Category Archives: Game Review

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.

Game Review: You May Not Escape! (2022, Charm Cochran)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You are trapped in a maze.  You’re not sure why you are walking through this maze or why it is so difficult to find a way out.  At the start of the maze, a man named John Everyman offers to help you out but if he doesn’t think you’re being properly appreciative, he’ll leave you to figure it out on your own.

Try to make your way through the maze without getting lost.  I’ve played this game a few times.  It’s not easy.  It’s even a little creepy.  Stop and relax on a park bench but don’t fall asleep.  Climb a tree and discover a homey place to rest but watch out for the rain and the lightning.  Then there’s the graveyard.  Three of the graves are filled.  The fourth is waiting for you.  Find some rocks.  Break the security cameras and the LED signs that flash messages at you.  It’ll make you feel better but it won’t get you out of the maze.  At one point, you’re even given the chance to accept that the game is over.  Will you accept or will you keep searching?

You May Not Escape! was designed using Inform and it’s a throwback to the classic text adventures that I used to play when I was a kid.  Even the puzzle feels like a throwback.  Can you navigate a maze?  How many times to Scott Adams go back to that well?  But You May Not Escape! is much more difficult and rewarding than the old games that it resmebles.  This game requires some thinking.  It requires some imagination.  It requires that the player pay attention to what they’re reading.  The game is well-written and I appreciated all the little details that made the maze so memorable.  I especially liked the LED tickers the spelled out messages that were either menacing or encouraging, depending on how you read them.  You May Not Escape! is challenging but rewarding.

Play You May Not Escape!

Game Review: Crash (2022, Phil Riley)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Here you are, a member of the Repair Corps.  When a spaceship docks at Space Station Omicron-5, your job is to repair the appliances and make sure that everything is in ship-shape condition while the crew relaxes and does whatever they have to do on the station.

It’s like they say in the song:

Just another face in a red jumpsuit.
He did a good job cleaning up the place,
But his bosses didn’t like him
So they shot him into space.

Except, in this case, it’s not your bosses who send you into space.  Instead, it’s the fact that the space station explodes while you’re getting ready to leave the ship!  Now, the ship is hurtling through space and you’re the only one who can figure out the proper way to stop it before it crashes.

Crash is a classic-style text adventure, programmed with my favorite Interactive Fiction development system, Inform.  What that means is that you pretty much have complete control over what the main character does on the ship.  Walk where you want to walk.  Examine what you want to examine.  Try what you want to try.  Just know that time is running out.  Crash is well-written but it’s also puzzle-heavy.  That won’t be a problem for most people but, for someone like me who sucks at puzzles, it can be daunting.  Fortunately, the game comes with a built-in hint system.  Also, when you’re usually terrible at puzzles, that means you feel even more triumphant when you actually manage to solve one of them.

(Even if you did have to ask for a lot of hints.)

Be sure to ask the computer a lot of questions.  This game has an in-depth backstory and it’s actually interesting to learn all of it.  You’re just a repairman but suddenly, you’re in the middle of a galactic conflict.  It’s the sort of set-up that has led to many classic sci-fi tales.

Play Crash.

Thanatophobia (2022, Robert Goodwin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Maddie is a 20 year-old girl who suffers from Thanatophobia, a morbid fear of death.  You are the hypnotherapist who, after a chance meeting, helps her come to terms with her fears.  After you have put her under hypnosis, Maddie tells you that she is standing in a hallway and there is a hooded figure behind her.  No matter where she goes, the hooded figure is always there.  She needs you to figure out who the hooded figure represents and also how Maddie can get away from it.

Maddie is a chatbot.  You type in questions and she answers.  It’s like that old Eliza game except that some of the questions will lead to Maddue discussing her past and revealing her secrets.  It’s a challenging game but it does come with just enough hints that most players should eventually be able to figure out how to help Maddie.  The biggest hint that I can gives is that, just like with a real person, Maddie sometimes has to be asked the same question multiple times before she’ll open up.

Chatbot games are always hit-and-miss for me but Thantophobia does a pretty good job of simulating a real conversation and Maddie comes across as being a real person instead of a bot with several pre-programmed responses.  The game is challenging but the mystery can be solved and Maddie can be helped.  In fact, Maddie’s answers are so well-written that I actually felt really proud of myself when I finally helped her get out of the hallway.

Play Thanatophobia.

Game Review: Under the Bridge (2022, Samantha Kahn)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You are a monster.

The humans have wiped out most of your species.  Your life in the forest has been upended by their intrusiveness and their violence.  But there is a bridge, one that leads into a nearby village.  The bridge looks like a good place to live and to feast.  Even monsters need to eat and with villagers constantly traveling from one side of the bridge to the other, the bridge is the perfect place for you to hunt.

This is a Twine game that tells the familiar story of the Troll Under The Bridge from the point of view of the troll.  You have many reasons for not trusting human.  You also need to eat.  When the humans try to cross your bridge, will you allow them to pass or will you confront and maybe even eat them?  The decision is yours but every decision comes with consequences,

I liked Under The Bridge.  It was well-written and it featured memorable but non-intrusive visuals and audio that truly made you feel as if you were hiding underneath that bridge and waiting for the sounds of possible prey.  There’s a number of different endings so this is a game that can be replayed several different times.  Considering that so many Twine games seem to lead to the same ending regardless of the choices you make, I appreciated that your choices actually meant something in Under The Bridge.

Play Under the Bridge.