Added: 28.07.2015 22:55 | 28 views | 0 comments

Lost Dimension masquerades as an average, everyday JRPG. Spiky anime hair, teenage angst, and crater-inducing special attacks abound, but this turn-based quest to prevent global genocide manages to successfully pair the expected with the aberrant. The tactical combat and deep pool of weapons, armor, and abilities are robust enough to stand on their own, but there’s a twist. Within your 11-person troupe lives a traitor, and knowing of this mole’s existence but not his or her identity forces you to tackle otherwise straightforward situations in unique ways--altering who you take into battle and how you interpret one-on-one conversations. Should you trust the doctor with a checkered medical practice history? Is the lavender-haired vixen with her admittedly fake accent out to get you, or is it the shotgun-toting knucklehead you can only pray remembered to leave the safety on? What could have amounted to a throwaway gimmick is instead used to enrich both combat and story, and while the elimination of party members devalues some character progression, Lost Dimension pulls off its bold gamble.

The cast can be comically bizarre, but the story itself is both bleak and highly self-serious. In the near future, the fate of the world is threatened by the pale, moody villain all-too conveniently named The End. This archetypical evildoer rides in on a massive structure from another dimension called the Pillar and wipes out a significant percentage of the population to show that, despite the red-frosted tips in his hair, he means business.

To combat this threat, the UN sends a special task force wielding psychic gifts to reach the top of the Pillar, battle The End, and save humanity. Codenamed “SEALED,” this peculiar group is little more than a mishmash of colorful strangers with foggy memories. Bonds between each member and the protagonist, Sho, need to be built from the ground up, but working against that process is The End’s declaration that a traitor is present among the group. Before advancing from floor to floor of the tower, your team must vote to not only oust this fraud but also sentence him or her to death. Each subsequent floor establishes a new traitor, and the identity of the turncoat is determined by your interactions with each of the characters along the way.

Like in any good relationship, building trust takes time and effort--and Lost Dimension makes that a surprisingly enjoyable task. Without knowing anyone’s background, you quickly pick favorites and identify people you don’t feel too comfortable watching your back. Continuing to chat and adventure with a specific comrade improves camaraderie between your two characters, and beyond the social benefits, this often leads to more assistance in battle. It’s important to vary whom you bring into skirmishes, too, because Sho can hear the thoughts of those he fights alongside and note whether or not they seem suspicious. By switching different members in and out of your lineup and keeping track of these guarded thoughts, you can more easily narrow down your search.

This unique system forces you to care about otherwise irrelevant dialogue and experiment with different combat concoctions. The identity of the first traitor becomes clear before you’re asked to cast your vote, but from then on, you’re often wracking your brain over the choice. You accumulate Vision Points that can be used to dive deep into the psyche of any party member you’ve battled alongside to out the traitor, but if you use up three vision points only to discover three clear consciences, you and your team are left taking a shot in the dark when asked to vote someone off the island.

The combat variation that comes with having 11 stylistically distinctive party members is both vast and delightful, even as your numbers dwindle over time. Any six members can be taken into a mission and moved within a restricted circle to perform group attacks, flank enemies, pick up items, or hit switches to open gates. You can both move and attack in a given turn, and because you’re often outnumbered, it’s critical to partner up with members of your team with whom you’ve become friendly to coordinate assisted assaults. Guns, blades, and magical gifts can all be used to clean out a given location, but even highly leveled and well-equipped SEALED members can be easily dropped when isolated.

Boosting stats and abilities is exceedingly rewarding, and Lost Dimension provides a healthy suite of techniques to learn. A character with basic fire-based Gifts can eventually learn area-of-effect attacks, abilities that drastically reduce enemy stats, or even devastating special moves that might smite a target in a single blow. It can be frustrating to build up an individual character only to learn that he or she is a traitor, but even fallen soldiers leave behind items that can be used to unlock even more powerful Gifts for those who are still standing.

What Gifts you unlock and whether you decide to invest more heavily in defense or offense can make the difference between earning the top S rank and limping to the finish line with just one of your six characters standing. Once you get a handle on the battle system--how to attack without constantly getting countered, maintaining your Sanity meter so you don’t lose control of a character, and taking out specific enemies to complete missions in a hurry--Lost Dimension becomes a smooth operation. However, the stuttering framerate muddies an otherwise even experience. Even the most basic attack animations can make combat sequences chug, and the dull, insipid environments and unspectacular visuals make for a game that rarely looks as good as it plays.

What’s also uneven is the difficulty. Even if you keep up with the side missions and special character quests, some battles ambush you with a disheartening level of difficulty. The final battle is the biggest culprit, forcing you to grind out old missions over and over again to even stand a chance at victory. It’s not enough to sully the otherwise rewarding combat, but Lost Dimension’s sporadic degree of challenge can make hours of leveling up and character building feel moot.

Dialogue suffers from having far too many cooks in the kitchen, and it feels like whoever was writing the lines was forced to include a quip from each of the 11 characters for every single occasion. What’s actually said is almost never more profound than “Who could the traitor be?!” The one-on-one chats are much teresting and actually reveal valuable information about a given personality, but watching the camera swing from character to character during the story only to hear empty, repetitive lines is wearing.

Sure, Lost Dimension is another RPG in which a group of teens need to save the world from a maniacal villain with wonderful hair, but Lost Dimension thinks outside that box just enough to feel new. The goofy characters, rewarding progression system, and tactical combat supersede the stunted dialogue and inconsistent framerate, and while the difficulty can be a bit overwhelming, the mechanics are fun and fresh enough to temper most frustration. What really brings it all to life, though, is the suspense that comes from never quite knowing who to trust, which keeps you wary of much more than just the enemies on the periphery. This is a JRPG layered atop a tactical strategy game layered atop a murder mystery, and somehow, the resulting structure holds up reasonably well.

Added: 28.07.2015 22:40 | 17 views | 0 comments

Santa Esperanza or Sin City? I found it hard to tell the difference between the two black-and-white burgs in the first episode of Blues and Bullets, a five-part adventure series from indie developer A Crowd of Monsters that sets a striking neo-noir tone. There are just as many shadow-streaked rooms, rain-swept streets, and bloody red accents as in anything scripted by Frank Miller, while the plot is stuffed with enough psychos, horrific violence, and cornball dialogue to make Dashiell Hammett roll over in his grave. This is an inspired rip-off for the most part, however, hitting the same notes as a good hard-boiled detective novel despite a few offbeat scripting choices and some technical glitches.

As noted above, the location is a crime-ridden fictional city called Santa Esperanza. The year is 1955. The protagonist is Eliot Ness, but not the historical figure or even the fake one from TV and movies. This take on the leader of the famed Untouchables who brought down Chicago gangland boss Al Capone is different from anything seen before. Instead of taking out old Scarface with a tax case, Ness wound the case down with a Schwarzeneggerian shootout, slaughtering a dozen or more mobsters single-handedly while so drunk he could barely stand up. Twenty or so years later, Ness is a haunted ex-cop running a diner and trying to run away from his past, which includes murdered friends, an unhealthy attachment to a dead buddy’s wife, and a whole lot of booze and guilt. All this is complicated by the fact that Capone has just been paroled and is asking his old nemesis to help find his daughter, who has been kidnapped by a sinister cult that is abducting, mutilating, and sometimes slaughtering little kids.

All in all, it’s an innovative look at an American icon crossed with a more modern serial killing saga. But it’s also kind of off-putting because everyone knows the story of Ness and Capone courtesy of decades of TV shows and movies. I eventually came to appreciate this bizarre new angle on characters I thought I knew, although I never completely abandoned the notion that all this messing with history was sort of unnecessary. This version of Ness only shares a name with the real person, and the same goes for Capone. Swapping out Chicago for Santa Esperanza is also an odd choice given the use of real names for the lead characters. Why not go one way or the other? Doing both makes the whole story feel somewhat off-kilter, for no real purpose.

Added alt-history weirdness creates a surreal mish-mash. Strange concepts are tossed in for kicks, like the apparent survival of the Hindenburg and its subsequent renovation into a luxury hotel in the clouds. You visit it early on in the episode as a real place, but it is so impossibly huge and luxurious that it’s more Xanadu than retrofitted zeppelin. Even though you’re supposed to be on board the big balloon, you also see that famous photo of the airship exploding into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey framed in its hallways. I was never sure what to think here. All things considered, the plot is innovative and guaranteed to keep you guessing about what’s coming next.

Blues and Bullets’ gameplay is standard for an adventure game, although both the action and sleuthing is volved than that in other similar series in the episodic genre. This is more of a traditional adventure game than what Telltale produces, for example. The structure isn’t quite as linear. Many choices influence the flow of the story, and dialogue options run a gamut of emotions that subtly alter how interactions play out with other characters. There is also more of a necessity to explore environments. Investigations are hands-on. Ness tackles a gruesome murder by examining the entire scene, from the occult altar made of severed hands in the bathroom to the impaled corpse in the living room and the discarded spoon in the hallway, which may have been used to scoop out the victim’s eyeballs. Ness puts clues together on a deduction board that leads him to conclusions. Nothing here is particularly challenging, although the process replicates the step-by-step nature of a criminal investigation.

Action scenes are also volved. Button-press fights and reactions are similar to those in more casual adventure series, but they tend to demand a little more from the player. Again, there isn’t anything here too tough, although you do have to hit buttons a little more quickly and more often than in similar games. In addition to the bare-knuckle sequences, there are also firefights in which you take cover and blast away at enemies. Anyone with even the most rudimentary arcade skills will be able to take on these vaguely GTA-inspired battles without breaking a sweat, but at least the game goes through the motions and gives you more to do. I’m hoping that future episodes ramp up the challenge and take advantage of the gangster setting with some serious gunplay.

What makes Blues and Bullets really stand out is its atmosphere. The game looks like an interactive version of the Sin City movies. The entire game is cloaked in long shadows and a gloomy air of menace, which is built up to such an extreme that even Ness’s diner in the middle of a sunny afternoon comes off as a midnight spook house. Surreal touches add to this effect. A dream sequence illustrating Ness’s tortured thoughts plays out as a gunfight in and around giant headline letters recounting just how corrupt and awful his world has become. Other stylish touches add tension. While most of the game consists of high-contrast black-and-white, red accent slashes are everywhere. This is of course used to indicate blood and to create a constant threat of violence. Even Ness’s ever-present red tie is a warning sign that bad things are about to go down.

The dialogue is also very good, albeit in the cheesy vein of old-time noir. Ness is pretty much the prototypical self-flagellating private detective with a weakness for booze and dames. Many lines teeter on the edge of self-parody. At times it’s not entirely clear whether the game is actually laughing at itself. While most of the story takes everything as seriously as an IRS audit, some aspects are over the top. One moment in which Ness interrupts a knife-thrower to the disappointment of the crowd and his now-perforated female target is so played up for slapstick that the Untouchable briefly turns into Frank Drebin. The voice acting is all over the place, but the leads are good for the most part. Ness is played as kind of a growly, boozy take on Batman, and Capone is a no-surprises, marble-mouthed thug. The cast is small, though, and actors try to hide their multiple roles with broad accents that do nothing but make the game seem amateurish.

Another issue that illustrates the indie nature of Blues and Bullets is the presence of a few bugs. Slowdown is the most noticeable problem. Every so often, the game will drop to single-digit framerates. This usually takes place during panoramic introductions that sweep across city blocks. On a couple of occasions, this brought the game to a complete halt for me and forced a restart. Another annoyance was a cursor that never stayed still. On selection menus in the options and within the game itself as I organized the investigation board, the selected option constantly clicked to the right regardless of whether I was using the mouse and keyboard or the gamepad controls, forcing me to push back against the grain to make a choice. This was merely an irritant, although it could have been show-stopping if the game had demanded teraction in this fashion.

Although Blues and Bullets isn’t without its flaws, this first episode sets a distinctive comic-book, crime-noir attitude compelling enough to keep you playing and looking forward to what the series will offer in future installments. Anyone who enjoys classic noir fiction or the decidedly modern, bloody take on it offered up on the grim streets of Sin City will find a lot to like here.

Added: 28.07.2015 22:40 | 44 views | 0 comments

Santa Esperanza or Sin City? I found it hard to tell the difference between the two black-and-white burgs in the first episode of Blues and Bullets, a five-part adventure series from indie developer A Crowd of Monsters that sets a striking neo-noir tone. There are just as many shadow-streaked rooms, rain-swept streets, and bloody red accents as in anything scripted by Frank Miller, while the plot is stuffed with enough psychos, horrific violence, and cornball dialogue to make Dashiell Hammett roll over in his grave. This is an inspired rip-off for the most part, however, hitting the same notes as a good hard-boiled detective novel despite a few offbeat scripting choices and some technical glitches.

As noted above, the location is a crime-ridden fictional city called Santa Esperanza. The year is 1955. The protagonist is Eliot Ness, but not the historical figure or even the fake one from TV and movies. This take on the leader of the famed Untouchables who brought down Chicago gangland boss Al Capone is different from anything seen before. Instead of taking out old Scarface with a tax case, Ness wound the case down with a Schwarzeneggerian shootout, slaughtering a dozen or more mobsters single-handedly while so drunk he could barely stand up. Twenty or so years later, Ness is a haunted ex-cop running a diner and trying to run away from his past, which includes murdered friends, an unhealthy attachment to a dead buddy’s wife, and a whole lot of booze and guilt. All this is complicated by the fact that Capone has just been paroled and is asking his old nemesis to help find his daughter, who has been kidnapped by a sinister cult that is abducting, mutilating, and sometimes slaughtering little kids.

All in all, it’s an innovative look at an American icon crossed with a more modern serial killing saga. But it’s also kind of off-putting because everyone knows the story of Ness and Capone courtesy of decades of TV shows and movies. I eventually came to appreciate this bizarre new angle on characters I thought I knew, although I never completely abandoned the notion that all this messing with history was sort of unnecessary. This version of Ness only shares a name with the real person, and the same goes for Capone. Swapping out Chicago for Santa Esperanza is also an odd choice given the use of real names for the lead characters. Why not go one way or the other? Doing both makes the whole story feel somewhat off-kilter, for no real purpose.

Added alt-history weirdness creates a surreal mish-mash. Strange concepts are tossed in for kicks, like the apparent survival of the Hindenburg and its subsequent renovation into a luxury hotel in the clouds. You visit it early on in the episode as a real place, but it is so impossibly huge and luxurious that it’s more Xanadu than retrofitted zeppelin. Even though you’re supposed to be on board the big balloon, you also see that famous photo of the airship exploding into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey framed in its hallways. I was never sure what to think here. All things considered, the plot is innovative and guaranteed to keep you guessing about what’s coming next.

Blues and Bullets’ gameplay is standard for an adventure game, although both the action and sleuthing is volved than that in other similar series in the episodic genre. This is more of a traditional adventure game than what Telltale produces, for example. The structure isn’t quite as linear. Many choices influence the flow of the story, and dialogue options run a gamut of emotions that subtly alter how interactions play out with other characters. There is also more of a necessity to explore environments. Investigations are hands-on. Ness tackles a gruesome murder by examining the entire scene, from the occult altar made of severed hands in the bathroom to the impaled corpse in the living room and the discarded spoon in the hallway, which may have been used to scoop out the victim’s eyeballs. Ness puts clues together on a deduction board that leads him to conclusions. Nothing here is particularly challenging, although the process replicates the step-by-step nature of a criminal investigation.

Action scenes are also volved. Button-press fights and reactions are similar to those in more casual adventure series, but they tend to demand a little more from the player. Again, there isn’t anything here too tough, although you do have to hit buttons a little more quickly and more often than in similar games. In addition to the bare-knuckle sequences, there are also firefights in which you take cover and blast away at enemies. Anyone with even the most rudimentary arcade skills will be able to take on these vaguely GTA-inspired battles without breaking a sweat, but at least the game goes through the motions and gives you more to do. I’m hoping that future episodes ramp up the challenge and take advantage of the gangster setting with some serious gunplay.

What makes Blues and Bullets really stand out is its atmosphere. The game looks like an interactive version of the Sin City movies. The entire game is cloaked in long shadows and a gloomy air of menace, which is built up to such an extreme that even Ness’s diner in the middle of a sunny afternoon comes off as a midnight spook house. Surreal touches add to this effect. A dream sequence illustrating Ness’s tortured thoughts plays out as a gunfight in and around giant headline letters recounting just how corrupt and awful his world has become. Other stylish touches add tension. While most of the game consists of high-contrast black-and-white, red accent slashes are everywhere. This is of course used to indicate blood and to create a constant threat of violence. Even Ness’s ever-present red tie is a warning sign that bad things are about to go down.

The dialogue is also very good, albeit in the cheesy vein of old-time noir. Ness is pretty much the prototypical self-flagellating private detective with a weakness for booze and dames. Many lines teeter on the edge of self-parody. At times it’s not entirely clear whether the game is actually laughing at itself. While most of the story takes everything as seriously as an IRS audit, some aspects are over the top. One moment in which Ness interrupts a knife-thrower to the disappointment of the crowd and his now-perforated female target is so played up for slapstick that the Untouchable briefly turns into Frank Drebin. The voice acting is all over the place, but the leads are good for the most part. Ness is played as kind of a growly, boozy take on Batman, and Capone is a no-surprises, marble-mouthed thug. The cast is small, though, and actors try to hide their multiple roles with broad accents that do nothing but make the game seem amateurish.

Another issue that illustrates the indie nature of Blues and Bullets is the presence of a few bugs. Slowdown is the most noticeable problem. Every so often, the game will drop to single-digit framerates. This usually takes place during panoramic introductions that sweep across city blocks. On a couple of occasions, this brought the game to a complete halt for me and forced a restart. Another annoyance was a cursor that never stayed still. On selection menus in the options and within the game itself as I organized the investigation board, the selected option constantly clicked to the right regardless of whether I was using the mouse and keyboard or the gamepad controls, forcing me to push back against the grain to make a choice. This was merely an irritant, although it could have been show-stopping if the game had demanded teraction in this fashion.

Although Blues and Bullets isn’t without its flaws, this first episode sets a distinctive comic-book, crime-noir attitude compelling enough to keep you playing and looking forward to what the series will offer in future installments. Anyone who enjoys classic noir fiction or the decidedly modern, bloody take on it offered up on the grim streets of Sin City will find a lot to like here.