Game EXP: Layers of Fear VR (MQ2)

 

Layers of Fear VR

Release Date: July 9, 2020

Systems: HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 2, Meta Quest 2

Publisher: Bloober Team SA

Developer: Incuvo S.A.

First off, a couple of things to note about the above.  Layers of Fear VR is a VR port of Layers of Fear, developed by Bloober Team SA in 2016.  The port of Layers of Fear to VR was handled by Incuvo and released in 2020.  Secondly, I have previously played this game on Steam and the Nintendo Switch, so I knew, for the most part, what I was getting into when I started; I also briefly talked about buying the same game multiple times here.  I would not normally review a game for the third time, but this is the first time I have replayed a game for the first time in virtual reality, and because there were some noticeable changes to the game in the VR format that I feel that Layers of Fear VR deserves its own article.

This being the third time I have played various iterations of Layers of Fear and just as many Game EXP articles.  The first time I played the game was on my computer through Steam, and the second time was on the Nintendo Switch exclusively in handheld mode.  I wanted to pick this game up for the Oculus Quest 2 / Meta Quest 2 for all of the reasons that I talked about back in August.  I had read some of the reviews for the game on the Oculus store page and knew some of the graphical limitations and a few of the crashing issues and glitches, but I felt pretty confident that I was going to be playing a fairly stable game.

Going into the game, there were two specific areas that I was terrified about revisiting.  First, there was the bedroom for your daughter.  In both previous games I had played, this room was very unsettling because you were forced to be in this room as the only door in/out would lock upon entering, and you had to be in the room the whole time while events happening around you.  Things like a doll banging its head against a crib, toys rolling across the floor, a music box with a spinning light playing some creepy-ass tune.  There were also effects in the room that I was afraid was going to make me very motion sick because previously, the lights in the room would spin, followed by the game forcing the player to slowly spin (in the opposite direction?  maybe?) without the player being in control, revealing horrific changes to the room with each pass.  Spinning rooms and not being in control are great ways to cause nausea, at least for me, and especially in a VR space.  Thankfully, the developer who ported "Layers of Fear" took this into account and there was no spinning in the room apart from moving myself, and they managed to make the room just as terrifying.  Sure this room was different from the original game, but only in how certain mechanics operated, but I am glad that Incuvo did make the needed accessibility changes to make it playable for most players while still maintaining the original feeling and effect that Bloober Team had created for the room.

The second room that I was not looking forward to was The Painter's office which involves heights, both in looking up, and falling down.  Now I have played VR games involving heights (The Climb 2, Ultra Wings, Vader: Immortal) and there are times when you can "feel" the fear of falling a few hundred virtual feet.  I recall the first time I played through this area I fell a few times because I thought that was how you progressed through the towering bookshelves looking for the ringing phone.  I now know that you are required to fall at least two, possibly three times, and each time I hated it.  Granted it is not quite the same as jumping across a gap between cliffs in a canyon, but walking across pallets suspended from the ceiling while surrounded by Dali-esque bookshelves is still an unnerving experience.

The rest of the moving about in this environment, now created in a 3D space felt pretty natural even with accessibility modifications.  In some VR games I have played that require the player to move around a space, they have used a projecting/throwing method that projects a circle on the ground with a connecting line showing where you will move to.  In Layers of Fear VR, you move around as you would in any first-person game, but while you are moving, the sides of the screen darken and narrow, essentially giving you tunnel vision, and only keeping the area directly in front of your virtual eyes in focus, reducing the risk of motion sickness.  When you stop moving, your vision returns to normal without the darkened edges.  It did take a while (a few 15-30 minute sessions) to get used to this method of movement, although by the end of the game, I felt fine moving around without issue; at least most of the time.  Going up and down stairs did make me feel momentarily nauseous, but I had gotten into the habit of marching in place while walking and using stairs to help mitigate that nausea feeling; I am sure I looked ridiculous, which Conklederp and my parents could attest to. That includes putting your hand through objects like walls, books, windows, and objects looking oversized (enlarged to show detail?).  

For people who hang their experience on the world being 100% accurate, there are a quite a few immersion-breaking aspects to the game. First, I fully understand the difficulty of "clipping," when your virtual hand clips through objects because I feel like there is little that the developers can do to not have your hands move through objects that would not translate well visually and to the haptic controllers.  You could just have your hand not pass through objects, but that would be visually off-putting as you know your hand is still moving, but visually, it is static.  So instead you can move your hand through most things in the game world.  Your head, essentially being the camera, on the other hand, cannot pass through most objects, especially walls.  If you do try to pass your head through a wall, the game world will just "back up," rather jarringly, until the wall and your head are no longer clipping.  There were a couple of instances where my head clipped through a door that was either opening or closing, but that is likely due to the walls and doors being constructed differently.  Additionally, when reaching for dressers or cabinets with a lot of drawers, There was also one room and one hallway that did not have the correct image/texture behind the window and instead was a just solid bright fuchsia.  It was momentarily distracting, but only if I were to stare at out that particular window for more than a second.

There were several times I found that objects were a lot larger than they would normally be in a real space.  Things like dominos were the size of small books, spice jars the size of growlers, rings that might fit Andre the Giant, a pocket watch was the size of your palm, and an embossing stamp was about three inches in diameter.  Sure, these objects were ToonTown levels of large but their models were never created with the idea that they would be looked at outside of a 2D screen or by waving a hand up in comparison.  In the original game, the objects might have come across as slightly larger, but not this comically large.  Does this ruin immersion?  A little, but it was not often that I was going around comparing objects to my virtual hands and this would only come up when reaching for a letter or drawing to see if I could pick it up; which was actually quite frequent.  I also admit that I am the kind of person that is not bothered by this, so after I got used to some objects being larger than their real-world counterparts, I was quickly able to get over it and continue getting the metaphorical feces scared out of me.  

Lastly, and this is a twofer, you could not interact with all freestanding objects.  Like rolls of paper in drawers, books on bookshelves, and chairs, which is something to be annoyed with after playing the Penumbra series where you could interact with nearly everything, but like a lot of video games, there are some things that were never meant to be clicked.  Secondly, items that you can interact with, like bottles, and some items in the kitchen, those objects do not have sound when you place them down or throw them across the room.  I picked up a wine bottle and tossed it up in the air, and it landed on a table, rolled off, and landed on the floor without any kind of sound effect.  Sure a lot of these were immersion-breaking, but I am also more on the forgiving side, and I know that I am a little bit biased.

For those wanting to know how I finished the game, I got the "Loop" ending again.  For the third time.  I thought I had read that to get one of the "good" endings that you needed to avoid the rat drawings, and while I only picked up three (all by accident), I still had The Painter finish the painting of his Wife only to have it distort in front of his eyes and laugh at him mockingly.  The game then did an interesting thing in that it cut to as if I was watching a movie on a screen, as The Painter picked up the painting and threw it in a room upstairs with all of the other paintings of his Wife.  I think this cutscene was shown this way to reduce motion sickness since, in the original game, it shows you performing this action, but if it were to happen all of a sudden, at the end of the game with the computer taking control of your character, it might cause the player to feel ill.  Also, because it is a cut scene, you are not supposed to be able to look around, which inevitably the player would likely do, which would lead the developers to need to create that portion of the house at that point in time.  So instead, it was shown as a movie, removed from the player's ability.  I was fine with this.

[No, this is not the final painting]

I think I can say that Layers of Fear VR, is my favorite way to experience this game now.  Sure, I could play it on PC and the game would look better than it does in VR as the textures would be richer and everything that Bloober Team created for the game would be there, but being able to be in that mansion, after having already explored it twice and it still feeling new was an amazing experience.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Leave Me Be, With My Memories

MIDI Week Singles: "Paintings on the Wall Pt. 1" - Layers of Fear (PC, NS, & MQ2)

 

"Paintings on the Wall Pt. 1" from Layers of Fear & Layers of Fear VR on Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, & HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 2, & Meta Quest 2 (2016 & 2020)

Composer:  Arkadiusz Reikowski

Album: Layers of Fear Soundtrack

Label: Limited Run Games

Publisher: Aspyr, & Bloober Team SA

Developer: Bloober Team SA, & Incuvo S.A.

I just recently finished Layers of Fear VR on the Meta Quest 2 over the weekend (stay tuned!), and having already used the Main Theme from the original and my first playthrough of the game for a MIDI Week Single back in 2018, I thought that I would use "Paintings on the Wall Pt. 1" being a song that I know from the game, but I cannot specifically place when this song was played.  I feel like it was likely used multiple times.  The music in this game is sparse as it focuses more on the sounds of the mansion as it crumbles around The Painter as his mind degrades.  When the music does crop up in the game, with one or two exceptions, there is a sense of relief, that you can finally breathe and feel less tense, an effect that a lot of music creates on its own.

With "Paintings on the Wall Pt. 1" it still has that somewhat-calming effect in-game, that you feel like this is a moment to reflect on a revelation by The Painter or the player on something that just happened.  Out of the game and listening to the song on its own, the song takes on a similar but expanded view.  There are layers of reminiscence as I recall playing the game, both recently and as far back as 2017 when I first played it.  There are feelings of sadness about what happened to The Painter's family and the negative effect he had on their lives.  Then there are also the questions as to the mental state of The Painter, brought on through some combination of alcoholism and likely undiagnosed mental health issues (I am not qualified to make any kind of diagnosis based on the events in the game).  And on top of all of that is the fear I felt playing this game all three times.  The anxiety about walking down a hallway to find that the door I entered through is no longer in existence, of the fear of anticipating a jump scare as I reach down for a torn picture on the ground.  

All of this comes out in this song and is just another reminder of how this is one of my favorite video games.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Still Calm with My Mind at Peace

Why Do I Buy the Same Video Game Multiple Times?

The other night I booted up the Oculus Quest 2 (Is it the Meta Quest storefront yet?) and thought I would jump back into Layers of Fear VR.  Less than 10 minutes later, I turned the game off, not because I was not having fun and not because I was getting motion sick, but because I was terrified.  Here I am, a grown-ass man, playing a game for the third time on a third platform, and scared of a wheelchair that wheeled itself behind me without noticing it.  And I knew that something was going to happen with the wheelchair because I had a vague memory of something happening with it from a previous playthrough and because it just looked like it was more than a piece of decoration.  The question I asked myself as I took off the Oculus, was not why was I afraid in a game that has no monsters that can kill you, but why had I purchased a game that I had already bought and played on Steam, and Nintendo Switch?  Why was I playing a game again on a different system when I had already played the game twice before?  

I think there are multiple answers to this.

1. The first and primary reason is that I really love Layers of Fear.  I love the smooth and seamless transitions between things happening to and around you while you play.  I love that I can walk past an inanimate object, turn the corner of a hallway, reach out for a door and hear a creak behind me and the game plays a subtle scare chord as I look behind me to find the wheelchair that was 30 feet and around a corner now right behind me newly splattered in paint.  I want to support the developer and my primary way of doing that is to buy their game.
2. Secondly, this is not just rebuying the same game over and over again, this is buying the same game in a different format.  When I first got Layers of Fear, it was through a Humble Bundle for Steam.  I bought it on the Nintendo Switch because I love being able to play in handheld mode, I love the game and wanted to support the developer on their first game published on a Nintendo system (see the first point above), and I was interested to see how the port to the Switch was.  Yes, I could have just read a review, but I wanted to see for myself, and again, see the first point above.
3. Lastly, I then bought the game again (albeit, it was on sale) on the Oculus Quest 2 for the first two reasons above, and because I was genuinely curious to see what playing a first-person horror game was like in VR.  Never mind the fact that I had already played the game twice so I knew what I was getting into story-wise, but I was curious.  Would being in this virtual space be as scary as the first time I played the game on my laptop (through an HDMI cord connected to our TV) I played the game?  How would the game hold up graphically when I could get my virtual head right up to paintings, bathtubs, and bowls of fruit?  I wanted to know this, so I bought the game.

Now we have answered the question of why I own at least one game on three different systems.  Do people buy the same game multiple times for the same reasons?  Would someone buy Resident Evil 4 on the Game Cube, on Steam, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Android?  Maybe that is a bad example because I would be surprised if people have not done just that because it is Resident Evil 4.  Me, I have only purchased RE4 once on the Game Cube and have had zero inkling to buy the game again.  Except on the Oculus Quest 2 for the third reason above.  And in recent years (as in the last 10 years I guess), there have been remastered and remakes, which made me think about how many times I had purchased the same game on different systems for any of the three reasons above.

And I honestly do not think that it is too many.  And I would not count the games that are included on either the Nintendo Switch Online package in the NES, SNES, or N64 catalogs or the NES Classic or the SNES Classic.

The next bunch of games I purchased again was specifically games on various Nintendo handheld systems (Game Boy Advance, DS, 3DS) and the Switch for portability reasons, although there is also likely an element of wanting to show support to the developers that there is viability for their IP on this specific platform, although that is usually directed more towards indie games.

Obviously, there is Layers of Fear.  I do have the BioShock: The Collection on Switch after I had already purchased it on PC and Steam.  Then there was Final Fantasy VII, which I first bought on PC back in 1998 and again on Steam, as well as Resident Evil ReMake on the Game Cube and Steam.  I would be tempted to say Dragon Warrior on the NES and the Dragon Quest I & II that was released on the GameBoy Color, but we did technically get our NES copy of Dragon Warrior free with our Nintendo Power subscription back in 1990.  I've also purchased Doom and Doom II on both Steam and Switch, partly to see if Doom II on the Switch also made gave me motion sickness.  Oh, I did buy the Final Fantasy I & II Dawn of Souls that was released on the GameBoy Advance while still having the original NES cartridge that I am pretty sure I bought.  At the time I do not recall Final Fantasy II being available outside of fan translation ROMS and I had zero qualms about replaying the first Final Fantasy.  I also have copies of Kholat and the Amnesia Collection on the Switch for all of the same reasons mentioned above.  But I also picked it up the Amnesia Collection because I realized I had not played either Amnesia game since I first played them back in 2012 and 2013 respectively.  And while I technically do have three different versions of Skyrim, one of those was an automatic acquisition because I already bought Skyrim on Steam, and anyone who had it was given a copy.  I got Conklederp a copy of Skyrim on the Switch thinking that she might want to start up a new character and play that way, but that ended up not being the case and I think it's been over a year since either of us has touched the Switch port.  I also picked up Dark Souls on the Switch for the same reason that I bought games for a second time on the Switch.  

I did buy the NES cartridge of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest right before I moved up to the PNW and I do not think I have actually played the physical game, but I did buy it for the Virtual Console on the 3DS, and I did buy the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on the Switch.  I also got the Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition on the Switch although I bought and played the hell out of the original game on my PC back in 2003, I never beat all of the DLC, specifically, I was stuck on a section of Hordes of the Underdark shortly after the massive battle in the Underdark; I think I have started three or four different characters and have finally decided to stick it out with my Half-Elven Paladin.

In a similar albeit slightly different vein, I did buy Pandemic on the Switch while I already have the board game.  I bought it partly because it was/is going to be delisted from a lot of online marketplaces, but also because I really like the game and the ability to play it in a single-player mode seems like a lot of fun since Conklederp and I do not have a lot of time to sit down to play a multi-hour board game after The Squire goes to bed.

Sure, there are other games that I would likely buy a second time around, like the Dead Space series, or Eternal Darkness if either of them ever came to the Switch.  I am also likely to buy again Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion on either the Switch (or Steam Deck whenever that is supposed to come in during Q4) because I had a lot of fun with that on the PSP.  And I will 100% buy Final Fantasy Tactics if it is on the Switch and/or Steam Deck when that is finally announced and released, as well as Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster which will likely be on the Steam Deck because apparently, Square Enix has no interest on releasing that game on the Switch; and I had no interest in the atrociousness of the HD smoothified monstrosity version of the game, and I never bought the GBA port because, at the time, I did not feel like I needed/wanted a portable version.

So yes, I guess, I will buy multiple copies of the same game on different platforms, but only specific games and for specific reasons, usually one of the three reasons at the top of the article.  As to why other people buy multiple copies of the same game across different platforms, you will likely have to ask them as I can only speak for myself and speculate until the bees come home.  I think my one caveat is that I do not see myself buying a second copy of a game, be it on the same platform or on a different platform without the intention of playing the game, to have only as a collector's item.  I do not have the disposable income or the space in our house to have multiple copies just to have them, if I am going to buy a game, for the most part, I plan on playing that game (stop looking at my Steam and Switch queue).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

When The Senses Are Shaken

P.S.  Only slight apologies for the semi-stream of consciousness in the middle paragraphs where I just start listing games left and right without a thought about any semblance of organization.

P.P.S.  And now that I think about it, I do not think I have multiple physical copies of the same game.  All duplicates are either a digital copy of a physical game or a physical copy of a digital game.  I think, but I will get back to you if this is not the case.  Because I care that much.

P.P.P.S.  I decided early on that I was not going to link all of the games I mentioned in this article because that would be too many games and I am not made of time you see.  Yeah, I decided it was okay to be lazy.  And that is okay.

Game EXP: Layers of Fear: Legacy (NS)

I realize that I posted a Game EXP article about Layers of Fear less than a year ago, but that was when I played it through Steam, and this time it is my experience playing it on the Nintendo Switch.  For a more comprehensive review of the game, I would recommend you read the article I posted last October, so I am not going to go into explaining gameplay mechanics and expect that you will have either played Layers of Fears already, or you have previously read the aforementioned article.

First off, this version of Layers of Fear is very much the same game that is available on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.  It may be graphically inferior to other releases of the game as far as texture detail or quality of dynamic lighting, but I feel that unless you are doing a side-by-side comparison, playing on the Switch, you will probably not notice if a wall, painting, or wooden doll's body would have looked even better on a PC or PlayStation 4.  And as long as we are talking about gameplay performance, I will admit that I did not notice any recognizable dip in frames per second, but since I do not have a counter on screen, I cannot confirm that the game did not dip from 30 fps to 20 for 4.7 seconds.  And this was from playing predominantly in handheld mode, although I did play a few times in docked, but at the very least, all of the pictures taken here were in handheld.

My biggest concern with playing Layers of Fear on the Switch was how well the system would handle the seamless transitions that made the game the first time around so effective.  After playing for the first hour, all of my fears were alleviated.  Walking down a hall way, hearing the door you just walked through click behind you and turning around to find a blank wall where the door once was, then you hear the sound of a crying child behind you.  As far as I was able to tell, all of the ways that  LoF excelled on my PC during my first playthrough have met all of my expectations on the Switch.

Having now gone through the game twice, I felt that the second time was significantly less frightening than the first time, but I feel like that is to be anticipated since I knew what to expect for the most part.  That being said, the game was still pretty terrifying in a lot of areas.

When I came upon the bedroom, I immediately recalled all of the horribleness that happened here.  By this point in the game, my palms were already a bit sweaty and my brain thought it would be the perfect time to inflict my arms and the back of my neck with goosebumps.  And that is primarily what I was hoping for on my second playthrough, and first on the Switch.  I have yet to go through the Inheritance DLC on the Switch, but I anticipate that it will have similar results.

And something that I apparently did not notice the first time I finished the game, was that "New Game" was replaced by "Finish It."  Now I am really hoping that there will be something different on a second playthrough of the same file.

So congratulations Bloober Team on a great port of a great game, and I am really hoping that Observer is able to see a Switch release, but I have been hoping for that now for nearly a year, so let us just keep at it, shall we?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Where We Can Find Our Path Forward

MIDI Week Singles: "Main Theme (feat. Penelopa Wilmann-Szynalik)" - Layers of Fear (NS)

"Main Theme (feat. Penelopa Wilmann-Szynalik)" from Layers of Fear on PC, OS X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, & Nintendo Switch (2016)

Composer: Arkaduisz Reikowski

Album: Layers of Fear Digital Soundtrack

Label: Bloober Team

Developer: Bloober Team

If you are thinking at all that this songs reminds you at all of the song "The Beginning" from the game Kholat, you would be correct on at least two fronts.  The first being that this is the same composer that wrote the music for Kholat, and correct on the other point, that Penelopa Willmann-Szynalik was the singer who offered her beautiful voice to both that song, and this.  That might be a reason why I felt immediately drawn to this song.  

The song is also incredibly beautiful, which I think is the perfect contrast to how dark in theme, tone, and the overall visuals are for the rest of the game.  It is somewhat nice to have a bit of light aire before delving headlong behind the eyes of a potentially unreliable narrator.

The only negative thing I have to say about "Main Theme" is how short it is.  Granted there is not a lot of music during the various areas of the house during the game, so the opening titles makes perfect sense to have a thematic piece before the game starts, but perhaps it is best to show the player a bit of the light before they plunge down a hole where they might have left their own severed finger in an oven just a little bit too long.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Past At Last Has Come

Game EXP: Layers of Fear (PC)

I started Layers of Fear, a year and-a-half old first person perspective exploring psychological horror game back in August and I was apparently so frightening upon finishing it and the Inheritance DLC, that I apparently decided to take a month to mentally recover.

Now since it has been 612 days since Layers of Fear was first released, let us jump straight ahead to my approach to the game.

Being a fan of first person exploration games that do no rely on combat like Dear Esther, SOMA, and The Stanley Parable, I feel like Layers of Fear is a perfect fit for what I want in this type of game.  I do not even recall if there was a run option, but I am willing to bet that there was not, so unlike SOMA, and Outlast, there was frequently nothing to run away from, although I do recall having to hide a few times in Inheritance.  Perhaps it was this lack of physical adversaries that allowed the rest of my brain to be freaked out 90% of the time I was playing.  The other 10% was probably spent just being excited that the game was giving me this type of reaction.

Like the painting in the background, the visuals are very painting like. Then horribleness started to happen.

The thing for me that made LoF so frightening, was the smoothness of how the game operated when it wanted to scare you.  One non-spoiler example would be that you would walk down a hall towards a closed door.  You try to open the door but the door is locked.  You turn around to find that there is no longer a hallway behind you but a wall with no door.  Confused, you back up, turn around to the try the locked door again, but the door is no longer there.  You are now in a room with no exits.  Only after looking to your right, do you see a door that wasn't previously there.  You try that door and it opens into a large sitting room.  You pass through the door and as you enter the room, the door slams behind you.  You check out the door and it is indeed locked.  When you turn back around, a painting flies off of the wall and crashes to the ground in front of you, followed by a scream off in the distance.

That's not what a normal doorway should look like right?

What makes the mostly spoiler free scene above work so well, is that there is no indication, with the exception of the door slamming, that the game is doing anything to mess with you.  There is no lag when events happen, and there are often no sound effects to hint that the hallway you just walked down is now just a wall five feet behind you.  It is amazingly seamless.  During the entire game I was hoping that I would be able to see something happening, but the game never allowed this to happen.  You could stare at a wall that you are convinced is going to change into a door, but it will never happen unless you look away.  Or maybe it always was a door, but your brain won't allow a door to mysteriously change from a wall before your eyes because that just doesn't happen.

I feel like if you stripped the Lovecraftian elements away from Eternal Darkness, then you would have something similar to Layers of Fear.

Now, as someone who may frequent our site might have gathered by this point, my laptop is not a robust gaming computer, but it is able to handle a fair amount of games that have been released as recently as last year.  Most of the time, the game ran at around 24+ fps which, despite nearly everything you may read online, is not unplayable.  One of the few times my game acted up was in the beginning when I noticed some tearing and after some tinkering in the in-game settings, which I do not think hampered the visuals of the game, fixed the issue.  The other issues was that the game froze or crashed, but that happened less than five times during nine hours of game play.  And because the game auto saves every time you pass through a door that automatically closes (I think that is when it happens anyway), you do not have to really worry about losing progress.

And speaking of progress, there were only two instances in the whole game where I became lost and was unsure what to do.  Especially in an area where rooms started repeating, I was at first convinced that this is what was supposed to be happening, until I spent too much time re-entering the same room over and over and knew that I was missing something, or expecting something to happen that was not designed to happen.  I was a little annoyed at this wall I was hitting, but that frustration was short lived and I was able to get back to being frightened all over again.

That is really all I want to say about this game.  I had been a long time since I dreaded the anticipation of walking down a long hallway, but I kept playing because I was intrigued by the story that kept unfolding.  I am sure I could have done a speed run, but then you would lose most of what the game has to offer.  At the moment, I am seriously considering picking this up when it is released on the Switch (probably next year), to play it again, but also to show that there is interest in this kind of game for Nintendo's new console.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Feel the Fear Takes Hold


P.S.  I ended up not taking as many pictures as I was hoping to, knowing that I was going to write about my experience, I was just too frightened to move my hands away from the mouse/keyboard.

P.P.S.  Then there is Observer, which was released back in August.  Here's to hoping that it sees a Switch release too.

Monthly Update: September 2017

Apologies for not putting this up on Friday as I apparently had forgotten that it was already September.  September has been known to do that in the past, so hey, consistency.  

I was looking at the games that I had been playing in August and ho-boy there were more than I thought.  I shouldn't say finished either because I only managed to finish one out of 12, and 8.33% is not great.  The primary ones on the 3DS were (and are still) Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, but I put that one on hold temporarily while I practiced Mario Kart 7 in preparation for the Nintendo World Championship qualifiers in Tuckwila in a week.  I am still kind of on the fence about attending as I have been unable to perform the wall jumping glitch in GBA Bowser Castle 1 which apparently everyone who was in the top 5 had been able to do and the last word I read was that the San Jose judges were aware of the exploit but were still allowing it to happen.  Maybe that's just my cue to not drive the 334 miles round trip for the chance at a Nintendo pin and to play demos of Metroid: Samus Returns, and Super Mario Odyssey.  But on the Mario front, I did start tooling around with Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS again, which has reaffirmed my annoyance at people who insist on creating the most pain in-the-ass-possible levels.

The Switch has a more limited library in that Mario Kart 8: Deluxe has seen the most game time, with the 150cc circuit (is that redundant?) giving me a lot of grief.  My facebook news feed has been subject to the occasional pictorial rant about coming in first place in three out of four races, with the fourth often landing me in 3rd place or worse.  As in every single cup this has happened, which as lead me to believe that the game doesn't want me to win, if only by extreme luck.  But this is something that I will attempt to cover in a Game EXP article later in the month.  And now that I think about it, Conklederp and I should get back into playing Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together as we have only accessed the second out of I don't know how many worlds.

On the Steam front, I did finish the main storyline in Layers of Fear (which the Humble Spooky Bundle) reminded me that it was already patiently waiting in my inventory, and I am about an hour or two into the Inheritance DLC and while I think I am nearly finished, I know that there is much more to explore as I have gotten only one of I don't know how many endings.  I may have to play something lighter between playthroughs though because holy hell that's an effectively scary game.  More to come in a Game EXP later in the month.  I also started up Apotheon so that I could play a Metroidvania style game while waiting for Metroid: Samus Returns which comes out next week (9/15).  While the art style is one of the main draws for me, I have had to stop playing on two separate occasions where I died after not having saved for about 45 minutes and did not want to go back and do the exact same thing all over again just because I was briefly unaware of how low my health was.  Speaking of quitting, I have decided that I may be done with Jack Lumber after about two hours on the PC that this game is not really optimized for keyboard/mouse and really requires a touch screen.  I may write an article about this as it was a fun game, but I had to stop after reaching a frustrating wall.

In Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, I have finally made my way to the great city of Baldur's Gate and am now poncing around trying to see how I can activate the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion without having to look it up.  Continuing with the isometric theme, but now moving directly overhead, I finally started Darkwood after playing a bit of the alpha and demo following their successful Indigogo campaign from June 2013.  What immediately makes me nervous about this game, is similar to playing Fallout 2, in that I am afraid of making a mistake that will either make the game harder or close off a storyline.  But that's video games for you.

Lastly, I found a free game on steam called SNOW that is currently in Early Access that I was hoping would scratch that itch caused by the lack of a 1080° game and the level design for Mount Wario in MK8:D.  Possibly because it is in Early Access, but SNOW feels like it could be a lot more fun actually snowboarding down a mountain with a bit more practice on my part, and if the character didn't pop out of their bindings and flop down the mountain at the first (or second) bump against a tree.  I may write more about this in the coming weeks.

TV for Conklederp and I has been limited to Game of Thrones, which wrapped Season 7 a few weeks ago, and The Leftovers, which we started watching probably about the time GoT ended and we just finished Episode 2 from Season 3.  And since Vikings doesn't start up again until November 29th, maybe it's time that we get into Westworld?

Lastly, I just wanted to say that, partly due to the summer months but also due to my own in-activeness, neither of our Dungeons & Dragons groups have gotten together in a while.  This is definitely something that I would like to fix, hopefully before the end of the month.  I take some responsibility for our Oregon group as the current quest did not play out as excitingly as I had anticipated, but that's my role as the DM to keep the PCs engaged and entertained, so I may have to diverge a little bit from the printed story.

So that was August, and we are fully lodged in September.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
All Of Our Fears Will Be Gone 'Til Tomorrow