I'll be honest with you, I don't know exactly where this song happens in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It's 9:42 PM on Tuesday November 5th and if you look in your history books at today's date, or if you're reading this between Wednesday, November 6th, 2024 and Wednesday, November 7, 2028, then you'll probably already know the meaning behind picking this song for today.
The song is a lot more upbeat than you might expect considering the name of the track, so I might guess without looking it up just yet, that it might occur as you're picking which party members to send out into battle while taking into account the laws that will go into effect. Although one comment on YouTube says that this is the song that plays after "any big story revelation" so I guess it is still relevant in more ways than one. I don't know. I feel kinda nauseous and not in the best of ways.
I do like this song though. I'm just using our site and y'alls' attention as a coping mechanism and sounding board.
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Innsmouth 22 through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
All throughout this week, we will be releasing walkthrough videos on our YouTube channel for Innsmouth 22, a new visual novel from Raven Novels as played on the Steam Deck. We will have our typical Game EXP article up on Friday where I talk about my experience playing Innsmouth 22 in all of our grandiose words and whatnot.
The posting schedule will be as follows:
Monday: Parts 1 & 2
Tuesday: Parts 3 & 4
Wednesday: Parts 5 & 6
Thursday: Parts 7, 8, & 9
Friday: Parts 10, 11, 12.1 & 12.2
The videos will start to go live beginning at 6:30 and every 30 minutes after throughout the week. The videos are commentary-free and do not contain any spoken dialogue. I'll leave the rest of my thoughts for Friday's article, but I hope you'll join us throughout the week.
It's November, and you know what that means!? That's right, it's the month that incels try to convince you that it's exceptionally alpha/sigma/chad to not have any kind of intercourse because they're so toxic in their lives that they demonize anyone who is in a loving and committed relationship. It's a thing. But self-care is always important, so find your own way to destress, because bloody hell we all could use some downtime, especially if you're listening to any kind of election coverage here in the United States. Read a book that was published before 2016. Drink some Sleepy Time Tea. Watch The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition in a single sitting. I actually called The Kid earlier in the week to give myself an excuse to not listen to NPR for 20 minutes when I would normally do so on my way home from work to distract myself from the people who are convinced that multi-bankruptedconvicted sexual assaulter and multiple-convicted felon gives a damn about them and will magically make "it" all better.
But self care. Video games are one of my primary methods of self-care, which is likely a surprise to absolutely no one. And like a good little website that talks about video games and related media, I tried to showcase spoopy video games and music; and while I don't think Ale & Tale Tavern is a conventional creepy game, I found out that it does have zombies who did startle me both times they showed up while I was trying to run a minorly successful tavern. And while I did manage to get in Creepy Tale: Some Other Place just under the line, I wasn't able to finish Innsmouth 22, a visual novel that I'd been reading/playing with Conklederp at night. There are a couple more Keymailer games that I am hoping to finish and have articles up for this month, one of which is something that is part visual novel, part point-and-click, part item sorting, and all very strange and hilarious. Similar to Tux and Fanny, I'm not sure how well I will be able to convey this game's humor.
And I'm still playing Triangle Strategy and finally hit my stride in the storytelling about 20 or so hours ago.
Conklederp and I are also working through the second season of The Rings of Power, and at the moment, I'm kind of feeling the same way about this season that I did about the first season. That I'm enjoying the original stories and less excited about the stories about the Elves, and I also have to frequently comes to terms with the exceedingly truncated timeline. I also started Shogun a few weeks back while donating platelets and really enjoyed the first two episodes, which I'll likely continue the next time I make a donation which will probably be in a week or two.
And I'm still reading Spellfire, the first book by Ed Greenwood in the Shandril's Saga trilogy. I'm loving the story in all of its classic Ed Greenwood storytelling-ness, but I've just not been able to find the time to finish the book even after having checked it out from the library for 42 days. I'll get through it though because I'm loving nearly every aspect of it; plus it's making want to finish The Knights of Myth Drannor trilogy.
I hope y'all had a great Halloween last night because ours was fun and wet. Shut up.
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Creepy Tale: Some Other Place through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Creepy Tale: Some Other Place is the latest in the Creepy Tale series of indie point-and-click adventure games from Creepy Brothers, although this is the first game in the series that I've personally played. Unlike other modern point-and-click adventure games like Thimbleweed Park and Dropsy, or Goetia, Creepy Tale: Some Other Place (CTSOP) doesn't feel like it overwhelms the player with piles of inventory to sort through or a walkthrough to solve every other puzzle (put a pin in that last bit). CTSOP feels like it is more reliant on atmosphere and creepy/unsettling visuals to tell their story and that is something that I can get behind.
In classic Alice in Wonderland fashion, Creepy Tale: Some Other Place follows the character of Martin who is forced to chase a small hairy creature who steals his bucket of fish, into the hollow of a tree that transports him to another world filled with monsters, gnomes, magical wells, and dark forests. The majority of the story here is told passively through Martin, who seemingly reacts to events happening around him as he travels from Point A to wherever the next thing is. The game is made up of 10 individual chapters and it's not always clear what needs to be done or what Martin has to accomplish or who to interact with to reach the next chapter. On one hand, I really like this approach since it isolates each chapter as its own puzzle without needing to bring anything over from previous chapters, at least for the first two-thirds. In the back end of the game, you do find a ring that is used to interact with objects and creatures that are used in multiple chapters, but thankfully not as an inventory-specific item.
As far as the puzzles go, I never found them to be too difficult or obscure at least until after I found the ring, which created a second layer to simple puzzles that required you to find an object to give to someone or something else. It's one thing to find an object and determine where it might go based on the number of items in your inventory and where the game says that an object can be used, but it's another when you have an item that affects specific objects and you have to determine how and when to use said item in order to trigger a specific animation or reaction. I have had to use a walkthrough for four of the puzzles, one related to the aforementioned ring, and one other because I didn't know that you needed to leave the room/screen where the puzzle itself was located. In my defense, two of the puzzles included visual elements that were really difficult to see on the Switch's screen.
Only needing assistance for four puzzles in a point-and-click adventure game in fewer than five hours for a point-and-click game I think is an amazing ratio, especially since I feel that the puzzles aren't laughably easy. They include the kinds of puzzles that make you feel smart when you solve them and wish that someone was watching you solve it just to show off; but we all know that if there had been another person watching over my shoulder I likely wouldn't've been able to figure out demon skull tooth puzzle. Most of the puzzles are the kind that just make you feel good after solving, while still maintaining the creepy atmosphere that has been established throughout the entire game.
I've really enjoyed Creepy Tale: Some Other Place, and I am pretty excited to have found out that there are three other games in the series that look similar in tone, complexity, and quality. The games are currently on sale through November 4th on Nintendo's eShop and aspart of Steam's Scream 3D sale. I may jump on the rest of the games, if not now, then maybe we'll have a series feature during October 2025.
P.S. I don't have many end-game pictures/videos because The Squire somehow took out the micro SD card from the back of the Switch this last weekend while we were staying at Conklederp's parent's house and I've yet to find it/get it back. Let's hope it doesn't get vacuumed up.
I feel like there's something a little bouncy to the music Michiru Yamane wrote for Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin that fits both with the Nintendo DS aesthetic and the continued use of the anime look that started back with Dawn of Sorrow. "Name Entry" occurs just when you would expect, after you select which character you're playing as (more become unlocked after finishing the main game with Jonathan and Charlotte), you enter your name, and then interestingly enough, design a logo that as far as I can recall, has no real bearing on the game. And that's it. It is vaguely reminiscent of "Behind the Gaze," one of the songs that plays in the "Burnt Paradise" stages/paintings, but that might be trying to read too much into it.
So let's just enjoy our final foray into Castlevania for the time being with our celebration of the music that plays briefly while we enter our names in the red book.
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Portrait of a Torn - Demo through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Portrait of a Torn - Demo is an interesting game from a couple of angles. First, and admittedly so, I could not get the game to run very well on the Steam Deck and that wasn't for any lack of trying. The first time booting the game, I ran it as is without any compatibility settings and that game ran horribly. Kind of. It ran, but the game maxed out at 6fps even on the lowest graphical settings. Now, I acknowledge that games don't need to be 60fps to be playable and even sub 20 can be playable depending on the game, but I just could not handle these measly 6 frames per second. So I gave up, and went to the compatibility settings, first trying Proton Experimental then moving to Proton 9.0-3, 8.0-5, and finally giving up with 7.0-6 because it's not that the game wasn't running, is that it wasn't running well. So I went back to Proton Experimental and that kind of worked until it didn't. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I would frequently get a brief message of "Attach HorrorEngine Blueprint to Players Camera!" on the loading screen that I couldn't make out and the game would end up stalling before needing to force quit. I finally got the game to semi-run using Proton 9.0-3 which is where we now find ourselves.
[From here on out, there are going to be massive spoilers sprinkled throughout. You've been warned.]
If you just watched the video, you can see that the game does not run very well, but it does run at least well enough to get an idea of what Indigo Studios are trying to accomplish with this title. In this demo, you play Robert Candell, a soldier who is home from the war (more on this in a bit) and walking through his family home finding it eerily empty. Not entirely dissimilar to the basis for Gone Home, but that's the closest comparison I can make to that game.
The first thing that stuck out to me was that the voice acting sounded very emotionless and my first thought was that it was an artificial voice recording or an AI voice reading dialogue. The presence of what felt like AI-generated pictures in the game didn't add to my confidence that the voice acting was not from a real person either. At least all of their fingers could be accounted for and that's not inherently something to knock a game for, but it was something that I noticed in Robert's self-monologues to the player and the other two voices we hear in the game in the form of letters to Robert's mother. I don't know if I was feeling more critical because of how the game was running, but that could be a very real possibility.
For most of the game, you walk through rooms in the Candell house opening doors and clicking on items found in those rooms. I assume you could either just skip all of the downstairs rooms and b-line it for the bathroom to find Robert's bedroom key which would then activate going back upstairs to check on his mom after leaving his bedroom, which then leads you through the trench scene to finding the memorial and the end of the game. I make this assumption because I don't want to boot up the game again not only because of how slow the game runs, but also because I'm prompted to either uninstall or install Microsoft C++ Visual Runtime if I use any of the compatibility settings, but for all I know, the game requires you to go through each room before entering the mom's bedroom with dialogue from Robert saying that he wants to do something else first.
My biggest gripe with the game was not how poorly it ran on the Steam Deck or the AI voice and AI pictures, but with all of the historical inconsistencies and how the game felt like it couldn't decide when it wanted to take place. The first thing was Robert's wish that his mom had ordered pizza, implying that she could have called up a local pizzeria and had them deliver in 30 minutes or less. But that didn't mesh well with the photo of Robert and his army buddies looking like they were circa mid 1940s (maybe?). Then there was the letter from the Army sending their condolences for Robert being killed in action. With the US Air Force symbol in the upper left-hand corner. With the letter dated November 1952. So a few things. The largest war that the US would have been involved in in November 1952 would have been the Korean War, so I guess that's okay. However, the US Air Force symbol was officially adopted in 2004. Then, after you finish the letter and try to leave, you find yourself outside in a rain-soaked trench with Robert exclaiming "The trenches." The problem with this is that trench warfare was not common outside of World War I, although I did read that the Nazis continued to use trench warfare to a certain extent in World War II, but not by US troops, and again not very much in the Korean War. I know I'm making generalizations here, but having a story take place in a war-torn trench heavily implies World War I, 32 years before the Korean War. I can't comment on the language used in the letter though, if it's military appropriate so I'll leave that be. I'm not a military person by a long shot and I had to look up dates, although I felt that the logo/symbol on the letter looked far too modern of a design to exist in 1952. That was the crack.
The game ends with Robert finding a memorial to him downstairs and the front door opening revealing a mysteriously dead-looking woman, who is not his mother otherwise I feel like you would have heard Robert say, "Mom!?" After following the woman through, you're in a similar position to the opening of the game with a dark void and a door, which is where the demo ends. There are plenty of implications here, that you might be visiting another home of someone who died, or possibly Robert's home again but at a different time, either before he went to war, or sometime after. Plus the mystery of who the woman is and how she is connected to Robert and what he is experiencing. So at least there's a little bit of a mystery there apart from Robert's story, which seems like it's solved at this point? Maybe not? Maybe the main game doesn't focus on Robert Candell and this is more of a demo for the game and the mechanics? I guess we'll find out when the game releases (yesterday, October 24th).
"Name Entry 2K2" is possibly one of the most early-2000's name for a song in a Castlevania game ever. Something about the early 2000s lent itself to naming every other thing with "2K" and that works here too.
Interestingly, "Name Entry 2K2" was originally titled "Underground" and was first used in the Famicom Disk System version of Castlevania during the name entry screen and was omitted entirely from other releases of the game. This is a slightly beefier version of "Underground" but the song is essentially all here and then additional themes were written by Soshiro Hokkai, building off of what Konami Kukeiha Club had previously written. The song itself is quite dramatic* and foreboding for an opening menu and name entry screen, but again, because it's Castlevania, overtly dramatic fits well here. It was 2002 after all.
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