Tacoma

Back in 2013, The Fullbright Company made waves with Gone Home, which ushered in the “walking simulator” genre. However, I wasn’t as impressed by it and didn’t pay attention to their 2017 follow-up game, Tacoma. After I revisited Gone Home, I felt more inclined to try Tacoma and found that it happened to be on sale for $3 on Steam as opposed to $15 (though due to how Steam’s bundle system works, I got it for only $2.89). A couple hours later, I felt that while Tacoma improved from Gone Home to an extent, I might have felt ripped off if I had paid full price.

Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure

Two years ago, I played Thimbleweed Park through the Limited Run physical release and thoroughly enjoyed it until the ending left a lingering bad taste in my mouth. Recently, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ron Gilbert’s studio, Terrible Toybox, released a short game, Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure, that doubles as a prototype for Ron Gilbert’s new game engine. Since I played the original game, and Delores was free, I decided I may as well play it. For the price, I appreciate what it did and that it didn’t try to be anything bigger, but, like the original game, it’s a little rough.

Bone: Out from Boneville + The Great Cow Race

In the year 1991, independent comics creator Jeff Smith launched the first issue of Bone, a comic that ran for 55 issues until 2004 and would receive immense critical acclaim. I had been somewhat aware of this comic as far back as when I was in middle school, including seeing a wild fan art of protagonist Fone Bone as well as some of the earlier one-volume collections, however I would not get around to actually reading it until a couple years ago after buying an autographed (black-and-white) one-volume collection at Jeff Smith’s Cartoon Books booth at SDCC. I then understood the low-key hype surrounding this book and fell in love with the characters and setting, and since then have read the Bone: Coda and Tall Tales collections and the recently-released Smiley’s Dream Book, with the Rose comic prequel and Quest for the Spark novel trilogy on my radar as of this writing.

Cover for Bone #1, released July 1991
(from left: Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, Smiley Bone)

One of developer Telltale Games’ earliest works would be a series of games based on the Bone comic, starting from the beginning with Out from Boneville in 2005, shortly after the comic ended. A follow-up, The Great Cow Race, would be released in 2006, however the Bone saga in video game form would come to an ending there (incidentally, the latter game would also come right before Telltale’s first breakthrough with Sam & Max Save the World). With the recent shutdown of Telltale Games in late 2018, I recently decided to purchase the Bone duology while they were still available on the Steam store, playing both games shortly afterward for this review. Though the games were initially released as stand-alone product, I have decided to present a review of both games as one package.

After being run out of Boneville, the cousins Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone discuss their current situation, with the whole thing being Phoney’s fault. Soon after the three come across a map in the middle of nowhere, the three are attacked by a swarm of locusts and end up separated, while Phone Bone ends up with the map as he starts looking for his cousins. Meanwhile, a pair of rat creatures target him as they look for Phoney.

While both the comic and the game begin similarly, the game presents a somewhat compressed version of the story that still covers the same narrative beats. Though some moments that were cut arguably contributed to world building, these moments may have come across as filler when translated to a 2-hour point-and-click game. These small moments aside, the game retains the more important events, making it easy to follow for someone unfamiliar with the source. It also prefaces the story with lore that was originally divulged much later in the comic, teasing early on what sort of story the player is experiencing.

The gameplay for Out from Boneville is pretty linear, playing more like one of those “interactive storybook” games. Certain things from the comic, such as the Bone cousins running from locusts or Fone Bone’s first encounter with the character Ted, are translated as full-on minigames, though the chase sequences can be optionally skipped after failing them once. As this was Telltale’s second game overall (their first being Telltale Texas Hold’em), the more simplistic gameplay compared with their later endeavors is more excusable here.

The graphics actually hold up pretty well, as they offer a direct translation of Jeff Smith’s art style in a 3D space. This combined with the voice acting (which includes a small JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OVA reunion) and music gave the idea that Smith’s acclaimed comic had really come to life. I especially liked the casting choices for the Bone cousins, though I would give praise to those who had voiced multiple characters at once and managed to make them all sound and feel distinct from each other. A minor gripe on the technical side of things was the occasional glitching on some characters’ heads, wherein they did not seem to know whether to look in a neutral direction or the one intended by the developers, though otherwise things went pretty smoothly.

Soon after the Bone cousins are reunited in the town of Barrelhaven, Phoney and Smiley Bone have to work off a debt at the local tavern while Fone Bone pursues his romantic feelings towards Thorn. Meanwhile, Barrelhaven is getting ready for the Cow Race, in which Gran’ma Ben races against a herd of cows. Phoney sees this as an opportunity for a quick buck, collecting bets with the promise of a “Mystery Cow” that is fast enough to outrun Gran’ma Ben.

Compared to Out from Boneville, the game manages to retell the same basic story from the comic while shuffling things around a little to suit a mechanic where you have to shuffle between Fone Bone, Phoney Bone and Smiley Bone for the majority of the game, completing certain tasks to move the plot forward and influence what happens to each character. Some small filler not present in the comic is also added in order to aid this mechanic, including the introduction of a handful of side characters not present in the source material (they do, however, still include some side characters who had a fair amount of screen time in the comic).

Despite these differences, while the story was still pretty easy to follow and hit all the major moments from the comic, I ended up having to use the in-game hint feature a bit more often in order to get through it. As The Great Cow Race came directly before Sam and Max Save the World, Telltale’s aforementioned first major hit, this acts as sort of a precursor to the increasingly-complex logic puzzles that series would go on to be known for.

I didn’t find anything wrong with the game on a technical level, though I would note certain changes in the voice cast. Most of the voice actors from the first game return here, however Wendy Tremont King, the original voice actress for both Gran’ma Ben and Thorn, was replaced with Bridgit Mendler and Susan McCollom, who voice Thorn and Gran’ma Ben respectively. The change is noticeable after playing both games back-to-back, however the two try their best to sound like King while delivering their own unique performances that improve upon what she had started.

Though among Telltale’s lesser-known work, Bone: Out from Boneville and Bone: The Great Cow Race are both enjoyable games in their own right. After having read the comic, it’s a bit disappointing that the game adaptation never got past the second arc of the story, though as they are, the two games are worth playing through for Bone fans to get a taste of how things might’ve been. For non-fans, I would also highly recommend reading the Bone comic itself, as the One-Volume Edition isn’t too hard to come by. Either way, as the fate of Telltale’s games in digital storefronts is uncertain, I would recommend picking up these games on Steam while you still can.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

You might have heard of a Swedish gaming developer named Starbreeze Studios. Among their output is the first The Darkness game (which I previously reviewed) based on the Top Cow comic book series of the same name, and, for a newer example, they were one of the developers attached to the more recently released Payday 2, the sequel to the popular Payday: The Heist from Overkill Software, who had recently been acquired by Starbreeze. Though they’ve developed a handful of other titles, it was their entry into the Darkness series of games that I was familiar with, so I was surprised they’d developed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, the subject of this review, which seemed to have the feel of an indie game even though it wasn’t (this is not to say that indie games are bad; check out my positive reviews of Thatgamecompany’s output). When I learned of this game’s concepts and that it was being made in collaboration with a Swedish film director, Josef Fares, I decided to check out a demo of it on Xbox 360. However, like with Dust: An Elysian Tail, I wasn’t sure which system to purchase the game for, since it later came to PS3 and Steam, but I eventually got it on Steam thanks to the recent Autumn Sale it had when I purchased The Stanley Parable. Now that I’ve played it, I can say that Brothers is well worth the price tag.

The game opens with the younger brother mourning at his mother’s grave as he has a flashback of unsuccessfully trying to rescue her from drowning. The older brother soon has to him help with carrying their father, who has become very sick. When they take their father to a doctor, they are told they need to get the Water of Life in order to cure him. With a map in hand, the brothers set off on a journey to save their father.

Before I get into the controls, I must first bring up that, while I did play the Steam version of this game, which has its own control scheme, I took advantage of the controller support, since that is what the developers recommended Steam players to do, so my experience is based on using that option. As for the controls themselves, they are actually pretty simple: To control the older brother, you use the left analog stick to move him and the Left Trigger to interact; to control the younger brother, you use the right analog stick to move him and the Right Trigger to interact. Since the right stick is reserved for controlling the younger brother, the camera is manipulated with the Left and Right Bumpers. While the controls are minimal, they may require a little time to get used to. Since the right stick in most modern games is used to control the camera, the younger brother sometimes ended up going in a different direction than his older sibling, often leading me to have to stop so I could reorient the brothers’ positions. However, given the context of the story and this being a conscious gameplay design choice, this actually adds to the experience of the game rather than detracting from it.

I’ve given some other games I have reviewed before credit for having good visuals, but I still must say that in Brothers, the visuals are absolutely gorgeous. Since the game is presented in a top-down perspective, I sometimes tried to get a small look at the world around the titular brothers, only to be further amazed by the amount of detail put into the background visuals, including such things as rendering entire forests or sunlight peeking into an underground mine. There are some benches scattered throughout the game that you can have one or both brothers interact with to sit on, giving you an excellent look at how much depth there really is in the game’s world. No matter where I went in the game that showed off this much detail, it never failed to leave me stunned.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons has some really lovely scenery.

Another thing I enjoyed about this game was the sound design. The music matched the tone of the respective scenes quite well, matching the situation at hand to create joy or peril while adding depth to a particularly emotional scene when necessary. I have felt sadness at a game before whenever a sad scene was handled in the right way, but Brothers actually made me want to cry at one point; being a brother myself, there was one particular scene that not only struck a chord with me, but also made me momentarily pause the game so I could hug my brother. As for the voice acting, I’m not sure I can really say anything. Given that Starbreeze and film director Josef Fares are Swedish, I’m not sure whether the characters in the game were speaking a form of Swedish or a kind of made-up language, but even then I think the characters sounded in such a way that matched their appearance (to an extent in some cases), and while the game has a lack of a subtitle option, I learned how to generally tell what was going on thanks to the great work with the characters’ body language.

I’ve already mentioned how the brothers can interact with the world around them, but I think this is one of the best aspects of the game experience. There is a good amount of puzzle solving present in the game, most of which involves both brothers interacting together with environment in a variety of ways. A more common interaction, aside from the occasional bench, is when you see a ledge with part of a ladder on top, meaning you must use the older brother to give his younger sibling a boost, usually with another way provided to reunite the two soon after; some of the variations not only show some nice creativity from the developers, but also provides another chance to enjoy the beautiful scenery around them.

Other forms of interaction are with NPCs, including animals and other people. These interactions can be very interesting, since the brothers might each react differently to someone else, often ending up with the older brother being able to get information that will advance their quest. Some of these interactions will also earn you special achievements, some of which I was able to figure out how to do better than others, and these seem to be heavier moral choices than the regular interactions. One that I felt especially impacted by was the option of whether or not to rescue an NPC from committing suicide after his house on a cliff had burnt down, taking the rest of his family with it; I decided to rescue him, after which he broke down due to the weight of his loss, but then I rescued a music box from the wreckage to bring to him, after which he seemed to feel better, having found a new reason to continue living. Though it feels good to get some of these achievements, just as soon as you figure out how, the one I got for saving the NPC’s life was one I felt the most proud to obtain.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is an engaging, emotional journey that must be experienced. The scenery is beautiful and the controls are somewhat easy to grasp, while the body language of each character can create a tense scene even if you can’t understand what they are saying, helping to make the experience more universal. Some moments of the game can become very powerful, a number of which may actually bring you to tears. The game has a fairly short length, taking roughly 4 hours to beat, but if the game were made any longer, it probably wouldn’t be as good as it already is. If you are a fan of short, simple games with a lot of depth to them like Journey, I would tell you to seek this one out. If you play a lot of AAA titles but are looking for something to take a break from them, I would highly suggest Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Like Journey, this game isn’t so much about the destination as it is about the journey getting there.

[OLD] Second Opinion - The Stanley Parable

This game has been re-reviewed. Read it here: https://trophyunlocked.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-look-stanley-parable-demo.html

WARNING: Due to the nature of The Stanley Parable, this review may contain minor spoilers. If this does not bother you or you have no plans whatsoever to actually play The Stanley Parable, then feel free to read ahead, but otherwise it is strongly recommended that you play the game on Steam first before reading this review, preferably with as little knowledge about the game’s contents as possible. You have been warned, so don’t blame me if anything I say affects your experience negatively.

Some of you are probably aware of a piece of interactive fiction called The Stanley Parable, a 2011 Source engine mod by Davey Wreden that sought to deconstruct video games to demonstrate how many of them act in relation to the player, with narrations by British actor Kevan Brighting. In late 2013, after successfully going through Valve’s Steam Greenlight program, this game was given a major upgrade, also called The Stanley Parable, developed by Galactic Cafe, which consists of Davey Wreden and William Pugh, with further narrations from Kevan Brighting. While the end product is largely similar in concept to the original mod, it also greatly expands on it with what the player is able to do story-wise. After experiencing the game while entering it with as little spoiled to me as I could possibly make it, I have to say that The Stanley Parable is a very…unique experience that has me questioning some of the games I have played/seen being played.

The game follows a man named Stanley who works in an office building. One day, his co-workers vanish, and a disembodied voice narrates Stanley’s actions as he tries to take a look outside his office. This is pretty much all I can say without going into great detail about the narrative, due to the nature of this game.

One thing I can say without fear of giving away anything major, though, is that the game actually looks pretty good. There isn’t any visible texture loading and there is a very good range in the lighting and the color palette, each balancing off each other to make things visually appealing. When there is background music present, it’s usually able to set the mood quite nicely, though much of the game creates its own atmosphere by having no background music present, allowing the surroundings to sink in.

The controls are also very simple and easy to get a handle on. You control Stanley through a first-person perspective, using the WASD keys on your keyboard to move about while the mouse steers your direction, controls the camera, and allows you to click on objects. You can also use the Ctrl key to crouch, though you cannot jump at all, as the developers disabled that function.

The most interesting aspect of The Stanley Parable, however, would have to be its main focus, namely its multiple endings. I don’t want to go into too much detail about how this pans out (hint: try ignoring the narration), but some of these endings really had me thinking about the games that I have experienced beforehand. A few of the endings even had me thinking about my own life for a moment before I came back to my senses.

In the end, The Stanley Parable is a very interesting game to play through and one that shouldn’t be missed. It takes everything you know about video games and puts them in an entirely different light as it plays around with the medium’s various well-established tropes. I myself haven’t played the original mod, but if you have and have not yet played this new version, I would suggest taking a look at it to see how much of it has changed. Even if you are not familiar with the mod, I would still suggest checking it out anyway, especially if you are a fan of first-person and/or deconstruction games. The game goes for $15 on Steam ($11.24 with the Autumn Sale going on at the time of this writing), but trust me when I say that this game is well worth the asking price.

[OLD] The Stanley Parable - (Review Updated 10/27/2014)

This game has been re-reviewed. Read it here: https://trophyunlocked.blogspot.com/2021/03/second-look-stanley-parable-demo.html

NOTE: Due to a sudden moment of clarity, the original author has realized that the initial review of The Stanley Parable did not truly represent the game in question and contained many misunderstandings, including the concept of an “objective review,” and the views expressed were, quite frankly, insulting to potential readers. We at Trophy Unlocked deeply apologize for this and, as a result, the initial review has been thoroughly rewritten, though some of the inoffensive text has been maintained. If you would like to see the original text, you may do so after the break.

UPDATE (10/27/2014)

In July 2011, a man named Davey Wreden released a mod built on the Source engine known as The Stanley Parable. This mod presented itself as a work of interactive fiction and received critical praise for its narrative and sense of exploration, as well as the voice-over provided by British actor Kevan Brighting. Sometime later, he was approached by William Pugh, who wanted to help Wreden remake The Stanley Parable as a stand-alone release. This collaboration, which also brought back Kevan Brighting as the narrator, led to the release of the HD version of The Stanley Parable on Steam by the newly formed development team of Wreden and Pugh, named Galactic Cafe. Although more of a work of interactive fiction than an actual game, the HD version of the The Stanley Parable, released October 2013, has proven to be a worthy investment for any gamer as well as something worth having serious discussions about.

Spoiler Note: Due to the nature of The Stanley Parable, it is best to go in blind for the best experience, as there are many surprises that don’t have as much of an impact by reading about them. Because of this, there will be unmarked spoilers regarding the events of the game. If you wish to remain unspoiled, then hit Ctrl+F and search “Verdict”.

The Stanley Parable follows a man named Stanley who has an office job, as employee number 427, which requires him to press buttons on command. The computer on his desk tells him what buttons to push and how long to push them. Any normal person would have found this job to be tedious and repetitive. However, Stanley is very content with his job and is very happy to do it day after day. One day, Stanley wonders if there’s a world outside of his office and so decides that he’ll need to explore the office building he works in to find out, that is, if he so chooses to leave his comfort zone (if it’s even his choice at all).

What happens to Stanley next is entirely up to the choices made by the player. You can choose to follow the story that the narrator has laid out for you or you can ignore his instructions to discover a new path and thus a new story. The narrator will try to railroad you back onto the proper story path, but deviate enough and he’ll alter the script to suit the new path that Stanley has chosen, but of course Stanley can always change the new story up to a point if he so desires. The idea of choice is actually what drives the narrative, if the end result even has a narrative. I found it amazing just how many story branches Galatic Cafe was able to account for, with a total of 19 different possible endings (two of them being the unofficial Whiteboard and Broom Closet endings). Finding these endings in itself is actually quite thrilling and is a primary source of fun and replay value for the player. Combined with the number of easter eggs and other surprises waiting in store, including random room conditions or layouts, it’s quite possible that the player will find themselves immersed for hours scouring for every last possibility.

What’s most intriguing about these endings however is the fact that they all seem to deliver some kind of lesson about video games (acting as a sort of parable if you will). These endings and unique story paths all deconstruct some aspect of gaming, including the illusion of choice, the idea of “art” games with no real substance and the idea of linear story paths in supposedly nonlinear games. I found each of the ending paths to say something extremely relevant to the game environment in which the game saw release, though I’d wager that they’ll prove to be relevant sometime in the near, or even far, future. In fact, these story paths are the best part of the game because it seems that The Stanley Parable actually has something to say, unlike most of its indie brethren. At least one lesson, not letting time make a decision for you, is good to take away for one’s own life as well.

Though there is certainly a lesson to learn within the game, what really helps drive each of the points home is the wonderful narration by Kevin Brighting. His voice is easy to listen to and he is capable of delivering his, often witty, lines with a very snarky tone. There’s a good emotional range too, such as one side quest of sorts that gives the narrator an infectiously encouraging vibe. On top if that, his character is written pretty well, since sometimes he shows pity for Stanley and, in some endings, is shown to have limited control over his own actions. Being able to make a sort of emotional connection with the narrator is an accomplishment on its own, especially a narrator who manages to have more characterization than the main character (though this is excusable, since Stanley is implied to be an avatar for the player).

The Stanley Parable is made using the Source engine, though everything looks great, save for some times when getting too close to specific textures makes them a little blurry (keyboards on computers for instance). In a way it’s kind of what you’d expect from an engine as old as it is, though the appearance of the world feels different from other Source engine games. The controls are very responsive and everything runs very smoothly with little to no lag depending on your computer’s performance at the moment. I like the suitably bright color palette, as it reinforces the satirical nature of the game. The lighting can also get pretty atmospheric when things go dark, striking a good balance with the myriad tonalities of the increasingly forking paths. As for music, what little tracks there are aren’t that bad, though I really like Who Likes to Party by Kevin MacLeod, which is integrated in the most humorous way possible.

On a final note, I give props to the inclusion of the Museum Ending, as it gives a glimpse into the development process behind The Stanley Parable (though I’m sure a lesson can be found in this ending as well, like the nature of the game’s existence in and of itself from an in-universe perspective). Behind-the-scenes stuff can sometimes be very fascinating, this being an example of a very intriguing and engrossing presentation of it.

Verdict

For what it is, I’d consider The Stanley Parable to be a very worthwhile investment. The story, or lack thereof, is very engaging and the ideas presented are worth thinking about. At the same time, it presents these ideas in a fun and lively way and never for a second comes off as pretentious. I highly recommend buying it when possible, as this is a time when a $15 asking price seems good, especially for an indie game. If you’re still on the fence, I’d recommend playing the free demo, which differs completely from the final game, but gives a pretty good idea of what its deal is. If $15 still seems a little pricey, then feel free to grab it during a Steam Sale, whatever it takes to play this wonderful gem [NOTE: Trophy Unlocked does not condone piracy].

Dust: An Elysian Tail - An Action RPG That Shouldn't Be Missed

In the midst of highly anticipated AAA games and mass media attention to certain titles, there is occasionally a game that you happen to hear about that has managed to elude the public conscious, but the look of the game and the ideas behind it are enough to draw you in; for me, Dust: An Elysian Tail is one of those games. An RPG developed by Humble Hearts, aka former Jazz Jackrabbit animator Dean Dodrill, what drew me in to Dust was the fact that, aside from the voice/sound recording, and apparently some plot details, the entire game was made single-handedly by Dodrill. This and the art style lead me to play a demo of the game on Xbox 360, which in turn made me even more interested in the game. While I had intended to try and save enough money to purchase the game, in the end I took advantage of a flash sale on Steam that I happened to see while inspecting a Duke Nukem bundle, thus saving half of what I would have had to pay otherwise (what cinched it was 360 controller support on the PC version). After weeks of play, including a break I had to take from it due to Comic-Con, I feel satisfied with the end product, though I did encounter a couple of problems along the way.

In a place called The Glade, a mysterious sword arrives at a body on the ground, telling it to wake up. Once the figure gets up, he seems to have no recollection of who he is. The sword, Arah, tells the figure that his name is Dust. As Dust is getting used to the idea of a talking sword, an creature named Fidget (who is later revealed to be a Nimbat), swoops in and requests Arah back, explaining that she is the sword's guardian. Arah explains the situation to Fidget, who agrees to join the sword and Dust as they set off on a quest. Little does Dust know just what he has gotten himself into as things quickly become more complicated.

Pictured: Dust holding Arah

The story of Dust, written by Dean Dodrill and Alex Kain, is actually very well-written, in fact having a lot more depth than I expected there to be (not that I expected none). As Dust explores the world he is in, friendships are made, lives are lost, and questions are answered. Much of the conflict surrounds the mystery who exactly Dust is, and this even plays into the final conflict with the main villain. The story is written such that you get a very good scope of what's going on in this world, playing with your emotions up until the very end. The plot is this game's biggest strength, and it is one of the best stories I have seen from an indie game.

I also enjoyed the game's art style, especially in the character designs and backgrounds. The designs of the anthropomorphic animal characters can definitely make one think of Jazz Jackrabbit 2, assuming they are familiar with the series, but regardless the way they came out seems to suit their environment. Even the enemy and wildlife designs are amazing, even when the generic enemies get kind of ugly at some points (they never get cringe-worthy, unlike God of War: Ascension). The environments are simply gorgeous, ranging from beautiful grasslands to dismal volcanic areas. Dust definitely has a unique art style that works for it, and is a good example of Dodrill's talents as an artist.

The scenery of this game is very nicely done.

 

Before I get into the game mechanics, I want to point out that, while the characterization is very good in this game, I know that there's sort of a broken base regarding the character Fidget, one side arguing that she's annoying, the other that she is a likable character in her own right. Personally, I find myself more in the middle, though more leaning towards the latter. While I can see why someone would find Fidget annoying, I didn't really have that much of a problem with her, though I think that's mainly because I find her adorable.

Pictured: Fidget, a Nimbat

 

Moving on, while I don't really play many RPGs, Dust has some good game mechanics that would satisfy any RPG fan and give a newcomer a good idea of what an RPG is like. One of the main mechanics is being able to Level Up after gaining enough Experience Points (EXP), usually done through combat. As you Level Up, you become stronger and enemies become much easier to take down. While this is more of a general mechanic for RPGs, I decided to mention it because it still holds true for this game.

The combat isn't very deep compared to other RPGs such as the On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness tetralogy, but it does provide enough variety to not become tiring. Rather than having to worry about magic or summons or whatever, all you really need to do as swing your sword, Arah, at an enemy in order to deal damage to them. However, if you want your experience to resemble less of a hack-and-slash, you can also spin Arah, in a move called Dust Storm, to take on multiple enemies at multiple angles, or you can use the spin to your advantage to draw items dropped by enemies closer to you. You can also command Fidget to fire a projectile, which can also be manipulated by the spin move to increase its power; you might not find yourself doing one or the other very often. As you advance through the game, Fidget learns more options for her projectile attack, which are changeable with the right bumper on a 360 controller, leaving up more options for attack. Fidget's projectiles are also tied to an energy meter, though since I played on Easy, I'm guessing that on higher difficulties it doesn't refill so quickly.

An example of combat.

You can also increase your power further by equipping items, namely pendants, rings (one on each hand), armor, and augments. Your sword will always be Arah for the entire journey and anything you equip will not change Dust's appearance, but these equips can come in very handy as you increase stats such as attack, defense, and luck (among others). Another important thing to look out for is food, as consuming edibles can increase your health when you're in a jam, among them fruit, cupcakes, hot dogs, and even burgers, and many more; food can also provide certain benefits, such as curing poison or saving you from being burned. You can also equip food for easy access via the left bumper on a 360 controller. The health benefits of food may become near useless once you find items that can let you regenerate health, but it's good to have some food on hand in case things get really messy.

Some items cannot be equipped, and these are used for other purposes. For instance, you can collect items known as Resonance Gems, which allow you to open Resonance Gates of the same color (one for each color of the rainbow) as long as you have the respective Gem on you. You can also collect Treasure Keys to use for opening chests, at which point you must complete a small minigame before it can open; once these are opened, they can very rewarding. There are also 12 cages scattered throughout the land that each require four Treasure Keys to open, as opposed to just one for the regular chests. The minigame is a little more challenging here, but when you open them you get to rescue one of 12 friends representing characters from other indie titles, including Gomez (Fez) and Meat Boy (Super Meat Boy) just to name a couple.

Some items dropped by enemies, aside from food, can also be materials for use in item crafting via blueprints acquired through chests and enemy drops. Once you have enough of the right materials, you can craft an equip-able item so long as you are near or have contact with a blacksmith. Crafting also costs money, but once you are able to make the item, it can be worth it. My only complaint about this, however, is that it's not exactly easy to get rid of blueprints unless you have the money and materials to make the items with, and unless you just want to make items for the sake of getting rid of the blueprints, those blueprints are basically just going to stay there in your (bottomless) inventory until you get rid of them. Fortunately, you can also simply buy the item from a nearby shop when it is available, and a few times I have crafted items simply so I could sell them for more money later.

An assortment of armor you can buy in the shop, along with other necessities.

 

The game also has a sort of light puzzle element to it, which is something I liked. Often to get to certain treasures you have to figure out how to deal with an obstacle, such as glowing walls that can only be destroyed by exploding fruit or timing jumps right on moving platforms, and the more abilities you have, the easier it is to figure out how to access more areas of the game world. While some of these environmental puzzles are much more difficult than others, it's often rewarding once you are able to figure them out. On the subject of abilities, as you advance during the game you come across orbs that, once touched, give you a new power to expand your move set, including the ability to double jump or slide to name a couple, which open up new possibilities in previous areas every time you get a new power. You can also save whenever you come across a save point (larger areas have multiple save points), which can even refill your health when you really need it.

Like many RPG's, this game also has its own share of side quests, some of which encourage you to explore the game world further than you might have on your own. The difficulty of each side quest has a good range, even on the easier setting, though some of the tougher ones may require a guide (I admittedly used one on a couple of quests, but otherwise managed on my own). What I thought was interesting about these side quests is that a couple of them in at least one instance actually fed into each other, and at least one was even tied into the main storyline, both cases actually seeming more natural while expanding on the game's setting and characters.

Lastly, on the audio side of things, the quality of the voice acting is very good, as each actor shows off a good range for their respective character, emotional or otherwise, especially from the main characters. This helps tap into the emotions of the player at certain points, some of which can be real tear-jerkers (including the ending). The soundtrack is also very nicely orchestrated, with fitting background music for each stage and very emotional music during emotional moments in the game. Overall, the game has a very nice audio quality to it.

Tell me you don't want to hug her right now.

 

Now, while I did like the game, there are some things that brought my experience down a little, if only slightly. A more minor complaint, probably borderline nitpicking, has to do with the shops and save points. Occasionally I have come across one of these that seems to take a few seconds before I am even able to use them, making me think as though the shop are save point only seemed to work at times when it wanted to. To me this marred the pacing of the game a little bit, especially during the climactic portion of the story, but I learned to deal with it as I went. A bigger one, however, has to do with the pre-rendered cut scenes. Don't get me wrong here, I think they're beautifully rendered, but I just couldn't fully appreciate or become impacted by them because, for whatever reason, the top half of the cut scene was completely cut off, which really annoyed me a little as I watched them. I'm not exactly sure what caused this glitch to happen, but I braved through them anyway as I watched; I still at least had enough of an idea of what was going on in order for me to feel impacted by the major events these scenes presented. Fortunately, I was able to get an idea of what the rest of the scene looked like after viewing a few screenshots on the internet post-game.

 

In the end, Dust: An Elysian Tail is an amazing game that should not be missed, even by people who have little to no experience in the RPG genre. It's not as long as most RPGs can get, but it's still gets pretty lengthy once you try and explore everything. It has good music, amazing art direction, and a very well-written story that will keep you invested for hours as you uncover more secrets about Dust and the world he inhabits. RPG fans should definitely check this one out, while newcomers to the genre should try this game out, if only for the character-driven story this game presents. Dust: An Elysian Tail was enough to keep me playing until the emotional climax at the very end, and I can't wait to see whatever Humble Hearts does next.

Portal 2 - Better Than The First

If you have been on the internet in the last 4 years, it is incredibly likely that you have heard of the game Portal, or have at least heard a quote or two from it. Yes, it is impossible to escape Portal, a game first packaged with Valve's The Orange Box in 2007. While the game was short, it was very enjoyable and gained a phenomenally large fan base, enough to warrant a sequel. With the follow-up, Portal 2, having been recently released, I am very happy to say that it has taken everything I have heard about the game and has exceeded every one of my expectations many times over.

I would begin by talking about the story, but saying absolutely anything about it would spoil the experience. There are some twists in the story, albeit expected, but that's not important here. What is important is that the story does a very excellent job of immersing you into the world laid out in front of you. No matter how you feel about the events, it is all but guaranteed that you will become very invested in the story, unable to turn away from the next major event, of which there are plenty. Along the way, many of these moments will be very unforgettable. I still can't believe some of them even hours after playing.

One of the new aspects of Portal 2 is the introduction of two new characters, Wheatley (Steve Merchant) and Cave Johnson (J.K. Simmons). Both of them do an excellent job at portraying their characters, with Wheatley's English accent and Cave Johnson's unending charisma married with absolutely perfect comedic timing and plenty of humorous dialogue making them very likable characters. I just couldn't get enough of these characters, and I would sometimes stick around to listen to as much of their lingering dialogue as possible before moving the plot forward. The same can be said for GLaDOS, who has some memorable dialogue, but thankfully a lot of the dialogue of the game seems less "meme-able" than before, which is great for those who got tired of hearing GLaDOS' lines repeated endlessly.

The game looks much better than the previous entry, showing us less pristine environments and showing us that time has indeed passed between the two games. It is unknown exactly how much time, but it's fairly obvious that the world has aged, complete with some plant life creeping into the chambers. I also found it breathtaking when I first saw the test chambers or parts of Aperture Science that were less cramped and instead more spacious, some even having no bottom. This was a very welcome change, letting some moments have more of an impact. At times, I would even stare at the environment for a few minutes at a time to view the painstaking amount of detail put into the game; I could even go so far as to call them beautiful.

While an environment should be good to look at, it's also good to have a soundtrack that fits. Fortunately, Portal 2 delivers in this department. While Portal didn't have much of a soundtrack, it was there and largely forgettable, save for Still Alive during the credits. The sequel, on the other hand, has a more prevalent and memorable soundtrack, with a score that matches the onscreen events beat for beat. At the same time, the new ending song Want You Gone is perhaps not as memorable as Still Alive at the moment, but I'm sure that with time you'll be singing that along with your friends during discussion.

The most important thing about an environment, however, is being able to navigate it. That is never a problem in Portal 2, with simple controls that respond perfectly without a hitch. As portals are the main source of navigation, this is very good, and the ability to zoom in on a surface for a precision portal placement is a very nice and welcome feature, since sometimes you need to hit surfaces at odd angles and it can be hard to make sure that you have done so. Since the test chambers this time around are more spacious, it is also very helpful that you can see where you have placed your portals even through walls. This also helps you confirm better what portal color you have placed where, preventing you from accidentally undoing a few minutes of effort.

Being that Portal 2 is a puzzle game, design is very important, and it appears that there was absolutely no shortage of creativity here. At first, the puzzles seem familiar, but with time they evolve into bigger and more challenging puzzles. Challenge is never a bad thing when it comes to Portal, and it's the kind that feels very rewarding for being able to figure something out. The new mechanics, such as the Excursion Funnels and Gels, also offer some great fun once you experiment within the chambers and figure out how things interact. This is especially obvious when all of the mechanics begin to interact with each other to form new mind-bending puzzles you would never even dream of. While the original Portal could be finished in as little as 2 hours or so, the sheer amount and length of the puzzles in this game will keep you busy for upwards of 8 hours, which is great because it really makes the purchase more worthwhile.

But the biggest addition by far has to be the full-fledged Co-Op mode, in which 2 people, locally or online, can solve a new diverse set of Test Chambers. The puzzles here are equally as impressive as the Single Player campaign, which sets up a lot of interesting gameplay feats when four portals are in use, such as when players need to extend a Hard Light Bridge to overcome Emancipation Grills that could kill a lot of progress. As PSN was down at the time I started playing, I cannot comment on the online functionalities of the PS3 version, but I do know that communication can be crucial when it comes to puzzle-solving in this mode. When both players are working together, the experience is much more enjoyable and fun for everyone. While this mode is shorter than Single Player, about 5 hours or so, it's really fun to play with a friend or relative in this game. I should also note that GLaDOS' dialogue is simpler here, but it's still very humorous to listen to.

While the Co-Op mode takes place after the Single Player mode, it doesn't really matter which one you play first, as both parts are very self-contained. I had a lot of expectations for this game, and they have thus far exceeded them far more than any other game I have played. If you are a fan of the original Portal or have the tiniest curiosity whether or not the sequel is any better than the original, you definitely will not be disappointed with this game. If you are a newcomer, do yourself a favor and purchase the original Portal and play through that first, as there is a story and it is helpful to see it in order. I have fallen in love with this game, and it certainly helps that even in the real world, I can't stop thinking with portals.