Category Archives: Game Review

Game Review: Ghosts Are Good Hosts (2015, Leonard Pilchin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin’ to a party where no one’s still alive
Waiting for an invitation to arrive
Goin’ to a party where no one’s still alive

— Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo, lyrics by Danny Elfman

Last night, you dreamed about going to a party that was being thrown by ghosts.  The next morning, you receive an invitation to just such a party.  Of course, you go.  When you arrive, you meet Annabel, who is not a ghost.  However, the ghosts soon arrive and, once gathered around the table, they look at you with hungry eyes.

As the title of this game states, ghosts are good hosts.  However, they also want to eat you and Annabel for dinner!  Since there’s no way for you to leave the dining room without the permission of your hosts, you’re going to have to talk to the ghosts and somehow win them over.  Not even a ghost would be willing to eat its own friend.

Talk to Corsair, Halle, Kal, and Soul.  It’s not hard.  (All you have to do is point and click and then select what questions you want to ask them.)  Get to know them.  Ask them about each other.  Learn about their stories and compliment them at the right time.  Once you think that you’ve won each ghost over, ask them if they want to be “ghost friends.”  Ask too soon and you’ll get rejected and you might even get eaten.  Ask at the right time and you’ll have a pleasant ghost party and you might even make a living friend out of Annabel.

Ghosts Are Good Hosts is a surprisingly challenging but good-natured TWINE game.  The challenge isn’t finding the right questions to ask as much as it’s asking them in the right order and to the right ghost at the right time.  It’s not easy but it is fun, mostly because each ghost has their own unique story and personality.  Along with the wonderful graphics, the game has a retro feel which will appeal to the nostalgia of every 90s kid who used to play games on a big, bulky personal computer.

Ghost Are Good Hosts can be played here.  If you’re struggling to not get eaten, a walk-through is available here.

Game Review: The Sock Puppet Killer (2019, Jason Cantalini)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this diabolically clever work of interactive fiction, the narrator needs you to track down the Sock Puppet Killer!

Who is the Sock Puppet Killer?  A killer who kills sock puppets, of course!  And why are you the only one who can stop him?  Because that narrator says that you’re former Chief Inspector Caine Slade, the brilliant detective who has been a pathetic drunk ever since the tragic death of your family!

You can tell the narrator that you’re not interested in catching the Sock Puppet Killer.  You can say that you won’t even “do it for the children!”  (Yes, that is an option.)  You can say that you have no memory of ever being Caine Slade.  You can tell the narrator, in detail, why his story doesn’t make any sense.  But eventually, you’re going to end up in a bar, approaching a beautiful woman who you’ve been told is the Sock Puppet Killer.

This is one weird game and winning it going to require more than one try.  Fully understanding everything that is happening is going to take probably a dozen tries.  There are a variety of different decisions to be made throughout the game.  Make the wrong decision and you’ll end up dead.  Make the right decision and you very well could still end up dead.  The best piece of advice that I can give you (without spoiling the game, of course) is to avoid pissing off the narrator.  At one point, I very adamantly told him that I wasn’t going to approach the Sock Puppet Killer and I suddenly found myself drowning in the ocean.  It’s accepted in almost all Interactive Fiction games that the narrator is basically God but The Sock Puppet Killer is remarkable for featuring an easily angered and very vengeful God.

The Sock Puppet Killer is well-written and often loud out loud hilarious.  It’s not an easy game but that just makes it all the more rewarding if you manage to get through the entire thing without dying.

The game can be played by clicking here.

Game Review: Bogeyman (2018, Elizabeth Smyth)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this interactive fiction game, you are put in the role of a child who, after having what you believe to be a nightmare about being abducted, wakes up to discover that you actually have been abducted.  You are now one of several children, living in an isolated mountain cabin and subject to the unpredictable and often cruel whims of your abductor.  Escape seems impossible and survival is going to mean making some truly grim choices.

Bogeyman starts out with a dark premise and then it just gets progressively more dark from there.  Whenever you think that the story can’t get any more unsettling, it does.  It’s not a game where you always get as many choices as you would like.  Often, you have to decide between doing a bad thing or doing an even worse thing.  It’s also not a short game but it grabs your interest from the very first line and I played all the way to the end because, after spending just a few minutes experiencing life in that cabin, I had to know how it would all end.

Bogeyman is a Twine game and it actually makes good use of the format.  White text slowly appears against a black background while subtle but spooky music plays in the background.  Your choices are in all caps, highlighting the desperation of your situation.  There are a few graphics but most of the game takes place in your head.  The game does such a good job of describing the cabin and the situation that you feel like you’re there.

Well-written and carefully put together, Bogeyman is an IF game that sticks with you.  You can experience it here.

 

Game Review: Spring 2020 (2020, Philip J. Rhoades)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Click to Enlarge

In this existential, sequester-inspired horror film, you start in a room.  You cannot leave the room.  There is something appears to be food in the room.  You can do two things.  As the game puts it, “You can only eat or wait.”

The game’s not lying about that, either.  I tried all sorts of tricks to see if maybe I could fool the game into letting me do something else.  I tried to look at the food.  I tried to get the food.  I tried to go north.  I tried to go east.  I tried to go west.  I tried to go south.  I tried to examine the room.  I tried them all.  Just to be told, “You can only eat or wait.”

So, during one game, I ate.  During the next game, I waited.  I did both of those for several turns and things did not go well for me at all.  This is a game that you cannot win but it also captures the way many people feel about 2020.  This is the year when no one wins so why not play a game where no one wins?  It’s a simple game but it captures the mood of the year.

If you want to play this game, you can download it from here.  

Just remember, you only eat or wait.

Game Review: Rockstar (1989, Wizard Games)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Do you want to be a rockstar despite having no musical talent?

Then get over to the Internet Archive and play Rockstar, which is about as close to being a music superstar as most of us will ever get a chance to be!

In Rockstar, you’re a musician.  You start out as a poor, aspiring star.  You’ve got health, creativity, and happiness but you also don’t have any money.  How can you get money?  You can tour the local pubs.  And once you get the money, maybe you can record a single or even an album.  If that album sells well, you might get a record contract.  With a record contract comes so much money that you never have to worry about it again and that’s a good thing because, if you go bankrupt, you have to get a real job and the game ends.

Unfortunately, once you’ve signed that record deal, you’re pretty much a slave to the record company.  They’re going to want you to tour and record and make videos on a regular basis.  Tour too much and it will have a bad effect on your health.  Record too often and your creativity will dry up.  Work too hard and your happiness will go downhill and there will be a good chance that the game will suddenly tell you that you’ve committed suicide.

Fortunately, there’s a way to recharge your happiness and your creativity!  You can take drugs!  The game gives you the option to decide which drugs you want to take.  You can drink.  You can smoke marijuana.  You can drop acid.  You can do cocaine and heroin.  You can get hooked on speed.  Of course, you can be a rock star without doing drugs but it takes a lot longer and it’s not halfway as fun.  The secret is to find the perfect balance of drugs and to go to rehab whenever you’ve become too addicted.  (Otherwise, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually end up dying of an overdose.)  Unfortunately, going to rehab pretty much zaps away all of your happiness.  Assuming that you survive the rehab experience, you’re only option to cheer yourself up is to start doing drugs again.  Do too many drugs and you’ll overdose.  You might survive the overdose but you’ll have to recover in the hospital, which again sucks away your happiness.  Once you get out of the hospital, you better call your connection and quick.

There’s only two ways that Rockstar can end.  You can either voluntarily retire, which brings your career and your fame to an end.  Or you can eventually die, which brings your life to an end but which also ensures that you’ll be remembered forever.  It probably sounds like a depressing game but it’s not.  Whenever the game told me that my latest single was the number one song in America, Europe, and the UK, it made all of the drug overdoses and mental breakdowns worth it.  You don’t play a game like Rockstar to win.  You play it to see how long you can survive.  The longest I’ve kept one of my rock stars alive was for ten years.  Eventually, he drank himself to death while on holiday but it was still a hell of a ride.

Rockstar can be played at the Internet Archive.

Game Review: Detroit: Become Human (2018, Quantic Dream)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Detroit: Become Human takes place in a Detroit of the near future.

Androids, built, programmed, and sold by CyberLife, have become so common place that almost everyone seems to own one.  The androids do everything from domestic work to hard labor to even dangerous security work.  Because they are viewed as just being machines, they have no rights in American society and they are often blamed for stealing jobs from hardworking humans.  Androids have become a luxury that few humans can do without.  Some try to treat their android laborers with respect while other humans are abusively cruel, secure in the knowledge that a damaged android can easily be replaced with a newer model.

Detroit: Become Human is game about three androids, all of whom the player will control at different points in the game.  Two of the androids, Markus and Kara, turn deviant and develop their own free will.  Markus ends up discovering the android community of Jericho and, depending on decisions made by the player, can end up leading either a peaceful or violent revolution against the human race.  Kara is an abused housekeeper android who, after escaping her owner, runs away with a young girl named Alice and attempts to reach Canada, where there are no laws limiting the rights of androids.  On her journey, Kara discovers a mad scientist who tortures androids, a deserted amusement park that is populated exclusively by androids waiting for their humans to return, and eventually the future’s version of the Underground Railroad.

Lastly, Connor is an android who has been designed by CyberLife to track down and destroy deviants.  Connor is assigned to work with police Lt. Hank Anderson to discover why so many androids have been turning on their owners.  Much like Heavy Rain‘s Norman Jayden, Connor is an outsider who has been assigned to aide the establishment.  Just as Norman sought refuge in a VR world, Connor finds himself summoned to an ever-changing zen garden where he is asked questions by his superior and it is up to the player to decide if Connor should tell the truth or lie.  Like Norman, Connor eventually has to decide which side he is on.  How Connor’s story progresses depends on the decisions made by the player.  Choose one path and Connor and Hank can become unlikely allies and Connor might even end up going deviant himself.  Choose another path and Connor might remain a loyal servant of CyberLife to the very end.  It may sound like an easy choice to make but nothing concerning Connor is ever that simple.

Of all the games that I’ve recently played, Detroit: Become Human is tied with Spider-Man for my favorite.  Like Quantic Dream’s previous games, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human tells a sprawling story where nearly every single decision that you make effects what happens in the game.  Like those previous two games, there are no do-overs.  If Markus or Kara dies during one of their chapters, the game continues without them.  (Connor, on the other hand, is just rebuilt by CyberLife and sent back into the field.)  Because the game follows three distinct (but connected) storylines, it is estimated to have over 40 possible endings, which makes it a game that very much rewards being replayed and experimented with.

Detroit: Become Human takes the storytelling and the gameplay concepts introduced in Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and it improves on both of them.  Unlike the uncertain voice acting of Heavy Rain, Detroit: Become Human features characters played by actors like Clancy Brown, Lance Henriksen, Minka Kelly, and Jesse Williams, all of whom do an excellent job of bringing their characters to life.  The game’s recreation of Detroit and the surrounding area is visually rich and detailed and, unlike Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human does not get bogged down in quick time events.  Detroit: Big Human is a game that rewards observant and intelligent players who want to do more than just push buttons while they’re playing a game.

Of course, this is a Quantic Dream game so don’t expect any of Detroit: Become Human‘s political subtext to be subtle.  When t comes to dealing with issues, this game is even more heavy-handed than Beyond: Two Souls.  There’s barely a good human to be found in this game’s version of Detroit.  The best of them is Clancy Brown’s Hank who manages to hate everyone, human and android, equally.  (Of course, who Hank or anyone else in the film ultimately turns out to be, depends on the choices that you make during the game.)  The most interesting of the human characters, though, is Carl Manfred, the artist played Lance Henriksen.  Carl tries to teach Markus how to be human and it’s a confrontation between Carl and his real son (who is jealous of Carl’s relationship with Markus) that leads to Markus setting off on his own.  If Carl dies during the confrontation, he remains an inspiration to Markus and his revolution.  If Carl survives, his later reaction to Markus will depend on what the player has chosen to have Markus do over the course of the game.  Is Carl as benevolent as he seems or was his earlier kindness to Markus just his way of assuaging his own guilt over essentially being a slave owner?  The answer depends on how you play the game.

In the end, it’s the sheer number of possible endings that truly sets this game apart.  This is especially true of Kara.  I haven’t discovered all of the endings yet but, from those that I have reached, Kara’s story always seems to get either the best or the darkest possible conclusion.  Markus, meanwhile, can either be an android of peace or an android of war.  After everything that he is forced to endure over the course of the game, it’s difficult not to go for war every time.  As for Connor, it’s all up to you.  Ultimately, everything is up to you.

I look forward to replaying Detroit: Become Human and seeing what other endings this game has to offer.  And I look forward to seeing what will come next from Quantic Dream.

Retro Game Review: Beyond: Two Souls (2013, Quantic Dream)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In between replaying Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, I decided to go ahead and also replay Qunatic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls.

In Beyond: Two Souls you play two characters who are linked together.  Jodie (Ellen Page) is a troubled young woman who, after being rejected by her family while still a child, is raised by paranormal researcher, Nathan Dawkins (Willem DaFoe).  You are also Aiden, a mysterious psychic force that Jodie can use to read minds and move objects.  Because of Jodie’s powers, the CIA wants them to work for her.  Because Jodie does not want to assassinate progressive world leaders just because the CIA wants them dead (remember, this is a French game), Jodie goes on the run.  The game itself is told out of chronological order, with the player going back and forth from Jodie’s childhood and Jodie’s present as a fugitive.  Like Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, Beyond: Two Souls has multiple endings depending on what you do during the game.

Beyond: Two Souls is a weaker game than both Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human but, when I replayed it, I discovered that it was not as bad as I remembered.  Willem DaFoe and especially Ellen Page are amazing in the roles of Jodie and Nathan and the parts of the game that took place during Jodie’s childhood actually improved on a second playing.  (There’s nothing more fun than burning down the bully’s house.)  The nonlinear storytelling was still needlessly confusing.  Fortunately, there is an option to play the game’s chapters in chronological order.

The game’s flaws were still there, though.  The CIA stuff was heavy-handed but that is to be expected from Quantic Dream.  The main problem I had with the game is that the constant switching back and forth between Jodie and Aiden felt awkward.  You can switch between the two throughout the game and I kept pushing the wrong button and I would suddenly find myself stuck in Aiden form, even when there wasn’t anything for Aiden to do.  The game’s heavy reliance on quick time events also made me feel as if I didn’t have as much control over the narrative as I did in Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human.

Quantic Dream is one of my favorite video game developers because they are willing to experiment and take risks.  Sometimes, those risks pay off and sometimes they lead to an interesting failure, like Beyond: Two Souls.  Tomorrow, I’ll look at one of their experiment’s that worked.

Retro Game Review: Heavy Rain (2010, Quantic Dream)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When it comes to Heavy Rain, it seems that there are two schools of thought.

Some people consider it to be one of the most important and ground-breaking games ever developed, a challenging mystery where nearly every decision that you make will effect what happens next in the game.  Unlike other games, there’s no easy do-overs in Heavy Rain.  If you get one of the four playable characters killed, the game will continue without them.  At a time when people had just started to get bored with games that featured a handful of endings, Heavy Rain revolutionized the entire concept with not just a good and a bad ending but instead with over 20 possible endings.  Your goal is to both discover the identity of the Origami Killer and also to save the life of little Shaun Mars before he drowns in a cage.  Fail and the chances are that the last thing the game will show you is an image of the flooded cage with Shaun nowhere to be seen.

Other people consider Heavy Rain to be a game where the main goal is to get Madison Paige naked as many times as possible.

Madison

Madison

Madison is the photojournalist who, suffering from insomnia, checks into a cheap motel and happens to meet Shaun’s father, Ethan.  Madison seems to spend the entire game either undressing or getting threatened by men who want her to undress.  If the player chooses, Madison and Ethan can make love in his hotel room.  The bra removal mini-game is actually one of the more challenging parts of Heavy Rain.  For the record, it is possible to play the game without Madison taking a shower, stripping for a club owner, having sex with Ethan, or even getting attacked by the crazy doctor who repeatedly tries to stab her in the crotch with a surgical tool.  It’s possible but I doubt many players have done so.

Ethan

 

How does Heavy Rain hold up after 9 years?  Surprisingly well.  The game has its flaws.  There’s the infamous and much parodied scene where Ethan searches for his son in a mall while calling out his name in a flat monotone.  Quantic Dream is a French company and, when you play the game, it is obvious that some of the voice actors were more comfortable with the English language than others.  But the the game’s rain-soaked and doom-heavy imagery all hold up well and the multiple endings make this a game that’s worthy of multiple replays.

Norman

All four of the main characters are intriguing, even the much-criticized Madison Paige.  The best of them is Norman Jayden, the drug-addicted FBI agent who uses VR technology to solve his cases.  Unfortunately, the game also seems to be determined to kill Norman.  If you can make it to the end without Norman either dying or abandoning the case, you will have truly triumphed at Heavy Rain.  My only complaint is that Lauren Winter, the prostitute who joins forces with private eye Scott Shelby, wasn’t a playable character because she had one of the most interesting storylines.  If Lauren and Scott both somehow survive the game, you’ll get one of the best endings that Heavy Rain has to offer.

Lauren

Scott Shelby, the private investigator, gets some of the game’s best scenes.  He is big and slow and he always seems to need to use his inhaler but he can still handle himself in a fight.  He gets the game’s big action set piece, where he takes out an entire army of armed guards in just a matter of minutes.  At the end of the scene, he also gets to make one of the game’s biggest decisions.  Do you do the “honorable” thing or do you leave a bad man to die?  Whichever decision you make, it is one of Heavy Rain‘s most satisfying moments.

Scott Shelby

The majority of the game centers on Ethan, the father who has has to avoid the police while trying to save his son.  He is given a set of challenges by the Origami Killer, all designed to prove whether he’s worthy of being a father.  The bra-removal mini-game may be the most challenging part of Heavy Rain but the sawing off your own finger mini-game may be a close second.  A close third would have to be the diaper-changing mini-game.  It’s amazing how many different things you end up doing while trying to keep a little boy from drowning.  At the same time, I was as proud of myself for changing that diaper as I was for unsnapping that bra.  I was less proud about sawing off Ethan’s finger but it had to be done.

Ethan and saw

9 years after it was first released, Heavy Rain holds up better than I was expecting.  It’s flaws are still there and the plot holes become even more obvious with each time that you play it.  A frequent complaint that I’ve read about the game is that, in order for the mystery’s solution to make any sense, you have to be willing to accept that the Origami Killer would not only lie to other people but would also lie to himself.  The challenges that Ethan are put through are sometimes too reminiscent of Saw and even the rightly celebrated atmosphere sometimes leans too heavily on the obvious influence of Davids Fincher and Lynch.  (That Norman Jayden is based on Twin Peaks‘s Dale Cooper should be obvious to the most casual of viewers.)

Norman and Mad Jack

But, flaws and all, it’s impossible not to like this game or to appreciate the influence that it’s had on many of the games that have followed it.  Even it’s cheesiest moments are fun.  With the way the storyline branches out and changes depending on almost every decision that you make, this is a game that rewards frequent replays.  Each decision you make, you find yourself thinking, “What would have happened if I had done something else?”  Fortunately, with this game, you’ve got a chance to find out.  For that reason, Heavy Rain remains one of my favorites and a game that I’m looking forward to replaying soon.

Ethan, moping. Madison, helping.

 

Game Review: Night Trap (1992, Sega)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Moral panics about video games are nothing new.

Long before people were worrying about the violence in Grand Theft Auto or the nudity in Heavy Rain, they were holding Congressional hearings about a game called Night Trap. 

Night Trap was an interactive movie video game, one that was presented through full motion video at a time when that was still a big deal.  The player was a member of S.C.A.T., the Special Control Attack Team.  For 25 minutes, your job was to watch as blood-sucking creatures known as Augers attempted to launch a sneak attack on five girls at a slumber party.  Whenever an Auger approached a trap, the player had to click a button to capture the Auger.

It sounds pretty simple and it was.

It also sounds pretty stupid and again, it was.

Night Trap initially received some attention because it featured former Diff’rent Strokes star Dana Plato as one of the girls.  Plato played Kelly, who was actually an undercover member of S.C.A.T. and who searched for clues while you were busy trapping Augers.  Plato gave such an annoying performance that many gamers probably purposefully let a few Augers escape just so they could get the “bad” ending, with Kelly plunging into Hell.

 

However, even more than Dana Plato running around in a sports bra, it was a scene of one of the girls being stalked while wearing a nightgown that truly worried the moral guardians of 1993.  At the Congressional hearings, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Herb Kohl spent hours reviewing this scene and demanding to know whether it had any socially redeeming qualities.  The hearings also focused on Mortal Kombat and the senators seemed to be far more offended by an actress in a nightgown than they were about Kano ripping his opponent’s still-beating heart out of his chest.

Night Trap seems tame today but, of course, it was also tame back in 1993.  One reason why the “nightgown scene” got so much attention at the hearings is because it was the only scene in the entire game that could be considered the least bit racy.  There’s no sex or nudity in Night Trap.  For the most part, there’s also not any violence.  Whatever actual blood sucking that happens in Night Trap happens off-camera.  Probably the most intense scenes in the game involved Dana Plato scolding you if you let too many of the girls get captured.  Since the only thing the player could do during the game was activate a trap by pushing a button at a certain moment, this game required not so much skill as just being able to keep track of time.  Now, If you enjoyed just pushing a button over and over again, Night Trap might have some appeal but otherwise, this is a dull and poorly acted game.  Not even as formidable a thespian as Dana Plato could liven things up.

Ironically, those Congressional hearings made Night Trap.  If people still remember the game today, it’s because of those hearings.  If you want to know how a boring game like Night Trap could get a special 25th anniversary edition, it was because of those hearings.  There’s nothing like a moral panic to boot sales.

 

 

Game Review: Suspect (1984, Infocom)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The time is Halloween, circa 1984.  You are a newspaper reporter who has been invited to the annual Halloween costume party that is being thrown by your old friend, Veronica Ashcroft-Wellman.  You show up, eager to find a story.  You are dressed as a cowboy, complete with a lariat and a gun belt.  Shortly after you arrive, Veronica goes to her office.  Not long afterwards, Veronica is discovered dead.  Around her neck is your lariat.  Lying near her body is a bullet from your gun belt.  You’re not only a suspect.  In the eyes of the police, you’re the only suspect!

Infocom’s third and final murder mystery followed Deadline and The Witness.  Just like those two games, you have a limited amount of time to explore your surroundings, find clues, and talk to the other people at the party.  Run out of time and you’ll once again be approached by the trusted Sgt. Duffy.  This time, though, Duffy is coming to take you to jail.  The stakes have never been higher and the mystery has never been more complex.  Not only is the house bigger than the houses in Deadline and The Witness but there’s also many more suspects, all of whom are in costume and all of whom move around at their own free will.  Clues are not difficult to find but it can be a struggle to not only figure out how they link together but to also the convince the investigative detective that they are important.  This is not an easy game to win.  I played it several times and failed to solve the mystery every time.  Finally, I did what anyone would have done in my situation.

I cheated.

I found a walk-through for the game and, following it step-by-step, I solved the murder and cleared my name.  If I hadn’t used that walk-through, I probably never would have solved the case.  This is not a game for casual text adventurers.  This is for people who want to totally immerse themselves in a world and then spend hours working out a plan of attack.

It’s also an elegantly written game, with its fair share of Easter eggs for experienced gamers.  Just count the number of guests who have come to the party costumed like characters from other Inform games.  This game is tough but rewarding, even if you do end up having to cheat to win.

Suspect can be played at the Internet Archive.