Hey, David. Yeah, you. Write more, I’m not a one-man army (though I play one in video games all the time).
Speaking of which, I haven’t talked about video games in a while. So here goes!
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PC - Half-Life 2: Episode 2 - Just beat this last Tuesday night. It was a bit of a chore, as my laptop is ill-suited to gaming and likes to overheat, crashing on me at very inconvenient times. For example, it crashed in the middle of the ending sequence which, in case you were wondering, is a really bad time.
Anyways, the pacing of Episode 2 seemed much more staggered, as though the game was divided into set challenges. Granted, there is travel in between these challenges, as well as more traditional levels, but the unique nature of these special sections sets them apart. Also, the new achievement system added to Steam often ties into these sections, further emphasizing them as the meat of the game.
The upside of this is that these particular fights are incredibly entertaining and replayable. The downside, though, is that this particular chapter of Half-Life feels much more like a game than a story. It sacrifices immersion a tad, but that degree may vary from person to person.
Still, it’s a minor quibble at worst, so I’ll not go against the vast majority. Awesome game, go play it! It should take a healthy amount of time, especially if you feel tempted to explore more and chase after achievements a little on your first time through. I’ve seen a six hour figure quoted, but I think I spent at least eight or nine. And no, that’s not factoring in all the time I spent rebooting my computer.
Be prepared for frustration when hunters destroy your sticky bombs all the damn time. You’ll know what I mean when the time comes.
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DS - Dementium: The Ward - Have you seen this, have you heard about this? I don’t follow much US gaming news these days other than Penny Arcade, so I tend to only know what I see on the shelf of the local GEO in Japan. I stumbled on this game by chance when I was back in the US, though I only recently beat it last week.
As the title suggests, this game is about freakiness and craziness. It’s designed to be scary, and can be quite successful when played in a pitch black room. Headphones might help too, though the speakers did the job wonderfully, as the sound effects are quite good regardless.
Dementium is a game where you can’t help but focus on the design though, since the game is frustratingly light on plot. There’s a fine line to tread between dangling occasional hints and simply refusing to write more flavor text. By the end you might not even care, though you’ll probably be a bit disappointed no matter what.
The extremely, and I mean extremely repetitive level design will not help either. While logic dictates that buildings tend to have the same floor plans for multiple levels, that’s no reason to actually make it so in a videogame. It even becomes easy to guess which doors will be locked and unlocked after a while, as even that falls into a predictable pattern.
So that’s the bad. Oh, and this is another game where you have to wield the flashlight separately, a la Doom 3. And you have to restart at the beginning of chapters when you die, which can be especially excruciating when it’s a long one. And there’s a part where you fight some of the old bosses again, further making me wonder how rushed development was.
But seriously, that aside, the game is actually not that bad. The graphics are impressive for a DS first-person game, the controls are quite smooth, and the enemies provide a decent variety of challenges. I personally think a certain melee weapon is broken, as it completely eliminates the challenge of ammo conservation and reduces the suspense for the user (you’re supposed to want to run away from scary monsters, not charge in!), but that’s still at the discretion of each person.
All in all, I consider it a good start for horror on the DS. It’s not long and should provide about three to five hours worth of gameplay. It’s completely linear, though, and I don’t think the combat alone provides enough incentive for replay. It’s probably worth a playthrough if you can find it cheap, or if you really want a horror fix. But we can do so much better.
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