Holy mother of shitting crikey that was horrible. Paul and I just played through the demo of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and it has to be the scariest demo I’ve ever played, and quite honestly I don’t know HOW I managed to finish it. It’s by the maker’s of Penumbra, but its undoubtedly better… Major demo spoilers below, but go play it for yourself right now.
If you look at the enemies in this game, your character starts to go INSANE. Like, literally. That’s the sort of game this is – you are physically encouraged to stare at the walls in order to stay alive. You have no weapons. You are completely alone, an ordinary man trapped in a hellish castle dungeon, and according to a letter written and left by your former self, wherever you go, you’re being hunted by a “living nightmare”. You can’t fight it, all you can do is run and hide.
Luckily, you can hide in cupboards – something I wish more horror games would allow me to do – and frankly it’s one of the safest places you can be. Light and dark play a significant role, in that the things hunting you apparently can’t see very well in the dark, making you safer. Yet linger there for too long, and Daniel (you) will start getting blurry vision, his teeth will start to tremble together loudly, and he may even lose control of his legs. You have a lantern, which requires oil to light. Save it for when you really need it, please… Don’t do what I did and have it on permanently, only to watch in horror as the oil runs out and you’re left stranded in a pitch-black wine cellar, huge cobwebs hanging from the ceilings, and…what was that!? SOMETHING just opened that door…but there’s nothing there!
The sounds! Good grief the noises. And the water… the final section of the demo has you knee-deep in murky water, apparently some sort of flooded cellar. And something is down there with you. You can’t see it, only hear its heavy, sloshing footsteps. KEEP OUT OF THE WATER! Thank god for dismembered body parts… no other game has made me even consider using a torn-off arm as a distraction… There’s a key moment in this demo which cemented my decision to buy the full game – the thing in the water couldn’t see me… all I could see of it was the splash of water every time it took a step, and I realized that’s exactly what I looked like to it. We were the same. Only difference was I was smart enough to stand on the crates. KEEP OUT OF THE SODDING WATER!
This game is out today, however, BcR may not be reviewing the full version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, because Matt does not own enough underwear.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
I’ve played many versions of Mario Kart, first on the Snes at a friend’s house, followed by my own copy of the N64 version. The Nintendo DS edition got a lot of play during the various anime conventions that I attended between 2006 and 2011, where you could LAN it up via Bluetooth with anyone else in the vicinity. But the version I truly have the fondest memories of has to be Mario Kart Wii.
Format: PS3
Release date: 2010
Heavy Rain is more like an interactive movie than a game, and it is mostly excellent. It’s a game about choices and living with the consequences. I played it through twice myself, just to see how different decisions affect the story and its ultimate conclusion, but to say that my first try was emotional would be the understatement of the century. This game almost broke me. I’ll tell you how soon, but first I want to recount the story of one of my friend’s choices… Like I said, watching Heavy Rain is just like watching a movie, but watching your friend play Heavy Rain gives you an amusing bit of insight into their psychology. The results can be hilarious.
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
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