with pop-up exclamation points, wild hand-waving emotes, spontaneously falling down, et cetera.

The game is presented as a side-scrolling platformer, with some dubious ground rules - literally, it's inconsistent on whether stair-like platforms have horizontal collision - and the level available in the demo felt bland and remedial. Like the Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! game, boring level design feels doubly boring when you ask the player to backtrack through it.

Combat segments are where the game could shine, except the rules feel poorly thought out. It bears some similarity to, uh, the Mario & Luigi gimmick of using timing to dodge or parry enemy attacks. Including the aspect that enemy "tells" are totally unpredictable until you've seen them at least once, which I hate.

Underhero's combat isn't turn-based, it's real-time: both you and your enemy have to manage your actions with a stamina meter. Both attacking and defending will drain the meter, so if you attack too aggressively, you'll be unable to defend effectively. There are some cool quirks to this system, like well-timed dodges restoring some stamina, and well-timed parries temporarily incapacatating the enemy; but...

Fundamentally, this system's problem is that to get more stamina, you need to wait -- wait for an enemy attack to dodge, or if the enemy isn't attacking, wait for the meter to build up on its own. If you're trying to budget your stamina, you'll have to sit and wait for the right opportunities. And if you don't budget correctly, using too much stamina, you'll have to sit and wait while eating enemy attacks.

In aggregate, waiting occupies a too-significant portion of any given fight. I would rather just take turns.

Did I mention that the level-up screen is practically identical to Super Mario RPG's? Or that the audio sounds like it was composed on a Sega Genesis? Or that the main menu looks uncomfortably like the Unity engine's default UI tools?

Overall, Underhero feels like an enthusiastic, but under-cooked tribute to the developer's favorite games. It's a respectable effort, but doesn't execute as well as its inspirations, and its unique features aren't strong enough to distract from that.

Progress: Finished the demo.

Given it's been over a decade since I played Zone of the Enders, I was surprised at how distinctly the demo of Zone of The Enders: The 2nd Runner Mars reminded me of the original.

At first, I'd mistakenly believed that this sequel was brand new -- but, no, it's a remaster of a PS2 game from 2003. And through that lens, the game's apparent shortcomings make a lot more sense.

To be fair: the remaster looks great, with crisp models and silky-smooth effects. And, admirably, the control scheme still holds up fairly well.

But in the limited demo for 2nd Runner, I could already tell that it re-checks all the bad boxes I wrote about the original:

  • "Camera movement is basically impossible?" Check.
  • "Pretty much [only] two enemies?" Check.
  • "Lengthy dialog sessions" with "insipid banter?" Check.
  • "Terrible" voice acting? Check.

Even within the span of the demo, I was already waiting for it to end.

Progress: Finished the demo.

No, The Frozen Wilds didn't wrap up Horizon's cliffhanger ending. I guess they're saving that for a sequel.

Overall, Frozen Wilds is more of the same Horizon stuff, but smaller: a main story, some side quests, some collectibles, and a few new weapons and enemies.

A side quest in The Frozen Wilds unlocks modification sockets for the spear weapon. You can find and collect spear mods during the main game - and I found several - but there's no way to use them until doing this quest. Huh.

The main quest line is relatively short, and the story focuses a little more on its characters' personal growth than the main game's story did. Otherwise, it feels a lot like a subset of Horizon's story: the plot is basically the same, the technological details are the same, and the themes are extremely similar. It's a bit disappointing that, narratively speaking, this expansion adds so little to the game.

It doesn't add much to the gameplay, either. Except frustration with the new enemies. Particularly the Scorcher, a wolf-styled machine that can leap across the whole damn map and can attack like a billion times a second.

In the main game, I hated when evading multiple attackers gave me precious little time to counterattack. But with the new enemy types in The Frozen Wilds, solo attackers have the same effect; it feels close to impossible to fight back. And unlike most of Horizon's high-threat machines, which have big glowy components that can be removed or destroyed to make them substantially less dangerous -- the fucking fire wolves never stop with their pouncing and slashing and flamethrowing.

In a broader sense, those fuckers - and to a lesser extent, also the new bear-type machines - feel like a misstep in Horizon's combat design. Most of the main game's enemies set a pretty good precedent for teaching me what weapons to use, and what components to target; I became better at fighting them by developing those techniques. The wolves are less vulnerable and less complex; all I learned from fighting them was how to roll away.

But I digress. I didn't have to fight very many of those fucking fire wolves, so I can't begrudge The Frozen Wilds too much for having them.

What I will begrudge it, a little, is not pushing the envelope more -- especially with its storytelling. The Firebreak backstory was entertaining, but didn't reveal anything about the "metal world" that I didn't already know from the main game.

The Frozen Wilds is worthwhile, but I don't think it quite meets the quality bar set by the main game.

Better than: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned
Not as good as: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
While most of Horizon's backstory is well-researched and believable: the idea that real scientists would do a node-rotating puzzle for security clearance is pretty silly.

Rating: Good

It's kind of a shame that Horizon Zero Dawn came out at, like, the same time as Breath of the Wild. It's impossible to avoid comparing the two. (In fairness, Horizon did beat Zelda to store shelves by ... uh, a week.)

So here's the short version: Horizon has a much better main story, but its combat is a bit sloppier, and its open world isn't as strong overall. On its own, though, it's still a fantastic adventure and a fun sandbox to play around in.

The jewel of Horizon is its main story, which -- actually, is somewhat awkward and boring for the first few hours. Its opening scenes consist largely of a character monologuing his situation out loud, to no one in particular. And after the introductory tutorial, the plot stays pretty mundane, limited to the hemmings and hawings of a primitive tribe of hunters; up until a shocking twist several hours in.

After that, though - when the backstory starts to reveal itself - Horizon's main quest line turns into an enthralling sci-fi epic. Aloy's adventure is both an engaging Hero's Journey, and an intriguing mystery, as she gradually uncovers the dramatic secrets of the ancient "metal world." The pacing of these main quests, the personalities of the characters along the way, the emotive voice acting, well-written dialog, expressive animations, fascinating text and voice collectibles... all of these contribute to an overall excellently-crafted story.

One painful hiccup in Horizon's technique is the lip sync animations. The animations themselves are quite realistic and convincing, except, they often don't match the characters' spoken words; either moving too slowly for the audio, or mouthing what are, clearly, very different words than what's being said. (I guess the lip-sync data just got desynchronized from the final recordings.) But it's easy enough to listen, read the subtitles, and avoid being distracted by this.

Unfortunately, the optional side quests don't fare as well; the majority of them feel like more of the same from the intro. That is, throwaway characters and mundane events. Horizon's side quests feel a little like filler material as Aloy travels between major plot beats.

And the mechanics used in most quests are ... well, they work fine, but they don't feel very unique. You've got your "go to this object and press a button" mechanic, your "talk to this character" mechanic, naturally a "kill this group of things" mechanic; and there's a Focus-vision for finding clues and following trails, a'la Detective Mode or Witcher Vision, but its uses are pretty dull and uninspired.

Interestingly, dialog scenes occasionally have choices, but not for anything important. Any moments that would actually change the outcome of an event are fully scripted. A little like Golden Sun, these choices supposedly allow you to inject your personality into the story, but it's fairly transparent that these decisions are totally inconsequential.

Really, Horizon's story didn't need these at all. This is no Witcher or Mass Effect; Horizon has one scripted sequence of events to show off, and that sequence is damn good just as it is.

(Standing in stark contrast to Breath of the Wild's rote and barely-there backstory.)

Meanwhile, there are some dialog events that play out differently depending upon Aloy's actions so far -- that is, if you've done a relevant quest before talking to a character in another quest, that previous experience might come up in the conversation. Like the choices, this doesn't affect any outcomes, but it's a very nice immersive touch that makes Aloy's journey feel meaningful.

So, the main story is pretty great. But Horizon is also a game about high-octane robot-fighting action, open-world traversal, RPG progression, item collection and crafting... and in these areas, it does mostly well.

Combat is a lot of fun! when it works, which is most of the time; and until it becomes tedious, which it sometimes does. At a high level, combat manifests as a third-person shooter with Aloy's bow, and aiming at weak points unique to each enemy type, sometimes twisted by elemental vulnerabilities. There are some cool strategic elements at play here, especially the ability to directly target an enemy's weapons or other components to remove them.

The problem with Horizon's shooting is that, even in slow-motion bullet-time, it's irritatingly easy and common for the enemy to jerk suddenly and evade your arrow. This doesn't happen most of the time, but often enough that especially-small weak points just don't seem worth trying to target.

But what can really make the combat frustrating is a combination of stunted mobility, and unintentional "adds." Aloy has a dodge roll - great! - but all-too-often gets stuck in the terrain as she's trying to evade an attack. Many terrains just aren't well-suited for evasive maneuvers. And yet, trying to run away to more open ground only increases the likelihood of more asshole robots joining the fight.

Generally, even the hugest, most gun-bristling machines are pretty simple to fight one-on-one. But when you throw in a second, Aloy hardly has any time to draw her bow between evading each enemy's attacks. First one attacks, then the other; there's little room to breathe inbetween. So when a second, third, fourth, or fifth enemy joins a fight - especially when they jump at Aloy from behind, with little warning - it can get a lot more "exciting" than you'd counted on.

Zelda could have this problem too, but it feels worse in Horizon. A few too many fights felt physically exhausting to me.

Aside from fighting shit, the other big draw of Horizon's open world is just exploring it. And it does present some interestingly-varied biomes: snowy mountains, dusty deserts, and dense jungles; but aside from the big city of Meridian, there aren't many particularly memorable regions or landmarks, and few geography-specific events. It's immersive and fun to play around in, but doesn't really measure up to the awe-inspiring vistas of Breath of the Wild, or the character-rich set pieces in Skyrim.

Horizon's other supporting features are kinda mediocre. It's got cliff-climbing parkour, but the movement just doesn't work as well as an Uncharted, or even a Tomb Raider. A few too many transitions can miss completely, planting Aloy's feet on a glitchy edge that inevitably falls to her death.

And the inventory system is a train-wreck, with no good way of sorting "useless" and "important" items. My pack is full of resources that I'll probably never need, but they claim to be used in some crafting recipes, so who knows if I'll want them in the future? I could sell them for money (Scraps), but the only use I even have for that is to buy treasure boxes with random loot, usually even more stuff that I don't need or want.

Don't get me started on weapon upgrades, which, due to that randomness, feel less like a progression mechanic and more like gambling.

But! But. Horizon's lows can't compare to its highs, not just the usually-fun combat and generally-enjoyable world, but especially its incredibly interesting story. Uncovering this world's mysterious past is a real treat every step of the way. Just, maybe, skip the side-quests along that way.

I'm really looking forward to a sequel that copies Zelda's versatile climbing, adds some kind of lock-on targeting, and throws out this garbage-fire of an inventory system.

Better than: Middle-earth: Shadow of War
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (... but the story is better), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The ending is a bit of a cliffhanger: but I'm hoping that The Frozen Wilds helps wrap that up.

Rating: Awesome
Playing A Game Brainfuck PC

As a programming-puzzle game featuring an obtuse language, Brainfuck is right up my alley. I bought this without a second thought.

So it was an extra-huge disappointment when I gave up on it and requested a refund.

I spent about 20 minutes in the game, and most of that was taking screenshots to demonstrate bugs I encountered. They were all pretty heinous, but most importantly: none of the puzzle UI worked, meaning the game was totally unplayable.

I just expect games about programming to be, uh, well-programmed. Zachtronics really has spoiled me, hasn't it?

Playing A Game Chasm PC

More than five years later, Chasm finally got released. It's technologically solid, and has a nice, clean art style. That concludes the nice things I can say about it.

Chasm just isn't fun.

Combat, for starters, is somehow simple yet clunky. Attacks are slow and can't be canceled - not by jumping, not by an evasive backward-dash - so most of the damage I suffered was well-telegraphed, but practically unavoidable. Chasm abides by an antiquated combat design in which you must jump, then attack to preserve mobility -- not just silly and cumbersome, but impossible in some cramped corridors or over rough terrain.

Chasm has some elements of RPG progression, but doesn't execute them very well. As you delve into the mine, you'll earn experience points from killing enemies, collect coin for purchasing upgrades, and gradually rescue townsfolk who can craft said upgrades. But leveling up is slow, and grindy; collecting enough money for upgrades also feels grindy; and critically, good upgrades seem to be locked behind finding and rescuing the Blacksmith. Until then, the only way to get better weapons or armor is random chance from enemy drops (which, again... feels grindy).

Some rescued townsfolk also prod along the game's underwhelming attempt at a story. The light prologue, some collectible journal pages, and scant dialog all hint toward a backstory that's ... not very interesting. Some legend about an old king and an apocalypse cult, and then -- oh, you awakened an ancient evil in the mines? You don't say.

The game's world feels overall uncreative and empty. The mine's levels are blatantly inspired by Diablo, not only in how they change themes as you descend, but also in how they're procedurally assembled. But while Diablo's randomly-arranged rooms showed "character" through the enemies you fought there, Chasm's enemies aren't that engaging, nor is anything else happening in its bland, interchangeable levels.

(There are a few environmental puzzles, but nothing comparable to, say, a Zelda block-pushing puzzle.)

Chasm wears its Diablo and Castlevania inspirations on its sleeve, but fails both to replicate the highlights of its predecessors, and to introduce any unique strengths of its own. It's admirable, for a Kickstarted game, at being technically playable; but I couldn't give a good answer for why you would play it.

Better than: Bear Simulator
Not as good as: Torchlight, or maybe even SteamWorld Dig
Arguably on-par with: Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn

Progress: Gave up in the catacombs.

Rating: Bad
Playing A Game Prey (2017) PC

Prey is a great free-roam action-RPG, in the vein of Deus Ex. It's a great story-driven adventure, a'la BioShock. And it's a great pulse-pounding survival-action game, like Resident Evil 4. I loved it, and will never forget my experience on Talos I. But how those aspects sometimes conflict with one another wasn't so great.

The game's atmosphere is incredibly tense and foreboding: enemies look and behave legitimately frightening; the disaster-struck level design looks thoroughly unsafe; and the music, man, the music is anxiety incarnate. Speaking as someone who doesn't care for horror games, I can still appreciate and respect how evocative Prey is in this way. But...

As I crawled slowly down corridors and hid from Phantoms, avoiding traps and trying to conserve my ammo -- my desires to explore, and to progress the story, felt slowed down by this anxiety. In the early and mid-game, the tense atmosphere (and high enemy difficulty) suffocated both the sense of freedom and the storytelling. ... And then, later on - when I revisited the same areas, with way more health and combat upgrades - that sense of tension all but disappeared. As excellent as the "tense" parts of the game were, I feel like Prey would have been better served by using them less often.

The jump-scaring "mimics" are an excellent example of a great mechanic that felt detrimental to the overall game. Aside from a handful of scripted moments, they were legitimately and expertly hidden among a room's objects, and being surprised by one meant - in addition to jumping up in my chair - taking a big chunk of damage.

So of course, I equipped the Psychoscope upgrade that allowed me to see disguised mimics, and kept my 'scope on ... all the time. That solved my scared-and-dead problem, but sacrified some audio clarity and visual quality, like Batman's Detective Mode or Witcher Vision. I was pretty disappointed that there was never a passive upgrade for detecting mimics.

Maybe I'm just a scaredy-cat; but that wasn't the only way that I felt Prey was conflicted. Another big one was narrative choice, and my "fear of missing out."

The quality of Prey's narrative content was consistently excellent, not just in the main story and side missions, but even in the text and audio logs that filled in background details and characterization. This story wasn't great in the same way as The Witcher's -- but more like Metroid Prime, in that I was collecting clues and hints to gradually uncover the plot's mystery. And that's where Prey's strength as a story-driven adventure ran headlong into its strength as an RPG.

Occasionally, the game would present me with a choice - like saving or killing a person, using a key item or destroying it - that just deprived me of some amount of that backstory. And what was worse was when I wasn't "presented" with a choice at all; Prey has a few instances of surprise choice. Following one mission might prevent another one from showing up. Upgrading your Typhon powers will - surprise! - make the anti-Typhon defenses start to target you. Even something as simple as walking into a room at a certain time might set story-changing events into motion.

This kind of stuff made me really paranoid about missing story content, and being unable to solve the game's central mysteries. Hell -- one optional mission, starting near the beginning of the game, can lead to an early, alternate ending, that spoils the "real" ending. Like some kind of narrative trap, ruining the story if you happened to choose wrong.

Tangentially, I avoided many of these traps by searching online. (I also searched for the locations of some key items, like the fabrication plan for medkits, because that seemed important.) And I wouldn't necessarily recommend that; online resources for Prey are very spoilery.

Another, simpler design conflict in Prey was how painful backtracking tended to be. As a non-linear Metroidvania-style game, and as an RPG with plenty of optional missions and pickups, Prey involved a lot of return visits to areas I'd explored before. And as an action-adventure game, Prey felt the need to continually re-populate (most of) the enemies in those areas. With no fast travel, every trip from A to B and back again included some repetitive encounters, and felt like a waste of my precious ammo.

This made some of Prey's Deus Ex-ey obstacles more frustrating than fun. As I explored more of Prey's map, I'd find a door blocked by items too heavy for me to lift; a computer with too high a security level to hack; a broken machine that I wasn't skilled enough to repair. And though I was later able to get upgrades for unlocking these, the backtracking I would have to do to find them again didn't feel worthwhile -- especially for things that weren't related to a mission, and therefore weren't trackable on the map.

What's disappointing, and fascinating, about Prey is that these irritations aren't born of small missteps or mistakes; in fact, they only stand out because each individual aspect of the game is so incredibly well-executed. This makes Prey ultimately feel like less than the sum of its parts.

Nevertheless, I fell in love with those parts. The character- and equipment-upgrading loop, the tight action gameplay, the excellently-realized sci-fi setting, the mysteries uncovered by snooping in computers and audio logs, and the intriguing storyline (with an even more intriguing ending!); all of these aspects of Prey kept me riveted, and drove me to drop hour after hour into it.

As much as I wish it was better, Prey is impressively great already. My criticisms don't change the fact that it's a masterful blast of a game.

Better than: BioShock Infinite, Dishonored, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the non-story aspects of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
But: an emphatic no, thank you to the rogue-like Mooncrash DLC.

Rating: Awesome

Back when I replayed Guerrilla's "Steam Edition," I said that "I don't need a new open-world destruction game, at least not yet. This one is still good."

Well, three years on, it's still good. But my desire for a successor is growing.

Driving trucks through buildings, solving destruction puzzles a'la Blast Corps, and whacking Mars-nazis with a hammer like you're at the driving range; all of this remains super-duper fun. Meanwhile, the lifeless B-grade plot, the terribly sparse Badlands map, and bugs (like progression loss, or crashing during the final mission!); these feel more prominent and detrimental than they used to.

At its high points, like slinging rockets at EDF jets or mowing down soldiers with a mech walker, there's still nothing else quite like RF:G. And I hope that doesn't remain true -- since its low points are feeling more and more antiquated.

Kudos to this game's re-Mars-terers; here's hoping for the next one. (I'm legit stoked for any Saints Row remaster.) And beyond that, I hope that THQ Nordic someday sees fit to top Guerrilla with a new, not-a-corridor-shooter Red Faction installment.

Better than: Agents of Mayhem, I would argue.
Not as good as: it felt 8-9 years ago.
Sometime soon: I'll have to check out how The Saboteur has held up.

Progress: 20 missions and 43 guerrilla actions completed.

Rating: Good
Playing A Game Prey (2017) PC

I knew, going into Prey, to expect some BioShock-like immersive storytelling. And it's delivering on that front, with a really intriguing plot that I'm anxious to unravel by reading notes and chasing down mysteries.

What I didn't expect was how much gameplay feels borrowed from Deus Ex. And I love it. The best parts of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided were when my character choices led to options and openness in a mission - investing in strength opens a barricaded door, investing in hacking reveals a locked room's passcode - and Prey looks like a whole game's worth of that.

Prey absolutely nails its aesthetic and theme, too, using both weathered and fresh in-game narrative techniques to make its sci-fi setting feel seamless. From notes scribbled on whiteboards and "science-y" weapons like the Gloo Cannon, to the mechanical foundations of the intro/tutorial sequence, every aspect of the game feels both natural within the world, and exciting to see and play with. It's a real triumph of first-person world-building.

From what I've seen so far, anyway. I'm making slow progress because of how meticulous I'm being in exploring Talos I, and collecting all the scrap material I can find.

Also, I'm terrified of the phantoms. Huge kudos to the visual and audio design that makes Prey's enemies so surprisingly intimidating. This is a feeling I've not felt since RE4's chainsaw man.

Progress: Skulking around in the Machine Shop.

Rating: Awesome

Red Faction: Guerrilla and I are well-acquainted; nothing in its Re-Mars-tered edition will be a surprise to me. Nevertheless, three minutes of Dunkey was enough to make me yearn once more for the joy of demolition and some screwball physics.

Guerrilla is getting on in years, though, and it shows. This Re-Mars-tering helps the game look modern - it really does! - and even the controls and mechanical depth feel contemporary enough. But the muted color palette and dull level design, not to mention a 90s B-movie plot, become more immersion-breaking with each passing year.

Then again, I haven't even gotten the Rocket Launcher yet. That should distract me from the red-brown desert.

Nine years later, it's funny to me that some of RFG's most distinctive features still haven't been copied into more games. Not just Geo-Mod destructibility -- but its discoverable, dynamic-feeling "Guerrilla Missions," and how civilians react to high morale by joining your fight. These are things that would feel right at home in Ubisoft Game.

Between "Deathinitive," "Warmastered," and now "Re-Mars-tered" editions of THQ's old games, THQ Nordic has established a clear pattern. I really hope it leads to a "Resanctified" version of Saints Row 2 or maybe a "Waterfront Genkification" edition of The Third. (And I hope Volition comes up with better puns than mine.)

Progress: Just got to Dust.

Rating: Good