Not much this week. Multiple hours long meetings dulled my senses.
I picked up my Abscission save again after a few weeks. The game still has a good vibe. But equally the point-and-click'isms grow increasingly overpowering as the game goes on. It took me many minutes to orient myself after reloading my game on top of that. It's still decent, but I don't know if I'd recommend to anyone who wasn't already inured to pixel-hunting and backtracking.
Sudden Death is probably a game, made for the Domino Club "Bodies in Motion" game jam. It is a free short (about 45 minutes) browser-based experience telling the story of team that plays a sport that is 99% Australian Rules Football in a league that is definitely not the AFL (called the "UFL" in game, possibly from some alternate reality where the VFA won out over the VFL 100+ years ago) and their experiences at the end of a successful season leading into the finals. The story is told through multiple changing perspectives (changeroom banter, sports commentary, online news and comments, documentary flashback, IM flirting between a couple of fans) as it progresses. All of these have their own distinct interfaces and visual looks that lend a lot of legitimacy to the presentation. And while there is a definitive and satisfying narrative arc, the story does not start or end neatly, giving you the feeling of walking into a drama in progress and ending just as certain parts of the story are ramping up. This could be frustrating, but for me it just made the world feel more real and fleshed out.
What stands out about Sudden Death to me is how the sport of football and the world of the AFL does not seem alien to this game. It's not just a romance wrapped in AFL trappings for novelty's sake. Nor is it a detached ironic look at the AFL from people with no genuine interest. It's a game made by people who are clearly very familiar with the sport, its history (2012 Essendon Bombers and 2015 Adelaide Crows particularly) and its culture. While also avoiding cliches and apologetics, and imagining much more for the sport. A truly excellent work, one of my favourites this year.
I discovered The Battle of Angels this week. Which is a 2020 game from the (very ostentatiously Christian) developer of The Zoo Race. It is a farcically bad fighting game where you are an Angel charged with cleaning up a crime and drug-ridden city. This is done through a series of CG FMV vignettes, where said angel pops up at the last second before disaster with a proposed solution, while a devilish counterpart also appearing. The two then fight clumsily in a boxing ring, and the winner has their preferred outcome play out. The scenes range from comical, to offensive, to comically offensive.
After a discussion with a friend about it, I played Columns for the Mega-Drive for the first time in at least a decade. That game is bad and has always been bad. A terrible attempt to cash in on Tetris' success on the game boy with a clumsy match 3 equivalent.
Devilated is a frenetic FPS game, with a hyperviolent comedic bent, whose premise seems to roughly be "You wake up in hell and something bad is happening." Mechanically it is very fast-paced with a lot of dodging, zipping around, and generally spraying damage into multiple enemies while using their corpses as shields and/or consuming them for health. There's also a style meter that shows up sometimes, but not others, that emphasises switching attack methods. An equipment and inventory mechanic that provides a bit of variety. And a skill tree, which main seems to assign new mechanics to increase the number of buttons you need to press (functioning as a Doom(2016) to Doom Eternal switch.) I had fun slaughtering enemies and listening to the humourous quips (There's a dedicated "smoke a cigar and say a one liner" button,) but the game is also bit of a mess at the moment.
Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers was released on short notice this week, the follow up to SRB2Kart, itself the kart racing spin-off of SRB2 (Sonic Robo Blast 2) which is a Sonic fan game running on a source port of the doom engine. Ring Racers is probably terrible. I say terrible because I spent most of my time stuck in the tutorial, which is objectively terrible, and mandatory, and 45 minutes long. Like all good tutorials; It skips over the basics nearly completely. Forces you to master several things not needed in the game. Is a completely different genre (weird car platformer) to the game proper. Requires text to be manually advanced using a separate button, meaning the displayed text often does not match the location of the player. Has mechanics not used anywhere else, but also completely omits necessary mechanics to play the normal game. And of course locks you out of the rest of the game until you finish it
I feel bad being so critical of a free fan game that possibly gets a lot better if you . But there is the real risk that somebody might try Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers for themselves.
Of course none of this matters, because days later a Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers v2.1 patch was released that changes large parts of the game.
All Games Played
- Rimworld Anomaly: OK
- A Solitaire Mystery: GREAT
- Abscission: Good
- Sudden Death: GREAT (Notable)
- The Battle of Angels: BAD (Notable)
- Columns: Disappointing
- Devilated: OK
- Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers: BAD
