Wednesday, November 20, 2024
MIDI Week Singles: "Track 29" - Metal Wolf REV (PS2)
Monday, November 18, 2024
First Impressions: Classic Marathon (PC)
Classic Marathon
Systems: Windows, macOS
Release Date: May 10, 2024 / December 21, 1994
Publisher: Aleph One Developers / Bungie
Developer: Aleph One Developers / Bungie
Time Spent: 18 Minutes
I do have the other two Marathon games, Classic Marathon 2, and Classic Marathon Infinity and I'll likely give both of those a go to see if there were any updates to gun wobble/bobble. But if I end up not playing either of the other games in the Marathon Trilogy, then I won't feel too bad (at least for about an hour if I have to stop playing) since the games were all free and I know that plenty of other people out there have been enjoying them. Just not me because of my weak little stomach when it comes to certain first-person shooters.
P.S. I should probably come up with a better name than "A Stage Select Start Attempt," maybe something a little more positive, but still informing the viewer that they're not about to watch an 18-minute speedrun of an 8 1/2 hour game. But for now, I kinda like using "Attempt" in the title in the YouTube video, but for here, I think I'll keep the "First Impressions" title too.
Friday, November 15, 2024
Emulator Hour: Unreal PT (PC)
I am somewhat loathe to say that I've now played P.T. because I haven't, which is kind of the whole point of our Emulator Hour articles. That we're publically saying that we've played an emulated game or at the very least, played a game on an emulator for any number of reasons. The reason for playing an adapted and rebuilt version of P.T. the way that I have is because the original P.T. was first made available on August 12, 2014, and was pulled from the PlayStation online store after a falling out between Hideo Kojima and Konami was made permanently unavailable as of May 2015. But hooooooly shit did it make an impression. I did not have a PlayStation 4 at the time that P.T. was available and I'm sure as hell not going to fork over $750 for a 10-year-old console that supposedly has the playable teaser installed on it.
For several years I'd searched for an emulated version of P.T., but most of my searches led me to Unreal PT, but only in name as most of the links I came across were more than six months old and dead. Then I read an article (I sadly can't find the article or the article that I had written about the article) going over what they (who're they?) felt were the best horror games of all time that everyone should play, and naturally P.T. was on that list, which irked me a bit because of the uber-scarcity of the original game files. That'd be like saying that The Day the Clown Cried is the best movie of all time that everyone should see before they die. But find a downloadable version of Unreal P.T. I did, and play it I did. Kind of.
Very quickly, before I get into actually talking about the game, I want to preface that I know that there are two semi-available emulated ports of P.T. There's Unreal PT that I have played, and the 'closer to the source material' P.T. Emulation 1.4 which is locked behind a Patreon paywall. Between those two available ports, Unreal P.T. has the greatest number of differences such as missing animations, missing assets, and is potentially unbeatable. So with all of that in mind, let's get to Unreal P.T.
Attempt #1
This was technically my second attempt playing Unreal PT, but that first time was mainly to see if the game would run on my laptop, and let me tell you, in this case, 18 frames per second was about what I was expecting. What my point is in sharing this clip, is that I went into this without having looked anything up, although I did know, possibly through common societal knowledge that the game had something to do with a hallway and a creepy-ass woman. I also read a while ago that the creepy woman is supposedly behind you the entire time from a game-dev standpoint and so I kept thinking that she was going to show up, which is why I kept turning around in my Attempt #2 and #3 videos, expecting her to be at the end of the hallway.
Despite not knowing how to open the door on the second loop, what threw me the most was that the door-opening mechanic was just, "walk into door and it will either open or it won't." Maybe I'm just too used to modern first-person survival-horror walking sims where you have to click on the door to open it or press a button to trigger a door-opening action, but this just felt like I was doing something wrong. That and not knowing what I was supposed to be looking for. Like a picture on the ground, but we'll get to that in Attempt #2. I feel like at the 9:40 mark you can feel me really getting frustrated.
Attempt #2
Before jumping into the game this time, I did look up a walkthrough, which was where I found out about the picture on the ground in the second loop (or is it the first loop?). However, I misremembered what I read because I thought that this had something to do with the series of pictures you collected during one of the later loops. But upon zooming in (thanks to the RMB cue) this opened up the door to allow me to proceed through to the next loop.
During whatever-loop-that-is at the 07:14 mark, I noticed my frames per second dropped from 15-18 down to 9. Normally this would likely mean that the game would be unplayable, but possibly because I was already used to a sub-20 fps, this didn't bother me too much. I could still play and feel that the game wasn't absolutely broken. It's not running great, but at least it's running. And then I accidentally shortcutted one of the more iconic shots in the entire game, when you round the corner and see the woman standing at the end of the hallway, all because I rounded the corner too quickly and didn't stop soon enough. But maybe that makes the event creepier since you only see her for a split second before the lights go out? Maybe?
Just a few additional notes on Attempt #2. Nope, do not like that bathroom one bit. At the 10:40 mark, I paused the game because I was playing it at work on my lunch break, and at the time, there was a medication delivery that I had to handle, so I ended up cutting out about four minutes of pause screen. That new modified radio broadcast in the second to last loop was damn creepy, as in goosebumps and all when the voice started repeating the numbers and then again during the last loop when the voice says, "Look behind you. I said, look behind you." And that jump scare at 14:55 legitimately got me. Then I decided that I should turn the lights back on in my office and go back to work.
Attempt #3
This one was the doozy. I reread a walkthrough before playing, and referenced a couple during the repeating red hallway sequence to find the hole in the wall, and once your flashlight starts to change colors each loop. I think this might be as far as you can get in Unreal PT based on some of what I've read about this port's limitations, and I'm kinda okay with that. The solution feels like it's on the level of Lucasfilm Games' point-and-click level of obscurity what with the number of steps into the hallway, and even having to speak a certain phrase or word for the front door to finally unlock; although I also read that that solution doesn't exist in either Unreal PT or PT Emulation 1.4, so there's that too.
The attempt had a lot of good moments in it, from seeing words appear on walls on subsequent loops, to even the amount of frustration of the red looping hallways and actually thinking that the foyer was some level of relief because it was something different. The white screen of death was nice and in a way felt akin to the blue screen of death in Eternal Darkness. Also somewhat being able to piece together the story of what I thought was going on was genuinely unsettling but still a fun realization; although I obviously don't know everything because I didn't see what happened immediately before the player is graced with Norman Reedus' beautifully grossly mug. I'm also not sure what to make of the bloody talking bag in the garage after respawning the post-white screen.
I don't think that I can come away saying that I've now played P.T. for all of the reasons I mentioned way up there at the top, but I can say that I've played through the majority of Unreal PT, which might be all that will ever be available until Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro are able to wrestle their vision away from Konami's copyright lawyers. Who knows. Either way, this was a fun emulated port of a delisted playable teaser for a game that was canceled nine years ago because someone's ego was purportedly bruised.
P.S. I listed InvertedEarthTheory as a publisher at the top because they are currently the only way I know of to download and play Unreal PT.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
MIDI Week Singles: "Northpoint Nocturne" - The Elder Scrolls Online (PC)
"Northpoint Nocturne" from The Elder Scrolls Online on Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, XBox S/X, Linux
Composer: Brad Derrick
Album: The Elder Scrolls Online Original Game Soundtrack
Label: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: ZeniMax Online Studios
Monday, November 11, 2024
Demo Time: Sancticide (VSD)
[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Sancticide - 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.]
Sancticide is kinda strange and I'm not sure how to feel about it or the message that I might have interpreted from only playing the demo. You can watch the whole of the demo which is up on our YouTube channel here.
So that's where I stand on Sancticide, which if you're not sure by the time you're at the end of this article, then you're in the same boat as I am. If the game implemented at the very least lock-on targeting during combat (as if I know how easy/difficult that is to implement in a video game) and some type of dodge mechanic, then I would likely enjoy the combat a lot more than I did in the demo. I'm sure that there is a lot more to the story and what is going on than what is in this 20-minute demo and I would be very surprised if the demo is how the game actually started. I need to know more about these sinners before I allow myself the pleasure of gutting them with a three-thousand-year-old sword.
Friday, November 8, 2024
Game EXP: Innsmouth 22 (VSD)
[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.]
First off, we have an entire playthrough of Innsmouth 22 up on our YouTube channel here if you want to go watch that before reading the article. But just a heads up, it runs about 6.5 hours, and it's best watched in chunks, probably not all in one go. And apologies for the seemingly random cut-off times for the videos. Since there werne't any specific chapters, I decided to end a video either when Lorenzo went to bed, or when I myself started dozing off. Secondly, the developer mentioned this on the Steam page, but Innsmouth 22 exclusively uses AI-generated art. From what I can tell, the rest of the in-game text is all created and written by Raven Novels, although as evidenced by the title, is heavily inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, but only in ways that we'll get to later. Secondly, while I haven't found
Because the game only uses AI-generated art, it was sometimes difficult to gauge the actual look and feel of the town of Innsmouth, especially as the story progressed. In the story by Lovecraft, it's described as:
... a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward horizon. [...] The vast huddle of sagging gambrel roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. [...]
The harbour, long clogged with sand, was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater; on which I could begin to discern the minute forms of a few seated fishermen, and at whose end were what looked like the foundations of a bygone lighthouse. A sandy tongue had formed inside this barrier, and upon it I saw a few decrepit cabins, moored dories, and scattered lobster-pots.1
P.S. You might've noticed that around the 17-minute mark on Part 9, the aspect ratio changes, and that was because I went back and "refilmed from this point until the end, because I had dozed off while playing and I skipped through this part rather quickly. So when I went back to the game and started it to "refilm" the game had been released and updated since the previous night, which included changing the aspect ratio along with the title screen.
P.P.S. There were also several times when I accidentally brought up a secondary settings menu while playing, and that apparently happens when you press the Steam Deck joystick to the left in this game; so it's an in-game feature, not a bug, which confused me the first time it happened. And to ruin some behind the scenes magic, when that happens in subsequent videos, it's because I was starting to doze off. Sorry.
1. The Shadow Over Innsmouth by Lovecraft, H.P.
Visionary Publishing Company, April 1936
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
MIDI Week Singles: "Unhidable Anxiety" - Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA)
Composer: Hitoshi Sakimoto
Album: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Original Soundtrack
Label: Square Enix
Publisher: Square
Developer: Square Product Development Division 4