Batman: Arkham City Review

PROS

• It's Batman
• Diverse Gadgets
• Good Stealth Gameplay
• Smooth Gameplay
• Includes Many Batman Villians
• Conspiracies
• Good Level Up System

CONS

• Not The Smartest AI
• Side Quests With No Motivation To Do Them
• Boring Boss Fights
• Sandbox Doesn't Have Much Of A Point
• Story Lacks Drive

Recommended For:

Anyone who's played Arkham Asylum, people who like melee combat, Batman fans.

Not Recommended For:

People who don't like stealth gameplay forced upon them, people who don't like open world games.  If you haven't played Arkham Asylum yet, I also recommend you play it first.

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Batman Arkham City is the sequel to the famous and loved Arkham Asylum, but you already knew that didn’t you?  I’m going to start this review off by saying I didn’t beat Arkham Asylum, I played it for a few hours and….well never got around to playing more.  Now that that’s out of the way, the game’s main plot is that instead of there being an Asylum, a nice chunk of the Gotham Slums was bordered off and all criminals are essentially left to do whatever they wish inside, thus, Arkham City.  The game starts off by Bruce getting taken by the police, and then thrown into Arkham City, he hears about this thing called “Protocol 10” and like a good superhero decides to go and investigate instead of simply leaving.  At the beginning of the game you play as Bruce without the batsuit, but one thing that stuck out to me was that seeing him without the suit and still jumping 2 meters high and dashing around like a track star didn’t seem to fit with a human character, it seemed too super human.  I know he’s batman, but I think they should have toned it down and tried to portray him as a human a little bit better.

If you played Asylum then you’ll be pleased to know that the core gameplay hasn’t changed much, except that it’s a sandbox of course.  It has all the stealth elements such as swinging from gargoyles, ground vents, areal attacks and the lot of it.  Except the AI seems rather stupid, while it does make stealth easier, I think it would have made it an overall better experience if they could have made the AI smarter.  Although I do give the game credit, that in the last hour of the main story the AI does get the idea of shooting down the gargoyles that Batman sits on…but only in the last hour, and I don’t really see why they would decided to make the AI smarter in the end of the game instead of giving them all the same…common sense.

Now the translations of a non-sandbox game to a sandbox game always requires some gameplay changes, and while they clearly did a good job of it, I don’t think the overall structure of the game works as well as it did in Asylum.  Asylum’s linearity actually helped the game in my opinion, and the sandbox in Arkham City almost seems like an unnecessary addition.  Yes traveling around the city with the bat-claw and zipline is fun for a while, but after a little bit it just seems like the developers tried to make the game appear more vast, without the actual need to do so.  I think it may have actually been better if they made it more linear.  In the main story you only deal with a handful of villains, and the rest are a part of side quests. 

Making the majority of villains optional ultimately limits the overall story of the game.  If the game had you deal with more villains in the main story, there would have been a lot more places for the development team to implement more unique gameplay elements.  While Joker is great, he seems to really overstay his welcome by the end of the game.  Also, once I beat the game, I really didn’t have any reason to complete the side quests anyway.  Collecting all the Riddler puzzles seemed like a pointless hassle, and ultimately I don’t see the appeal of the other small side quests.  Implementing the majority of villains into the main story would have really expanded the game as a whole since there would be many more directions for the plot to go.

Speaking of plot, it didn’t really drive me all that much, since I didn’t have any motivation in the first place.  I think that a lot of it had to do with batman’s ideals, but those aren’t my ideals so ultimately I end up getting bored half-way through the game.  While the side quests do offer something else to do, it would have been better if they were used to make the main story more diverse.  Now I think they did try to add more gameplay with the addition of Cat Woman, except I got the game from Gamefly so I wasn’t able to play as her.  While I understand giving additional content to people who buy the game new, having a specific part of the game locked which includes its own gameplay and story really isn’t excusable in my book.  Ultimately that limits the game experience as a whole which doesn’t seem like an incentive for buying new, but more like a punishment for those who rent it, which really is a problem in the industry.

The game does have a nice assortment of boss fights, but they seem too simple.  At the beginning of the boss fight you usually get an obvious clue as to what device to use, and generally you just have to use that device over and over again until their health bar goes down, so I think they could’ve tried to make more “multi-stage” boss fights, and also let the player figure out what to do.  There was one boss fight which I actually found rather entertaining, you could ultimately use any way you want to try and take him down, while each attack made his health go down, it also made him realize what you were doing, so you couldn’t use the same tactic twice on him, I wish all the boss fights were like that, because it gave the player a sense of control and strategy.

Now I’m not saying Arkham City is bad, it’s actually a rather good game, it’s just it wasn’t executed as well as it could’ve been, and I believe turning the game into a sandbox actually limited the game in the long run.  The game has great gameplay overall, some interesting characters and with the leveling up and new gadgets you get throughout the story, it introduces new gameplay mechanics along the way so it’s still a fun experience, just not as fun as it could be.  It seems like they ultimately wanted to try and expand the batman universe within this game, and they actually did a rather good job of it, but it doesn’t appeal and doesn’t give enough incentive to people who aren’t specifically Batman fans, like myself.

SPAZ - Review

PROS

• Backgrounds that look better than space itself
• Tons of customization
• Zombies
• Procedurally Generated Galaxies
• Tons of missions
• Infinite replay value
• Continued support from developers

CONS

• Combat can become repetitive
• Mining can be an annoyance
• Lengthy distances between some story missions

Not Recommended For:

 Gamers who dislike a challenge and gamers with little free time.

 Recommended For:

 Everyone Else.

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SPAZ, or Space Pirates and Zombies is a game in space, the end.

What, you actually wanted a review, is space not good enough for you?  Well then you either need to play Portal 2 or you have expectations which are way too high, but fine, whatever you say.

Space Pirates and Zombies is a game about Space, Pirates, and Zombies.  In game you control a single ship within an expanding fleet, while having the overlord-ish ability to hop between them at anytime, as well as to pause the game and issue orders.  While the game mostly has a fast paced, action feel to it, it has a very nice underlying strategy system.  One thing I love is that the tactics are optional, while if you don’t use them you won’t do as well within game and will die more, you don’t need to understand what everything does, since the AI tends to handle itself fine on its own.

Tactics Screen

The game is basically a hybrid between mission based and open world exploration.  You can freely fly between systems, but then you need to choose which mission/station/planet to warp to.  When you aren’t in one of those places, you are at your mother ship, which serves at a mobile base between systems.  While the game does have an overarching story, you tend to forget what it is after playing for a few hours, since while you do have goals pertaining to it, there isn’t really anything story related outside of it, since the game gives you so much freedom you just tend to do missions while doing your story ones along the way.  But basically, you and a group of people created a giant ship, with the hopes of traveling into the depths of your universe to become rich bastards.

The open universe is nice, there are tons of random missions which can help you progress with either experience, Rez (The games currently), or with new blue prints.  I really like how the game goes about giving you new ships, you can’t simply go to the nearest station and buy them, you have to kill a certain number of that ship and reverse engineer it, which makes getting bigger ships a challenge, since the bigger, the stronger.  As far as ship customization goes, it is diverse and works well.  Each ship has a certain amount of turret slots, device slots, missile slots, bomb slots, etc. and you can choose what to put in each one, and as you level up you can put on even better items.  While there aren’t too many different turret/main weapons, each weapon is different so that not having too many differences isn’t that big of an issue.  Each ship also has a build cost, which is how much it costs to rebuild once destroyed, if you aren’t a player who enjoys mining for 30 minutes every hour or two, then you need to be careful not to make the most expensive ships in the galaxy!

Each galaxy in game is procedurally generated, which means each time you play; it will be an entirely different world to explore.  The developers did a good job of bringing these galaxies and systems alive; each game has two warring factions, the military and the civilians.  You need to choose which one to side with, or just not to take a side at all, and many of the missions in game help please one of the factions.  And depending on which faction you choose, will depend on if they give you access to their station or not, which can have items for sale, allow you to bribe guards, or allow you to mine.  There are tons of random missions which can pop up, some connected from earlier ones, which helps give a sense of…life to the systems, though it would be even better if there were neutral factions such as bounty hunters and merchants, who could reward you with rare items or money for helping them, which would in turn get others of their faction to like you.

A Rather Large Galaxy

The combat itself is very in-depth, action packed, and fun, though also challenging.  One thing the developers did very well is balancing combat, while it does feel hard at times, you simply need to try a different strategy, if small missiles aren’t doing the trick, fit all your ships with large slow moving missiles and try that instead.  I love how the game allows you to refit ships in the middle of combat, so you can completely switch strategy, with nothing but a small build time in between.  There are many strategic approaches to take such as cloaking devices, drones, bombs which stall enemies, and many others, allowing the player to choose how he prefers to play, since there isn’t one “win it all” combination.

Combat in an Advanced Ship

My only complaint is that after playing for a while, combat can get repetitive.  Because about 10 hours in, it boils down to “Shoot with missiles, fire laser, get hit by gravity bomb, sit here and get shot at, die, rebuild, repeat”.  Because I came to a point in which I needed to travel halfway across my galaxy, and since to unlock new systems you have to destroy blockades (or you could bribe the guards, but shooting is easier) and some of them were at a level too challenging for me, I had to do other missions to level up while also killing blockades, which were mostly the same fight over and over again, with needed mining in the middle.  I understand that the bigger you make your galaxy, the longer the game takes, but if they could’ve simply condensed missions and not have made some of the story ones so far away, it not only would have helped speed up the pace, but it would’ve been less repetitive.  Speaking of which, I wish exploration was a bit more rewarding, I would have liked if some random missions involved finding wrecks of rare ships to reverse engineer, some rare ship equipment, some mission which involved moral choices which had repercussions (which also would add to the ‘alive’ feel of the galaxy) but instead it is mostly a mix of mining and shooting.

Now there is one thing that does change up combat, and that is zombies.  When fighting zombies you really have to take a different combat approach, which is a welcome change from the usual dodge and gun.  If a zombie spore reaches your ship, your whole ship will be zombified and be taken control of by the zombies, so you need to make sure you keep your distance, but the ships still have weapons so you can’t be too defensive, which makes zombie combat much for interesting.

Zombies

All of the SPAZ ships look very cool and differentiated, along with the systems and asteroids, all the art smoothly works together.  Now the backgrounds are…just amazing, easily the best space backgrounds of any game I have played, since they are multilayered and dynamically animated.  The sound is also good and fits in with the game.

So ultimately SPAZ reinvents gameplay you’d expect from more retro games, mixes in some RPG elements along with procedurally generated galaxies;  which all forms together into one hell of a game.  This game honestly has nearly endless gameplay, and while it is challenging, it is balanced, and above all else, fun to play.  It also has good progression as you play through the game.  You can check this game out on steam with their demo, or get the full game for $15.  You owe it to yourself to buy this game, since it isn’t just an Indie Gem, it’s near Indie Perfection, and one of the best Indie Games I have ever played…hell, it’s one of the best 2D games I have ever played. The developers clearly put a lot of hard work into this game, and they are going to continue to do so with additional content in the upcoming months.  The only thing that would’ve made this game better was if there was a mobile version so I could play a mission or two if I’m bored for twenty minutes.

Misfortune Beta Review

You see that yellow tint? That's simply due to my awesome black, tinted goggles!

PROS

• Unique Art
• Cool Soundtrack
• Unique World
• Gameplay Better Than Most Social Network Games
• Story Based

CONS

• Normal Missions are Boring and Repetitive
• Long Wait Between Gaining More Actions
• Lack of Environment Art
• Still In Beta

Recommended For:

Anyone who wants a game to play once in a while when bored on the computer.

Not-Recommend For:

Someone looking for a game to play for hours at a time.

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Misfortune bares resemblance to usual social network games such as Mafia Wars and etc. but it tries to differentiate itself with unique art and more in-depth gameplay.  Misfortune focuses on being more story based than traditional social network/browser games, so right off the bat it reminded me of Echo Bazaar.  The game starts with introducing the main character, and having him, for one reason or another, end up in a random town with nothing but his own clothes.

The game has two different modes, or perspectives you play from.  The first is when you choose where to go, what missions to do, and what to buy and etc.  The second is a first person mode in which you navigate around a 3D space made up of 2D art.  The actually character navigation and first person perspective is what first caught my eye, since it wasn’t what I expected going into the game.  Within missions your main goal is to usually get to a certain place.  What blocks your way are multiple puzzle mechanics such as finding keys and hidden doors, as well as combat with various enemies.

Although the game does uses a mechanic I personally despise in browser games, which is that it only allows you to do a certain amount of missions until you have to wait for your action points to refill over time.  While I understand why games do this, as a gamer I dislike having to wait to play more of a game.  So that is a bit of a pain but I guess is by now come to be expected of games like this.

The gameplay itself is pretty straight forward, you use WASD to move, and you click on enemies to hit them, and items to interact with them, and what’s important is that it works for the game.  You can also use apples and first aid kits to heal yourself, but the game only tells you the hotkey for them once, so I wish it showed what key they are mapped to on top of the icon, as most PC RPGs do, simply as a reference to the player.  The game also boasts RPG elements, so you can collect items and armor to assist yourself, as well as save up money from missions and buy weapons and armor in shops.

The game’s art style is a bit hard to define in words, but I’d say it’s “A seriously cartoony yet detailed art style”.  The art does look great for a browser based game and while some things may be a bit over-the-top and cartoony (such as wearing a pot as a helmet) it only adds to the game’s uniqueness.  The art was done by a children’s book illustrator after all, which clearly aided the game.  The game also boasts a soundtrack, while it doesn’t have too many different tracks, the tracks it does have fit the game, but personally the combat one does get a bit annoying, but it’s still a browser based game with a soundtrack, which earns the game brownie points in my book.

The game’s world is an interesting and mysterious place.  The game takes place in a dark and pirate filled city which always seems to have something interesting going on, while also having some steampunk elements.  The world is displayed and portrayed well within the game and the art, except the same art is always used; you are always navigating around alleys of tan walled building with gates.  It makes me think of a Dungeons and Dragons DM who only has one tile set and insists on always using them and as such always has the player’s missions take place in the same places, which gets dull after a while.  I really would like to see other parts of the city portrayed, and I hope in the future more art is added to the game.

The game does have some nice progression, because as you get money, you get better equipment and skills.  Farther in the game you can unlock more equipment like an optics shop which has some special optics which allows you to see enemies through walls, as well as even locating those pesky hidden doors for you!  But, the problem with progression is that while the mission difficult is rated from 1 on, as you get better equipment and more money, the game decides “Hey!  Let’s make level 3 missions as hard as a level 6 mission was for the player yesterday, without telling them!”  This really does bug me, because what’s the point of having a difficulty curve, if it changes randomly.

Now onto the game’s main focus point, its story.  The story is told in a few different ways, within missions there are certain dialogs that will popup randomly such as your Aunt getting attacked by four thugs, to a parrot insulting you, to a man arguing with a mechanical talking parrot.  As well as special sets of missions you can get later on as you progress with “Fortune Points” which you have to get with real money or by completing offers.  I played one of these mission sets, and the amount of points spent would have equaled $5.  The missions are a bit more story based than the usually pointless missions, and also, the set I played had a moral choice or two attached to it, which I hope affects me in the future.  Not only that but this set of missions unlocked that awesome optics shop I talked about earlier.  While I’m not sure if I’d say it is worth five dollars, they do add some more flair to the game, so if you’re a fan you’ll probably end up trying a set of missions out some time or another.

Within dialog you mostly choose what to say, but certain skill rolls (just like in DnD, a roll of 1-20 plus any modifier) are also implemented which can have dire consequences if you roll low.  The skill system itself in the game isn’t all that explained, since outside of combat skills, the only skill I was able to get up was clockworking and pick pocketing, both I had to learn by doing certain things within dialog.  Overall the dialog system is pretty solid, they make a nice break from running around looking for keys, and some of the dialog options can be pretty interesting, as well as impacting your future within the game.  The only problem I found was that the choices weren’t all that broad, I would like to have the option of saving my Aunt from pirates or not, not being forced upon it.  If the developer adds more moral and impactful choices into the game itself, I can see it becoming quite a great browser game!

Overall if you ever get board and are sitting at your computer, which I bet you are doing right now, go check The Misfortune Beta out here.  Either with your Facebook, or you can just create an account, so don’t fret all you Facebook haters!

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Review - Comparing The Original

PROS

• Great Environments
• Fun Gameplay
• Good Sound
• Enough Gameplay to Justify the Price
• Multiple Playstyles

CONS

• Forced Into Boss Fights
• Augmentations Are Cluttered and Need Improvement
• Lack of Moral Choices
• Subpar Story
• You Feel "Too Human"
• Zombies

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the prequel as a sequel!  Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the long awaited sequel to the original Deus Ex, not including Invisible War since that shredded everything Deus Ex.  Human Revolution promised to stay true to the roots of the original, and did it?  Pretty much, but backing up a bit, Human Revolution is set as a prequel back in 2027 when augmentations were still very controversial, but also very noticeable, instead of simple implants there were fully robotic limbs and even sunglasses implanted into your skull.

That atmosphere itself is essentially the Tron Legacy world, except replace any color, except for black, with gold.  And even with the slightly limited color pallet, the game still looks pretty good.  The atmosphere is very well shown, and the side missions and factions help as well.  The only problem I found was when looking at cityscapes or large views; they look very bad, and can lag the game which doesn’t help show the scope of the game world.

May look good on PC, Consoles are another story

Now in the game you play as Adam Jenson, which reminds me of JC and Denton (The name of the character from the original game) smushed together into a last name.  The game plays from your well known first person shooter perspective, though what differs it from the original Deus Ex, is that there is a 3^rd person cover system.  This is where it branches away from how the original Deus Ex played.  In the original, it was completely first person, instead of cover, you would instead lean left and right.  I believe that the developers probably did this to fit consoles, but in my opinion it hindered the game in that it makes it less realistic and less human of a story.

They also got rid of health packs in favor of the infamously hated “Wait to wipe blood off face” health system.  As much as I hate games that use this, I believe it was again an improvement made for console gamers, and it actually works, more or less.  You can also takes stimulants to temporarily increase your health, so I’m surprised to say this isn’t bad, but leads back to a much bigger problem I will talk about a bit later.

Augmentations, a staple of Deus Ex are also back, with a much more RPG-esque system, while also replacing skills (which means no swimming).  The biggest problem with this is that especially at the beginning of the game, the augmentation screen is very intimidating.  It essentially just throws 20 icons in your face, each representing a different set of augmentations which at the beginning can be very confusing, because you don’t know what to get, what will help you, and you also have a fear of not wanting to waste your limited XP, since over the course of the game, you won’t get all the augmentations.  The system itself is pretty expansive, and covers inventory space, social upgrades, jumping and speed increased, less damage, seeing through walls, etc.  One thing I like about these is they aren’t all directly related to a stat, such as there aren’t ones that specifically upgrade damage, but they are more focused around serving purposes, and that’s exactly what they do.

Wanna kill 2 people at once? There's an Aug for that

Now, the second fault is that they essentially combined the skills and augmentations from the original into one system.  Now, I believe they probably did this to dumb it down a bit, now this is exactly what happened with Invisible War, they dumbed it down to the point where it was just a First Person Shooter, which isn’t what Deus Ex is.  Now, this didn’t dumb it down THAT much, but it still took away some of the core aspects of Deus Ex.  Experience was used to upgrade your actual person, just like how having experience in real life makes you better at things.  While upgrades were limited to how many you could get while still catering to gameplay; you could explore and find them in hidden places, hack your way into safes, or you could simply buy them.  This also combated what I mentioned before, which is feeling overloaded with options, each augmentation canister you found gave you a simple “this or that” choice, which is a much better way to do it.

Now, onto what Deus Ex is famous for, the story!  The game has an average plot set in a vivid world, but I never really thought there was a climax, which is important to most games, I also didn’t feel the same sense of conspiracy and betrayal I felt in the original.  So overall, to sum it up, the story is meh.  It’ll be enough to keep some people playing, but not for others.  But what will keep people playing is how despite everything I’ve said, the gameplay is still fun, and there is still the famous Deus Ex blend of stealth, action, and exploration.

Now, onto that one problem which I have been relating to this whole review; the game makes you feel more than human.  One thing which I personally enjoyed about the original, above all else, was how the main character felt human.  He died from a headshot, a shotgun blast pointblank would destroy him, and without regenerating health, a bad injury would affect gameplay, such as a leg being broken and etc.  The health packs in the game helped make it a much more human game.  You also couldn’t easily kill 5 people unless you had a rocket launcher and they were huddling in one point having an orgy on the job or something, you had to use strategy and stealth to take enemies out one at a time, threats felt more…threatening.  I personally went through Human Revolution killing everyone, in the original there is no way I’d be able to survive some things I did in this game because you are more than human, regenerating health, deadly and abusive weapons, and some abusive upgrades simply made you seem more than human, which throws out everything the original did well.  Especially without actual skills, this is the game’s biggest fault, and it’s that it fell into the trap set by modern day games, and that’s making the player feel more than human.  Yes, I know there is the hardest difficulty, but all that means is you’ll be camping and waiting for health to heal more instead of crawling in vents.  Now I’m not saying there were augmentations in the original such as one that allowed you to take 30 bullets, but it was not only implemented much better than augmentations in Human Revolution, the upgrading took time, and you still took damage which could only heal by itself with a special augmentation, which you couldn’t have active all the time.

You'll probably live...

Which reminds me, another fault I found was limiting the player to one bar of energy without food, it made the energy upgrades more useless and it doesn’t help the feel of the game, only being able to look through walls for 10 seconds, over being able to use it in combat is a big difference and may have made combat a bit more enjoyable.  Now that isn’t the only problem of the game mind you, the AI is less than stellar, which I guess is one of the things that does live up to the original.  Now, moral choices were a pretty big deal in the original, but another problem in Human Revolution is that a lethal or non-lethal path doesn’t really change anything.  I went through the game killing everyone; I swore that when I killed over half of the Detroit police force I would get my ass handed to me…but not a word.  In this game the moral choice is simply limited to the player, or more importantly, what guns you have ammo for.  There isn’t an army general to scream at you for killing people, the game doesn’t question your morals for killing civilians, which is a missed opportunity if nothing else.  Now the last thing I’m going to rage on is how they brag about how you can talk to people and find alternate paths, when in reality the game forces you to try conversations and if you fail you then have to take an alternate path, it honestly isn’t an option which again doesn’t help the game live up to the original, because you are supposed to have to look for easier paths, not have them handed to you on a silver platter while having someone ask you if you’d like some melted butter with that.

This dude WILL piss you off by the end of the game

Now is a great time to point out that I lied, I have one more big problem about the game to address.  The game at times forces you into boss fights which are frankly unnecessary.  Having boss fights breaks the flow of the game for someone who focuses on stealth or hacking, because it forces you into unavoidable combat situations, not only that, but they are simply unfair, and one person who can take 10 bullets to the head without a drop of blood doesn’t belong in Deus Ex because that’s “Too Human” which I guess would make sense knowing that your character is also an abusive badass.  Now, I know the original Deus Ex forced you into a few boss fights, but they at least allowed you to use your surrounding somewhat, while some other were avoidable, or had ways to cheat them.  In the original I kept dying from one augmented boss, so I looked around before confronting her again, found a rocket launcher, and shot her into 1000 pieces.  This game may have had a bit of that, but not as much since the boss fights themselves take place in compact areas without people to talk to for help and what not.  And lastly, the boss fights take place in tight places with no open world-ness to them, at least in the original I could run my pussy ass away, in this one; you are getting spammed by so many bullets you’d be lucky to move from one side of the room to the other while still staying alive.

Now, to recap since this review got much longer than I initially expected; the game tries its best to live up to the original, and is better than Invisible War.  It has good level design as well as good music and is great at enriching you with atmosphere.  But, the story itself is subpar and moral choices of killing people have no impact on the game.  The gameplay makes you feel more than human, which doesn’t live up to the original, and the “Choose your path” gameplay is there, but it could be much better, specifically where dialog is concerned.  If you are new to the Deus Ex series, you definitely should check this out, but if you are looking for a true Deus Ex sequel, play the Deus Ex mod “The Nameless Mod” instead.

Esoterica America - Indie Game Review

PROS 

• Alright Story
• Has Voice Acting
• Fun Mini-Game

CONS 

• Bad Movement
• Repetative Gameplay
• Pointless "Meditation" Game
• No Actual Story
• Short

Esoterica America is…well I’m not exactly sure how to describe it.  I’m going to go with story based puzzle game.  The game starts out alright by simply giving you a gist of the story with voice acting and still pictures, not the best way to introduce the story, though not the worst.  Then it throws you into the game on the characters 21^st birthday.  But from the start I noticed some problems.

First, the movement is very clunky and can be a pain sometimes.  The moving animation looks bad and navigation is a pain and the angled viewpoint doesn’t help.  Now it would be okay if that was the game’s only problem, but it’s not.  The game is very, very linear.  It allows you to examine items in the world, but there are only about 4 items that you can actually examine.  Beyond that the game just plays out in a very linear way of “Talk to this person, go do that puzzle, go somewhere else, repeat”.  Honestly, the whole game plays out like that.

The game tries to mix it up by adding this meditation mini game which is just flying around and hitting the right controller button color to match any flying objects around you, yes, it is as boring as it sounds.  Frankly it is pretty pointless, I’m assuming they either wanted to try and mix things up (if so, they failed) or try to make their very short game seem slightly longer.  Also, did I mention the game is about 30 minutes or less of “Talk to this person, do that puzzle, etc. etc. etc.” and apparently that was just episode 1.  It probably would have worked much more in their favor to take more time to make the whole story one game, and make the game better in aspects of presentation, gameplay, and polish.

As far as “fun” is concerned, you probably won’t have any.  I was so bored I played through the game while surfing the internet, there is pretty much no actual gameplay, and it is a pretty boring game.  I had more fun playing their mini-game in which you are a stoned hippy shooting at planes and helicopters with dual pistols.

Now, I have to give the game credit, it does have voice acting which I wouldn’t say is good, but it’s not bad, which is usually hard to find in Indie Games.  But, only certain parts of the game are voiced, and it seems completely random which conversations are actually voiced, which is an annoyance.  Also, another annoyance I found was that when watching a voiced conversation/cut scene, you can’t skip that line of dialog, if you, say, read the subtitles, you can only skip the whole conversation.  As far as the story goes, it holds up but the game just doesn’t do a good job of explaining it, ultimately, stay away from this game.