Category Archives: Game Review

Horror Game Review: A Shift In The Night (2022, Muulk)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You have a job working the graveyard shift at a gas station in the desert.  Because you have been hearing things coming from the backroom, you go to see a doctor.  He tells you that hallucinations are an occupational hazzard for people who work overnight.  He gives you some pills to control them.  He says that you must take them every hour.

Feeling better about things, you go to work and discover that you left your pills at home.  Can you survive the night?

A Shift In the Night is a work simulator where you attempt to get through your shift without dying.  It’s not just the weird buzzing coming from the stockroom that’s a threat.  There are also customers to deal with.  Some of them are harmless.  Some of them are crazy.  One of them is definitely very dangerous.  Good luck guessing which is which.

You would think that surviving an 8-hour night shift wouldn’t be that difficult but I have so far managed to die in four different ways while playing A Shift In The Night and absolutely none of those deaths were pleasant.  The game uses graphics and sound effects to put you right in that gas station.  When I was 18 and fresh out of high school, I worked nights part-time to help pay my college tuition and this game captures the atmosphere of the night shift.  I always enjoyed the freedom of not having to deal with salaried management but I also knew that I had a greater chance of getting shot at night than during the day.  This game brought back memories.

Play A Shift In The Night.

Remember When The Burger King Was Your Trainer?

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The bad news is that work has been really busy this week.

The good news is that, a few weekends ago, I got my old Xbox out of storage and I discovered that it still works!  I’ve been blowing off steam by playing Fight Night Round 3, which I still think is the best boxing game that I’ve ever played.  From the creation of your boxer to the training to the path to becoming champion, Fight Night Round 3 is one addicting fight game.  I do think that the game cheats by letting your opponent take more punishment than I think any other boxer could handle but that’s what games do.

After all these years, I had forgotten that you could pick the Burger King to be your trainer.

Back when this game first came out, how many of you were like me and automatically picked The Burger King because you thought he’d give you some sort of special skill in the ring that none of the other, non-mascot trainers could provide?  I always went with The Burger King as my trainer until I realized he wasn’t any good.  All he did was dance around the stage and probably steal my prize money when I wasn’t looking.  Back in the day, I actually got sick of seeing him listed as even being an option.  I wanted to fire him and bring in a real trainer, like Jack from Jack in the Box or maybe the Grimace.

This weekend, when I played the game for the first time in years, I used the Burger King as my trainer for old times sake.  Oscar de la Hoya knocked me out in three rounds.  I’m done with the Burger King but I look forward to playing Fight Night until my Xbox finally gives up the ghost.

Horror Game Review: Kiss of Beth (2021, Charm Cochran)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Cordero has just knocked on the door of your home.  He’s here to take your roommate Beth on a date.  While Beth gets ready, your job is to check Cordero out.  Have a conversation with him.  Find out what he’s planning to do on the date.  Maybe ask him about his family or his plans for school.  You could even ask to see pictures of his dog if you want.  Find out all that you feel you need to know about Cordero because, towards the end of the game, you’re going to have to make a big decision.  And that decision will effect not only how Cordero views you but also your relationship with Beth.

With the exception of the final few moments of the game, Kiss of Beth is a conversation simulator.  At the start of the game, it seems like you are just being an overprotective friend but, as things progress, it becomes obvious that there is more to your relationship with Beth than just friendship.  There are two potential endings, a good one and a bad one.  I’ve discovered that it’s a lot easier to get the bad one than the good one.

Kiss of Beth can be played in less than 15 minutes and, because of the number of choices and the multiple endings, it’s a game that can be replayed several times.  After you finish the game the first time and learn the true nature of your relationship with Beth, you’ll be surprised when you play the game a second time and see that all the clues were right there for you to see.

Play Kiss of Beth.

Horror Game Review: Friends? (2022, MBoone)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

One night, Natt is woken up by his friends Josh and Stan.  Josh and Stan want Natt to step outside and have a drink.  Natt has not seen or checked up on Josh and Stan for a while.  Natt can be a friend and have a drink or he can go back to sleep.  Either way, he is going to end up in a bad situation.  Are Josh and Stan friends?  Natt soon discovers that there are consequences for not keeping up with people.

Friends? is a choose you own adventure style horror game.  You decide how Natt reacts to things and then you discover what happens as a result of Natt’s decisions.  The majority of the decisions appear to lead to Natt dying a horrible and gruesome death.  If you make the right choices, Natt can survive but it’s very difficult to get through the game without Natt taking on some damage, both physically and mentally.

A few typos aside, Friends? is well-written and the endings are gruesome and twisted enough to keep most horror game players happy.  It doesn’t take long to discover that there are very real consequences to making the wrong decision.  The game features multiple endings and multiple paths to those endings, making it a game that can replayed several times.

Play it and then check up on your friends.  They would probably love to hear from you.

Play Friends?

Game Review: Night Train (2022, Evan Farris)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this Twine game, you wake up in a train.  The train appears to be deserted, except for you.  Outside the windows, everything appears to be dark.  Do you explore the train and try to discover why you have become a passenger and just where exactly it is that you’re going?  Or do you go back to your compartment and wait for an answer?

This is a short and simple Twine game, written in the style of an old Choose Your Own Adventure book.  You are given various options that you can use to explore the train and hopefully learn what is going on.  Make the right choices and you’ll find the answers.  Make the wrong choice and you’ll fall victim to a fate of Lovecraftian horror.  The game takes less than ten minutes to play and I do wish there had been a few more options but the game’s story is intriguing and it does a good job of capturing the player’s attention.  This game really makes use of a classic Interactive Fiction scenario.  You wake up with no idea where or even who you are.  You spend the rest of the game trying to answer those questions.  There are a few typos in the game but, for all I know, there’s probably a few typos in this review.  None of them are serious enough to really interfere with the experience of playing the game itself.

Play Night Train!

Game Review: The Godfather II (2009, EA)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Since I had already gotten my old Xbox 360 out of storage so I could play The Godfather game this weekend, I decided to also try my hand at the replaying game version of The Godfather II.

The Godfather II takes place in the 60s.  You play Dom, a Corleone soldier who becomes Michael’s right-hand man after you help him escape from Cuba during the revolution.  Back in New York, Michael assigns you to take control of the city from the Rosato brothers.  Eventually, you will also gain the ability to fly out to Miami and Cuba, where you’ll meet Hyman Roth and continue to extort businesses and battle rival families.  It’s another Grand Theft Auto-style game, where you can focus on the story or you can just focus on exploring the open world and seeing what type of trouble you can get into.

The good thing about The Godfather II is that you get to select the members of your crew and you can send them on all of the missions that you don’t feel like dealing with.  They also stick with you and act as bodyguards whenever you get into a gun fight.  Choosing the members of your crew is one of the best parts of the game because every potential recruit comes with their own skills and their own personality.  Like you, the members of your crew can be taken out of commission if they get heavily wounded but they’ll always return after a brief trip to the hospital.  However, if you get tired of a member of your crew, you can remove his invulnerability and toss him off a roof or send him on a suicide mission to attack the Rosato Compound all by himself.  That’s the power of being the underboss.

Other than the stuff with the crew, Godfather II is not as much fun as the first Godfather game.  The combat feels clunky and the game’s overall design feel rushed.  Sending Dom to three different cities instead of concentrating on recreating 60s New York was a mistake.  There’s not that much difference between the game’s version of New York, Miami, and Havana.  Plus, the game didn’t allow me to take out Castro.  What’s the point of sending me to Havana if you’re not going to let me change history?

When it comes to Godfather games, the second one is good enough to be played once but it doesn’t reward a replay.  The first Godfather game is the one that still remains enjoyable after all these years.

Video Game Review: The Godfather (2006, EA)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Due to getting handed a major project at work, I missed the last few days of our annual Horrorthon and now I’ve got some catching up to do.  It’s frustrating and, whenever I get frustrated and need to blow off some steam, I get my old Xbox 360 out of storage and I concentrate my efforts on running the Straccis out of New Jersey.

New Jersey is one of the many neighborhoods that you can take over in EA’s video game version of The Godfather.  New Jersey is full of nice houses, dive bars, and police that are so incompetent that I got away with bombing their station on numerous occasions.  If you don’t feel like taking over New Jersey, you can go into Brooklyn and pick a fight with the Tattaglia family.  Or you can drive into Hell’s Kitchen, the worst part of New York and fight the Cuneos.  If you’re really brave, you can try to take over Midtown but Midtown is controlled by the Barzini family and the Barzinis don’t go down without a fight.  If you get into too many fights, you might accidentally start a gang war but you can always find an FBI agent in a church and bribe him to end the war.  Just don’t accidentally shoot the guy.  I did that a few times.

The Godfather is an open world game, a 1940s version of Grand Theft Auto that happens to feature characters from classic gangster film.  You play a Corleone family associate who, over the course of the game, goes from being a soldier to being the Don of New York.  Along the way, you take part in all of the major scenes from the film.  When Sonny is gunned down, you’re the one who chases his assassins.  When Michael shoots the Turk, you’re the one who drives him to the docks so he can head to Sicily.  When it’s time to get revenge on Paulie Gatto and Tessio, you’re the one handed the gun.  You get the idea.  James Caan, Robert Duvall, and even Marlon Brando voiced their film characters for the game.  (Brando’s recordings, unfortunately, weren’t usable and a soundalike was brought in to redo most of his lines.)  Al Pacino did not voice Michael and the game’s Michael looks nothing like Pacino because Pacino had already agreed to exclusively license his appearance to the Scarface game.

As a game, The Godfather can get repetitive.  As your gangster gains experience, he’ll level up and receive skill points.  It really doesn’t take that long to become so powerful that none of the other families have a chance against you.  (Only the Barzini Family remains challenging to the very end.)  The interactions with the storekeepers that you intimidate to get protection all tend to follow the same pattern.  Storywise, the game actually cheapens the movie because it suggests that the Corleones were so incompetent that they had to keep calling you in to clean up all of their messes.

But, flaws and all, the game is pretty damn addictive.  Once I get into my vintage, 1940s car and start driving around New York (which is lovingly recreated, even if it is on a much smaller scale than the real New York), I’m in the zone.  Under the right circumstances, the simplicity of The Godfather can be refreshing.  Drive around.  Hijack a truck.  Fight the gangsters.  If the police get upset, just go to a nearby safehouse and save the game.  If you get bored, grab a bomb and take out an abandoned building or maybe a parked car.  It’s a game so there aren’t any consequences to doing incredibly foolish things.  Or, if you just want to relax, you can just drive around the city and appreciate all of your territory.  It’s up to you.  When you’re the Don of New York, you can do anything you want.

Game Review: Approaching Horde! (2022, Craig Ruddell)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Your nightly routine is interrupted by the zombie apocalypse!  With your wife and most of your neighbors now turned into denizens of the damned, it is up to you to manage a ragtag group of ten survivors and find a way to survive the end of the world.

Approaching Horde! is a resource management game where you assign each of the survivors in your group a specific task.  There’s a lot that need to be done and the more survivors that you assign to each task, the quicker it will be completed.  The problem is that if you assign too many people to one task, the other tasks won’t get done.  If you have too many people working on a zombie cure but not on growing food, the survivors will starve.  If you have too many people growing food but not working on a cure, your people will be well-fed but they’ll be eaten as soon as the zombie horde arrives.  Fortunately, you can send some of your people out to look for other survivors.  The more people you recruit into your camp, the quicker you can get things done.

It’s a challenge but that makes success all the more rewarding.  Fortunately, the game comes with adjustable difficulty settings.  I found the easiest setting to be pretty difficult but then I was played at the hardest setting and realized just how crazy the zombie apocalypse can get!  I enjoyed this game and, due to its format, it’s one that can be played over and over again.  Trying to survive the end of the world is certainly addictive!

Play Approaching Horde!

Game Review: A House On A Hill (2022, Devin Cummings)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

There’s a house on a hill that everyone says in haunted.  Your friends Ingram and Ryan have dared you to enter the house, even though you might get sick from something you find in there or you might even die.  You can try to convince one of them to enter the house with you.  You can enter the house alone.  Or you can go home.

If there’s one thing that every good Interactive Fiction writer understands, it’s that you can get a player to do anything if you suggest that doing otherwise would make them a coward.  Saying “Go Home Coward” is the equivalent of making chicken noises.

Once you enter the house, you can search the rooms and you get a chance to make a few simple decisions about whether or not to do certain things.  Throughout it all, you are given the option to turn around leave.  You’ll get called a coward but considering what does happen if you stay, sometimes it is worth being called a coward.

This is a simple Twine game and it shouldn’t take anyone longer than 10 minutes to play it.  But there are enough different areas of the house to explore and enough possible outcomes that the game itself can be replayed several times.

Play A House On A Hill.

Game Review: Chase The Sun (2022, Frankie Kavakich)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Something has gone wrong with the world.  For six days straight, the sun has not set and there are reports of a storm circling the globe and flooding everywhere that it hits.  Europe and Asia are gone.  You are driving down a road in Pennsylvania.  You’ve been driving for three days and, during the entire time, the sun has been right ahead of you.

Your choices are simple.  Do you keep chasing the sun?  Do you listen to the radio?  Do you think about your family and the situation that you fled when it became obvious that something had gone wrong with the world?  Do you stop for gas or do you ignore the warning light?  Simple the choices may be but they will determine how you spend your last few days on Earth.

Chase The Sun is one of the many recent games to deal with the end of the world.  One thing that almost all of these games have in common is a fatalistic view of the end.  In almost all of them, the end is inevitable and it’s just a question of whether you can go out on your own terms or not.  Chase the Sun is no different but what sets this game apart from so many other games is that your choices actually do make a difference.  This is not one of those games where all of your choices all circle back until each game reaches the same conclusion.  Instead, there are multiple endings, depending on what you choose to focus on.  You have the chance to find some happiness before the world ends but it’s going to require making some smart decisions.  Make the wrong decision and your ending will be far less pleasant.  

The game’s descriptions are vivid and, most importantly, it’s not a game that wastes any time.  It’s a game that can be played and finished within 15 minutes but, because it has so many possible endings and branching storylines, it’s also a game that reward replaying.

Play Chase The Sun.