Into Darkness, Follow Yourself. A Resullian review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Welcome welcome, everyone, to the next best thing! Today we're taking a step into the cold depths of Brennenburg Castle.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror game made by Frictional Games for PC. This game takes everything we knew about the genre and puts it into a terrifying first person perspective but the catch is...you have no way to defend yourself. If you see an enemy, you either run or hide!

The first thing you'll notice when you begin the game is that the main protagonist, Daniel, has lost his memory. A fairly typical start to a game but the atmosphere is enhanced by the dark walls of Brennenburg and the strange pink fluid on the ground. Your only clue is to follow it until you find a note to you...from yourself. The note explains why you've lost your memory and what you must do to survive against a "Shadow" that follows you constantly. Your only advice to yourself: Run.

Your goal is to find the master of the castle, Alexander, and kill him. Your previous self's hatred for him is quite obvious.

A fairly decent start to the game, if a little stereotypical, no?

After this point the story is all told through notes and scraps of paper you find throughout the castle. Things that happened in Daniel's life that lead up to him coming to Brennenburg, Daniel's thoughts to the happenings around him, and also some notes of how this castle and the mysteries inside it somehow have something to do with every part of history...you may not have your own memory and you may be running for your life but you are most certainly getting into something big.

The gameplay in this game doesn't stand out too much. You walk around, can pick up any object you want and open any door and cupboard that's not locked. Simple. The survival part of the gameplay comes less in the form of keeping yourself alive but more like keeping your sanity. Yes, Amnesia has a sanity meter. Your sanity is affected by the darkness. The longer you spend in it, the lower your sanity gets. The only thing is, the sanity does little more than have some simple visual effects and supposedly makes enemies move faster. It cannot kill you and though you are given many ways to stay in the light Daniel's eyes will adjust to the dark if you stay in it for a few seconds. The sanity meter pales in comparison to games such as Eternal Darkness which had very unexpected results and much more shock factor.

You will find many tinderboxes, used to light candles and torches throughout the castle, and a lantern for those areas where there are no lights that you can fill with oil from canisters you'll find everywhere.

On the note of enemies: though they pose a threat to Daniel, as a player they won't really do much to hinder you. You can practically run right next to them without getting hurt. Their appearances are randomized except for a few key areas...at the end of the game. I gotta wonder if their spawning is caused by your sanity meter getting low or something of the sort. If you continuously make progress like I did you'll almost never see them. I went more than half the game running into only one or two of them.

The main reason they aren't a problem for you, however, is the fact that if they spot you and you can't run away from them...you can let yourself die and go back only a small ways. The areas of the castle aren't large. The point of most games is to not die, of course, but in the end the enemies are merely superfluous and do little more but hinder your continuous progress.

Since your sanity meter improves by making progress and staying in the light it's not hard to keep your sanity relatively normal at all times. Unless you literally light every candle and constantly use your lantern you will probably never even run out of items.

In the end, Amnesia is definitely more a game for atmosphere and story than it is for gameplay. The puzzles you run into are thought out well enough but leave no room for failure due to the game's constant autosaving. Aside from figuring out what goes where (and the game will tell you if something doesn't belong) all you have to do is press a button or pull a switch to activate a contraption after it's been pieced together.

The game's story mostly consists of the events before you take control of Daniel at the beginning. His journey before finding the Orb that ultimately lead him to Brennenburg Castle, memories of Daniel being given a tour of the castle by Alexander, even some of the things Daniel did while he was here. The best parts of the story, however, come at the end of the game when you reach the torture chambers. The one and only NPC you run into that isn't an enemy is pulled off very well and he is quite an amicable fellow to boot. It helps to release any tension you might have had before you go on to your next grueling task on your way to finding Alexander.

Music in this game is little more than supplementary to the experience. It's background music and nothing more. There is only one song that stands out and it's because it's so different from the rest and meant to soothe your mind.

In conclusion, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is more or less a fairly standard survival horror game that seems to have caught more attention for it's atmosphere and first person perspective more than anything. I would go so far as to say that the horror elements in this game are unnecessary and this game would have been better as a puzzle adventure game. The horror elements, particularly the enemies, always felt like they were just getting in the way of making progress.

I didn't find the game to be very scary though I realize that mileage may vary and the anticipation leading to a scare that may or may not be there is more terrifying than the actual thing that scares you. Since the enemies are seemingly randomized you'll never know when one is going to come at you but when you realize that you can merely let it kill you just to get it out of the way the horror side of things kind of fades away. The sanity meter was just as useless since it's easy to keep it up and any time it did get low it didn't stop you from doing anything.

If you're looking for horror and are easily scared, this game might still get you. If you want a game for atmosphere with some interesting puzzles, the game will definitely catch your interest. If you're the type who's not easily scared and is looking at this game because of all the hype about it being the scariest thing out there...well you're looking in the wrong place. Though it is, by design, a horror game I felt the horror elements did not do the game justice and it could have worked better as a dark and atmospheric puzzle game without all the silly enemies and sanity meter.

Thank you for reading, see you next time!

Detonation Mode Activate! A Resullian Review of Wild Arms 4!

Ah, Wild Arms. Mi amor. The series that has felt my love since I first started gaming. I had started the series with Wild Arms 2 many years ago after having seen Wild Arms 1 and seeing the case for the second one and not knowing that the game I saw was a different one. A few weeks later I begged my mom to pick up that case for me and it turned out to be a different game entirely. It wasn't until years later that I learned that the game I had seen was, in fact, the first Wild Arms. It was thanks to this one mistake that the greatest game and series of all time graced my meager abode.

Is it at all possible, then, that a game in this series could disappoint me in some way? Yes, yes it is. Wild Arms 4 is often considered the worst game in the series and it's fairly easy to see why that is. Walk with me as I tell you of both the wonders and horrors that Media.Vision has wrought with the fifth entry in the Wild Arms: Wild Arms The Fourth Detonator on Playstation 2.

What's that? Fifth entry? Why yes! There was, in fact, a remake of the first Wild Arms under the new subtitle of Alter Code F for the Playstation 2.

As I was saying...welcome, to the next best thing in the Wild Arms series.

(Note: All games in the series will be referred to as WA(number) from now on so as to avoid sounding redundant as much as possible.)

Let's start out talking about things this game did differently from previous entries in the series. It was a vast departure from the gameplay of the three games that came before it. For one thing: They added real platforming. In the past the series has always had a more vertical level design via the ability to drop down from ledges (something more RPGs should do, I think!) as well as many gameplay tools that allow you to cover gaps in the flooring but in WA4 they actually add a jump and even double jump button! It's because of this small but significant change that the level design had to be altered. More platforms, more vertical ascension and more complex puzzles.

Now speaking of puzzles, there's something the series has always done well. One way or another you would always have to solve puzzles to get through dungeons using the tools provided to each character. It's because of the unique nature of the tool system that puzzles in the WA series are a little more creative than most games. While like in most games you will almost always be able to tell what tool to use for what puzzle at the very least they are often themed to match the dungeons you go to so you never feel like the puzzle is just in your way, it's actually a part of the dungeon.

Tools, however, also change from previous games. Unlike in the past where you could switch between the characters to use their tools as needed this game has you only controlling the main character, Jude. This is a slight step down but it's a manageable change. The tools are still there, of course. Many of them are cut down to standard stuff like swords to hit switches with and shields to block projectiles as you move through a puzzle room but there are also some throwbacks to the other games in the series such as the Mist Cloak which allows you to pass through any grated surface just as it did in WA2. You can't jump when you hold a tool though so this adds to the puzzle complexity. It's fairly easy to bring a tool a little too far down the path and not be able to get back up!

However this only applies to main dungeons. The game uses one of those "pick your destination" world maps but many of the game's "dungeons" are actually just paths you can traverse, fight enemies and open treasure chests. Though many of them have story in them they are usually very short and have no puzzles. Because of this you will spend a majority of the game getting from one place to the other and just kind of walking through the story until the next big dungeon or town.

The biggest change in the entire game is the new HEX battle system. Instead of the traditional turn-based they now have a battlefield set across seven (HEX)agons that allies and enemies can move across and use to their benefit if they happen to have an elemental Ley Point on each HEX. Not only is this battle system an improvement on traditional turn-based because it adds a level of strategy but when you get more abilities later in the game you're able to take even more advantage of the Ley Points and the battlefield in a way that allows you to dominate even bosses.

The game is balanced so that it is possible to be utterly destroyed by even regular enemies and puts focus on strategy and encourages using each character's strengths and protecting their weaknesses. Bosses in particular take an extra dose of strategy, however, because of their ability to destroy your party in a single turn if you aren't careful. (like a boss that will insta-kill anyone in his attack range but he changes his pattern on a set queue of attacks.)

Here's where things start to get...iffy. The story, setting and characters. While they continue on the trend of western with a bit of sci-fi this game takes on a darker tone by placing you into a post-war world that is dying. There is a brown haze over most of the world but people eek out a living in small settlements in a newly created democratic government....except the people who originally fought to create this new government are now thinking that mankind is not strong enough to make this system of government work! You can imagine this causes many problems but this isn't what the main story is about.

Jude having been ripped from his sheltered life from a military strike attempting to capture the people of his village finds himself traveling across the globe searching for them with the help of Yulie, a girl who had been experimented on and made to control the powerful weapons known as ARMs, though she cannot use one herself; Arnaud, a teenager who learned to fly from his father so he could visit his mother in heaven when he was a child and now has a vast intellect that he skeptically uses to help the party with this magic; and last but certainly  not least: Raquel, a swordswoman with a mysterious past who travels the world to find the few beautiful things left behind after the war.

Now here's where things go bad: The dialog in the game is childish, repetitive and goes in circles and hardly improves. Literally every conversation ends with "Kids who shouldn't be able to do something or think a certain way vs adults who should protect children or think children should let adults do all the thinking"

This "kids vs adults" crap is the basis of 80% (rough estimate) of the conversations between the main characters and many of their interactions with boss characters. I get that you wanna portray that the future is for children to create and adults should guide them but it's WAY too much in this game.

Bleh, you can imagine how this made me question Media.Vision's ability to tell a story. This is also one of the main reasons the game is so low on people's Wild Arms lists. I hear WA5 is an absolute improvement on everything WA4 did both right and wrong.

The music in WA4 doesn't change much from the rest of the series either. It has many great tracks but they are all very recognizable as Michiko Naruke's handiwork. One of the greatest songs in the game is a boss theme that actually remixes the main Wild Arms 1 theme into it which adds a sense of nostalgic flair to it and it only really plays during pivotal boss fights.

Then we reach the final boss. I won't spoil anything about the boss itself but between the atmosphere and the music, which is the main theme of WA4 but slightly remixed to insert guitar solos to make it sound more like boss music. There's also a ten years later segment afterwards that adds much closure to the story.

 I can honestly say that it was well worth trudging through the horrible dialog and the long and linear dungeons to get to the end of the game. The music was as amazing as always, the dungeon design has improved vastly and puzzles are as creative and fitting as previous games in the series and the HEX battle system is just so much fun to battle in. The overall setting and story did it's job as it always does in Wild Arms, even if they couldn't hold a conversation to save their lives.

And with that I leave you with a recommendation: If you like the Wild Arms series then this game is worth playing at least once. If you enjoy gameplay than this game has arguably some of the best in the series. If you want story then look elsewhere. This game will not deliver until the very end of the game which may not be worth your time in the first place. I hope you enjoyed reading and it gave you an idea of whether the game is worth picking up or not!

I await thee, Xillia.

According to the numbers I'm seeing on Wikipedia I can only infer that Tales of Xillia (PS3) is going to roxxors our soxxors until we cry manly tears of joy. The wait for it's release (which is still labeled TBA 2013 on Wikipedia though I thought I heard something about a July release somewhere) is killing me. I've been playing a lot of the major games this year including DmC, Tomb Raider and Ni No Kuni and even with The Last Of Us coming in June I get the feeling that nothing will stand up to Xillia. If all goes as expected (by me) then it might be one of the best RPGs to come out this generation and will be a solid exclusive to add to the PS3 library.

A Tidy Ol' Time: A Resullian Review Of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Have you ever wondered what it would be like for anime companies and video companies to get along? What would happen if we had the amazing programming and gameplay of a video game developer combined with the music, story and characters of a solid anime animator? Ni No Kuni (literally "Second Country") gives you exactly that; Developed by Level-5 (Professor Layton, Dark Cloud) with the designs and music of the famous Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) Ni No Kuni really delivers the feeling that anime and video games were meant to be together.

The game starts out throwing you into a little town that emulates a rural town in 1950's America. You immediately get a feel for what the town is like by all the old vehicles driving around and the manner in which people dress. Almost immediately you are introduced to the protagonist, Oliver, who is grocery shopping for his mother in one of those smalltown shops that you could barely fit ten people into at any given time. The characters also seem to act and speak with a dialect that closely resembles the "innocence" of America back in those days. Throughout the game Oliver will often break out with exclamations such as "NEATO!" which is something you were most likely to hear back in that time period. It's important to know that this world, Motorville, doesn't necessarily take place in the actual United States of America but rather a Ghibli reinterpretation made into a fantasy world.

They also have actual animated cutscenes thanks to Ghibli and these really add to the overall feel of the game. A lot of games have scenes in them where there'll be special CG or animations to represent something but very few actually animate their scenes. Mind you Ni No Kuni doesn't do it all the time and when it does there seems to be a bit of a lower framerate than Ghibli movies usually are but they still deliver that exact same feel. There's much attention to detail to the interactions between characters, physics and facial expressions. All of Ghibli's best traits! The gameplay even reflects some of these details as well such as Oliver actually walking up and down stairs with his eyes on the stairs so he doesn't slip and with an animation that suggests he's on stairs. It's normal these days to see an animation for walking on stairs but none of them compare to Oliver's stairs animation. There's also another detail that I really love: If you walk backward into Drippy you can sometimes knock him over and he'll get back up and say "Hey, mun, watch it!" I mean, c'mon, how awesome is it that you can actually walk into him instead of just pushing him around and knock him over and have him make such an exclamation? Another great detail is that if you are at a cutscene that Drippy isn't directly involved in you can usually see him doing something in the background. The mark of a good game is when the game itself pays attention to the tiniest of details.

Another great example of how much thought they put into this game is the Wizard's Companion. I'm not just talking about the actual book you got with a preorder (I didn't get this one myself but oh do I wish I had) but the one in-game as well. You can view any pages you've unlocked and there is literally a full book in there with very detailed pages that tell you everything from spells and their elements and uses, creatures and what they drop and where to find them, stories that loosely resemble a lore system as well as general information on the locales you visit. All of this and very well-drawn illustrations scattered throughout and there's even a new alphabet for an ancient language! The alphabet is little more than replacing the alphabet you are reading with symbols but it makes you realize that they wanted to give you a FULL experience. Level-5 and Studio Ghibli really did their best to not half-ass anything, to make sure that the consumer was satisfied with every little thing in the game. They even went so far as to let you choose whether you wanted to use a waypoint or not! They went to great lengths to make the game enjoyable for everyone.

Now, after some heart crushing events Oliver makes the decision to venture into a parallel world to save his mother's life lead by Drippy who was previously a stuffed doll that Oliver used for comfort! Drippy is a perfect example of that "true Ghibli style". In every way he resembles small creatures in the movies. One thing Ghibli has always been good at is having very visually appealing characters and creatures without relying on typical anime tropes such as boxom women or fully-loaded men in trenchcoats. He's also got quite the interesting personality and in combination with his Welsh/Pakistani accent he'll have you smirking at one-liners or encouraging you with his assertive notions that all is possible when you put your mind to it. As cheesy as that sounds he actually makes it sound good, oddly enough.

This new world is where you'll start seeing Level-5's work as not only will you actually start playing the game but you'll also find many design choices that have Level-5 written all over it such as the world map, how it's structure and the rate of progression through it.

The pacing in Ni No Kuni is rather amazing actually. Depending on how often you do sidequests you're likely to spend a few hours in one town, getting to know the locals via the Errand Board (random quests and tasks from the citizens) as well as the Bounty Hunts (which will send you on a hunt for some creature for all sorts of reasons ranging from the creature causing trouble to downright near causing natural disasters!) as well as all the story and dungeons you'll run into. Every town is packed full of things to do and there's dungeons aplenty around them to keep you busy until the game is ready to let you move on. The environments are a little typical for an RPG: hilly plains, large deserts, vast oceans, industrialized nations, dark swamps and even a tundra, but each location has it's own unique citizenry and society.

They also take their time to introduce you to new features. It takes you all the way to the second city and a dungeon closeby to finally get the ability to actually CATCH familiars instead of just fighting them. This is several hours into the game but not so far in that you'll feel like you missed a lot. They also give you a spell that lets you fast travel just when traveling between each city starts to get tedious.

There is one area that really screams "This.....THIS is a Ghibli design" because of the music and characters you'll meet there. Drippy's hometown is a lively little place ruled over by the mother of all fairies. This area will send you on a bit of a quest to help two guys get their sense of humor back so they can do a stand up routine to help you advance. (Trust me, it DOES make sense when you are playing) Unlike most games that try to throw in a bit of humor with "funny characters" they really seemed to have put some work into the writing of these jokes. They are actually mildly funny and very well written. Just clever enough to get a smirk out of anyone but not so outrageously funny that you'd have tears in your eyes. The writing in Ni No Kuni is very well done and while they use many generic archetypes they are also very, VERY mindful of little details such as the Grimalkin king of the first town you visit always being called "Your Meowjesty".

Now, let me talk to you about the gameplay a bit. Ni No Kuni mixes a little of monster capture with a bit of an ATB (Active Time Battle) system. You eventually obtain the ability to catch the monsters that you fight and there are a lot of them but the game is made simpler by the fact that many of them are from the same family so if you've caught one, you're likely to get the others later in the game due to evolving the weaker ones from earlier. What's more is leveling up takes up less of your time since, even if they aren't in battle, as long as a familiar is in your party it gets experience! This definitely helps for those of us who don't want to spend a million years equally leveling a party of nine (three for each party member) or sticking to just three or four main types throughout the game. Certainly there are some deeper mechanics at work here but it's very friendly to those who haven't played a game like this before or don't want a hassle and just want to play the game.

The game implements a pretty decent reward system as well since when you do errands or bounty hunts you'll get lots of money but any items you get will be pretty standard except for a few that will give decent equipment. Now here's where things get interesting: They encourage you to do them not just for the small treats you get but also to collect Merit Stamps which fill up punch cards. When you fill up enough of these punch cards you get to trade them in for very special items that will enhance your experience. You'll get some fantastic items like ones that raise the drop rates of items from enemies or making Oliver move faster on the world map. One thing they really nailed is knowing how to make you WANT to do the side stuff. I can't imagine playing through the game without these nifty items!

But don't let the game fool you! There's also sidequests not listed in the Bounty Hunts or Errand Board such as a continuous quest throughout the game where a certain character will give you puzzles to solve and if you finish them he will give Oliver a new spell. Pretty neat, right? Well it seems this "sidequest" is also required at some parts as he gives you spells that you need to advance forward. What's more is that most of the sidequests only add to the immersion and give you insight into the daily lives of the citizens of each town. The way they live, the people they interact with, their amibitions and pasts, and much more!

There's also the alchemy pot, something Level-5 has used in many of the Dragon Quest games that they developed, that allows for the making of good equipment and better items if you are willing to hunt and forage for the items in battle and around the world map.

I hope you like minigames too cuz Ni No Kuni has it's own casino with four games in it. Four very fun games and prizes to be won! One of the games is just a redux of a puzzle earlier in the game named Double Cross, one of them is typical Blackjack, one is Slots with a twist and the final one is actually something totally new. It's a strategy card game called Platoon which can actually be played with a regular deck of poker cards. I won't go into details but you can tell they definitely put some thought into making the side stuff entertaining as well as rewarding.

I've rambled long enough. Needless to say Ni No Kuni really hits the spot if you are itching for a great RPG and anime elements that don't conform to typical tropes that get a little old over time.

Welcome to the next best thing

Salutations! Welcome to my new blog. My name is Micheal "Resulli" Jett, Res for short. The purpose of this blog is, as with most blogs, general thoughts on certain material but I plan to make most of it gaming related. I am an amateur reviewer as well so many of what you see will be my own brand of reviews of many games ranging from popular to obscure, new to old, handheld to PC (Eventually anyway, since I don't have a gaming PC at the moment and the most I can handle right now is browser-based flash games)

I have every intention of using this blog as a place for personal thoughts as well as a place to improve my journalistic as well as literary skills. I'm always open to a bit of criticism on my writing or how I express my opinions. A bit of eloquence goes a long way.

I will eventually post my older reviews up to show my progress as a reviewer, all of which are posted around the internet under the name "Resulli", but for now I'm cooking up a review for a couple of games so expect to see one in the next few days.

A big shout out to the gang at the Robot Blog for inspiring me to better my reviewing skills as well as signing up for Blogger over other sites.

I'm hoping to get a banner up soon so the place doesn't look quite as boring.

Welcome....to the next best thing.