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

Monthly Update: July 2018

Are you getting tire of my saying, "Holy crap, it's already [Insert Current Month], because last month just flew by!?"  Because if so, then "sorry," because June kinda just did.  Fly by.  Or at least for me it did.  And also, I'm not sorry.

I also kind of want to semi-apologize because I realize that my last handful of posts were Nintendo (specifically Nintendo Switch) related and when I am mentally looking forward to my next batch of articles and July in general, there is more Nintendo.  And I guess that's just the way things go when your primary video gaming system happens to be the Nintendo Switch.  And if you have been following along, I still have not gotten around to fixing my 3DS (or a semi-integral part of my car for that matter), so even my playable Nintendo gaming systems are dwindling.

But, the last week of June I did manage to pick up a previously coveted NES Classic so I have been fooling around with the 30 games that come on that, and before you ask or wonder, I probably will not be modding the thing as I am just a little too afraid in my abilities to not brick the system.  Maybe I'll just go the route of the Pi and attempt that?  And I realized that it had been a loooooooong time, possibly since Beardsnbourbon was over for a visit that I last played the SNES Classic, but I could be wrong.  Good thing I had played Final Fantasy III so many times that I was somewhat easily able to remember what I was supposed to be doing based on which airship I had and whom I had in my party.  To the Empire with a stop off in Miranda!

But moving away from Nintendo, at least for the time being, I do currently have Steam open, and I do tend to turn on The Elder Scrolls Online, if only to keep my game up-to-date so come the day when my computer decides that it wants to play ESO for more than 10 minutes before crashing, I will be good and patched up.  And as for Steam, I am doing a pretty decent job in not buying anything during their Summer Sale, mainly because the last game I played, not including the Mansions of Madness app that we used last night, was Dark Souls III back on March 5th.  And what I find kind of odd for me, is that while looking through my library of games, I really only get a hankering to play games that I have already played, like Dead Space, or  Morrowind.  Sure there are some games that I would love to play that I cannot get on the Switch like Prey, The Enemy Within, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture,  and Alien: Isolation, but my computer is getting up there in years and cannot handle much above 2011 games, with the few exception mind you.

On the other side of the board, hopefully we can get our D&D group together to finish up that one-off quests that will be going on its second session.  It's been since April when we had two sessions in a month.  Maybe some people felt a little burnt out, or more than likely, Summer kicked in and everybody, ourselves included, started having our weekends filled in with things that did not involve sitting around a table for six to eight hours on a Sunday afternoon.  But we did manage to have some friends over this last Sunday to play (and introduce) Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, which I came to realize that we had not played since Conklederp and I moved into our new house last November.  Eight months is a pretty long time to go without playing one of our favorite board games.

So July 2018, you are here.  Now let us do something about it.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
And It's Fine For Some

MIDI Week Singles: "Boss Battle 1" - G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (NES)

"Boss Battle 1" from G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1991)

Composer: Nobuyuki Shioda

Album: No Official Release

Developer: KID

If you happen to be in the United States, or are a citizen of this country, then I guess this song applies to however you want it to apply to whatever you want it to apply to.  Because 'murica! and because it is presently our Independence Day!

Not having ever played this game despite having watched a fair amount of the G.I. Joe cartoon as a wee kid, and played the board game quite a bunch, the NES game never seemed to interest me for whatever reason.  So when I came upon the music earlier last week during my #AllTheNESMusic listening, I thought that using for today would be appropriate.  I also thought that as boss music, it works, but at the same time, doesn't(?).  

It works in that, to me, it sounds very much like boss (or at the very least) mini-boss style music.  There is a franticness to the melody that clearly states it is not intended for your basic stage or level, but for fighting a single strong enemy in a single screen.  I do not know how or why I feel this is the case, but that is what it sounds like to me.  However, I feel that it does not quite work in that the melody itself seems kind happy go-lucky, but not in the same insanity way that "Majora's Incarnate Battle" did in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.  But that melody only lasts for about 13 seconds before it goes into a frantic "Get Out of THERE!" section that plays for another 15 seconds before the song repeats.  But I really think that that 13 seconds of where the melody is the strongest is where and why the song holds together, which is why I find it so catchy.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And You Never Need A Guy To Guide You

Game EXP: Fallout Shelter (NS)

So what if I reused the same graphic as before, it's practically the same as before anyway.

When Fallout Shelter was announced a few weeks back at E3 2018 for the Switch, I admit that I was initially excited.  Not because I had not played the game before, I had both on mobile and on PC, but because it was another game from Bethesda on the Switch.  I also wondered how the game would work with controller support, a way I had never played the game before, and with the micro-transaction model that the game was built on.  There was also a part of me that was hoping that if there was enough interest (and downloads) that Bethesda would begin to port Fallout titles to the Switch.  We all can hope.  So I gave it a go, and started Vault 47 for the third time.

Now, there have been a number of changes to the core game and upgrades to what you can do since I first played it on my Galaxy S III Mini nearly three years ago, but the premise is still basically the same.  You build your shelter in order to acquire more vault dwellers which requires you to expand your shelter which requires you to have more vault dwellers to work in various areas of the shelter, to keep the shelter running and to defend it from raiders, and so on.  Since the game was first launched three years ago, there are quests to send your vault dwellers out on have been added, which all require real world time to travel to and return from.

This was actually one of the aspects that I was curious about.  Since the game was developed for mobile devices, there was the time mechanic built in.  That frequent checking up on your vault dwellers was necessary as events (albeit non were usually lethal, but time did pass in at least some manner for them) could happen while you were away.  The player is encouraged to check up on vault dwellers that they send out into the wasteland either on missions, or just out to gather supplies.  If you failed to check in on a dweller out in the wastes who was low on health, they would die requiring you to use resources to resurrect them to bring both themselves and their loot back to the vault.  This mechanic is not as easily translatable to a home console (as it was also ported to the PS4).

Sadly, this Skinner Box type mechanic was still in effect in the Nintendo Switch version, as I am pretty sure that it was carried over as well to the PS4 port.  And I really should not have been surprised considering that it was the same when it was ported to the PC, although PC's are typically more portable than home video game consoles.  Once I figured this out, I felt that my days playing Fallout Shelter were once again numbered.

And that number was apparently 5 hours as I have since stopped playing the game.  Again.  Cold turkey.  After not checking on my vault for a day after maybe a week of frequently playing, I had not looked back to see the desolation that my absence has wrought.  I was half expecting to see either the vault completely empty, devoid of human life, maybe a Deathclaw or maybe a nest of molerats have taken hold in the Overseer's Office.  What surprised me was that everyone was still there.  Sure the one pregnant woman had been ready to give birth for a couple of days (do not want to calculate what that would be in in-game time), but the food, water, and electricity stores were all hovering around the bare minimum line to keep the vault up and running.

And so once again, I say goodbye to Vault 47.  You provided some fun for the times I was building and watching the dwellers do their thing, like procreate and hopefully not with your grandchild because I cannot keep track of who were the parents after children become adults and from that point on just perpetually are.

But when I turned the game back on to find out the condition of the vault, I do admit that it was pretty satisfying clicking on every one of the dwellers who were leveling up, giving birth, gaining attributes,  and crafting weapons.

Oh no. . .

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

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: Perception (NS)

I first heard about Perception from The Deep End Games back in March of last year, when I emailed the developers to see the feasibility of receiving a reviewers copy.  Well, that ended up not panning out but it was shot in the metaphorical dark, and when I saw that it was also being released on the Switch, I decided that that would be the system that I would get the game on, partly to help show that there was interest for this type of game on Nintendo's still new console, but also because I was finding that I was more apt to play and finish games if I got them on the Switch.

As far as how the game handled on the Switch, I did not notice anything that made me even consider that this was sub-par port.  I primarily played the game in handheld mode, until the final push and finished the game in docked mode.  Everything looked great, had fluid movement and there were no sound issues.  While there might have been fps drops, if they happened at all, they were completely unnoticeable.  One thing that was not implemented for the Switch version was video capture, which would have been a nice, but far from necessary addition, especially from a writer's perspective when covering a story about a blind woman.  And after watching some trailers though, I do feel that I possibly missed out on some creepiness with the Presence that does not seem to have been taken out of the Switch port.  Or maybe I was just too good at not making any noises?

What peaked my interest in Perception is that I already love first person exploration games within the horror genre.  Games like SOMA, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Outlast, I find to be of a particular length (5-10 hours), atmosphere, and writing that focuses more on the horror of the situation than trying to scare the player with blood, guts, and guns; although I do love the ever loving butts out of the Dead Space series, so there is that too.  So the idea of playing as a blind woman as a first person exploration game seemed that it could be more than just a gimmick.  And it really was.

So the basic mechanic in the game is that the main character Cassie, uses her cane a la Matt Murdock to create sound waves that work basically like echo location in order to explore a house.  The twist here, is that there is frequently a "presence" in the house that begins to hunt Cassie similar to 3D Monster Maze's "He is hunting you."  This presence is drawn to you by the sound of your cane, and admittedly at times, it can get pretty frustrating trying to navigate a two story house with multiple stair cases and locked doors when you all of a sudden hear the chittering of some massive insect and the screen turns from its serene blue hue, to an aggressive and stressful dark orange.  

One time in particular, after seeing the game saving icon pop up (and being done for the evening), I decided to see how long it would take for whatever it was that was hunting me throughout the house to find me.  After banging the cane around and the screen turning from orange to a deep red, I heard some god awful noise as I turned a corner and was overtaken by some kind of formless mass and "died."  I say died because Cassie either does not actually seem to die, or is brought back to either the last save point, shortly before you started banging this way and that.  I am actually not 100% clear on this point, and as it happened only twice, I will cease the speculations.

Now I have some criticisms that I want to get out of the way before I continue gushing about the game.  The biggest one is two fold.  When the game started out, I was a little confused as to what I was doing, besides exploring an abandoned house.  I seem to recall something about being driven by a dream about a tree, but that was about it.  Even after going through Cassie's cell phone listening to phone messages, reading emails (through a brilliantly use text-to-speech program), I still was not sure who people were (did the "Backer" that often appeared in the voicemails meant that that person pledged a certain level on Kickstarter?), how they were related to Cassie, or what my main objective was supposed to be.  The second part of this criticism, was that after I reached what I thought was the end of the game, "Chapter II: The Ticket" and thought, "Wait, there's more to this!?"  I had originally only mentally prepared myself for a short one act game (I did not look it up on How Long to Beat) and I recall putting the game down for a few days after that as it was pretty stressful and draining on my brain to focus on moving throughout a dark house and trying to remember the layout.  I should mention that due to my penchant for taking a long time playing games, that I spent well over an hour on the first chapter alone, possibly two.

One aspect of the game that I believe I only used once, was the ability to hide, and there were a lot of different places you could hide.  In a bathtub, under a bed, in a large trunk, behind curtains, in a closet.  Each place offered you a vantage point to look out on the thing that was hunting you, but the few times I used this mechanic in the game, I looked down out of fear that if I could see the thing, then it would some how see me and I would be caught/eaten/sacrificed.  The rest of the time, I would be very careful in conservatively using the cane whenever the screen turned the aggressive orange.

After picking the game back up and having events and locations in the house begin to change, I found that I was now fully engaged.  This was also where the game moved beyond using a gimmick to engage the player, than using it as a mechanic that I enjoyed.  Keeping that in mind, the game was still pretty difficult when I tried to keep my distance from the Presence, or figure.  Perception can be a surprisingly draining game until you think that a large portion of the exhaustion is from mentally recalling the 3D space that you are trying to move around in.  I also found that my tension would let up a little bit whenever I saw the Game Saving spiral, and around the same time was when I needed to remind myself to breath more frequently than I probably was at the time.  The biggest sense of relief would always come when the game would tell me "The House is No Longer Listening."  Then I would, occasionally, and mostly out of spite, bang the cane around to my palpating heart's content.  Take that stupid house!!

Something else that I really loved about the game was the attention to detail, or at least the amount of detail in order to remind the player that Cassie was blind.  It was coming upon a painting hanging on the wall when I first realized that, "Yeah, Cassie could tell that there was a painting here, but she wouldn't be able to tell what it was a painting of.  Neat."  This was done obviously because Cassie was blind, but I feel it is also a great workaround for having to worry about commissioning artwork or use pre-existing artwork.  Had there been an interaction with another character that involved mentioning the Picasso in the hall, issue easily fixed; except there was never that kind of interaction, but I loved the idea nonetheless.  Oh, and I realize that she probably would not be able to see the subtle wood grain, but those are the kinds of things I am willing to overlook when talking about things that I like.

In the end, Perception contained a much deeper and emotionally impactful story than I was expecting going into the game.  I am sure there was music to help with emotional level of certain scenes, but I sadly cannot remember anything about the music; I might have to look up the soundtrack later.  The voice acting was great too, with Angela Morris often providing the voice for nearly half of the cast (although that is not at all obvious).  And being able to inflict real sounding emotion into lines like "No, no, no, no, no.  Not children. . ." could very easily come across as either too corny, or too trite; or too Resident Evil-ly.  And kudos too to Nick Grava for giving me goosebumps during what was, I think, his last bit of dialogue in the game.  

And at the end of the game, reading the closing which contained a statement from the creators (Bill and Amanda Gardner), felt pretty deep and moving.  Especially in our current climate, having the game end the way it did with its final messages, was a wonderful thing to have come up.

Thank you Bill Gardener, Amanda Gardner for sharing your story, and everyone at The Deep End Games for making it happen.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Shrieking of Nothing

P.S.  I recently discovered that Perception was originally funded on Kickstarter back in May 2015, and I most definitely would have pledged at least the $20 tier, but I am still glad that I waited for the Switch release.

P.P.S.  I had some formatting problems post posting which prevented me from including some more pictures that I thought would fit, so here they are, plastered here at the end:

What's creepy about a wapiti skull on a doll?

Absolutely Nothing to See Here!!

Completely Unnecessary E3 2018 Wrap Up That You Don't Really Need To Pay Attention To: Special 2018 Edition

The Logo That Never Gets Old! Special 2016 Edition Maybe

So E3 happened, and while I tried to pay as much attention as a full time employee is able to afford themselves, I was really only able to watch Bethesda's pre-E3 presentation on that one Sunday night.  The rest of everything I caught up on four weeks after E3 was over. . .or something close to that; you get the idea.

So in the vein of previous E3 articles that we have featured on our sliver of the gaming rambling portion of the Internet, I am going to continue with listing and briefly talking about games that managed to peak my interest over the last week.  And these are games that I had no prior knowledge of before this last week, so games like Dark Souls: Remastered for the Switch (which I have already pre-ordered), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (because I have no interest in the franchise), or FIFA 19 (because I like to keep my sports games simple), I will not be mentioning.  Again.  I am going to stick to the previously unknown to me.

And this is by no means an exhaustive list as I do not really have that much time, so if I have forgotten about your favorite game, franchise, character, or DLC, leave a note down below in the comments and I will look it up.

So, without further ado, here is an alphabetical list:

Carcassonne
I was completely unaware of this game, in either its board game or video game form.  And while my paranoia about playing board games against a computer is fairly well documented, I feel like after watching the trailer, I am more apt to pick up the physical board game.

Cyberpunk 2077
It is kind of odd that I feel semi-obligated to put this game on here having only played one game by CD Projekt Red, but I guess that is how a studio gets their hooks in you.  With one really good game.

DOOM Eternal
I loved DOOM on the Switch, and previous entries in the DOOM series, so this should make a lot of sense.  And because of the success of the revamped DOOM, I am not surprised that this looks similar to DOOM II's take on demons of Hell have invaded/attacked Earth.  Also more Mick Gordon music is a good thing.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades

I really was not expecting any announcements for The Elder Scrolls, so when Blades was announced for both mobile devices and consoles (coming later apparently), I was pretty excited.  Now, I am probably not going to be playing this on my phone as I am not a fan of touch controls on mobile devices in the way that they show here (although if it is as engaging as Dead Space: Mobile, I may just have to), the fact that they said it is also coming to consoles (which hopefully means the Switch) is an added bonus.  At least as far as I am concerned.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Very Special Edition
This was a pretty hilarious part of Bethesda's presentation and I really appreciated that they were able to laugh at the public's semi-ridiculing of their porting Skyrim to as many devices as it is currently playable on (currently nine I believe).  Then on Monday, I thought it would give it a try on our Echo Dot (thanks again Shramp), and lo and behold, it is a real thing, although it does not have the level of actions that are present in the trailer.  It is still pretty fun, albeit repetitive, to play.  My skill with a weapon, skill with magic, and my shout are all level 7.

The Elder Scrolls VI
I realize that this trailer was probably created to appease The Elder Scrolls community who would have been (and was) upset at the announcement of Fallout 76, considering that Fallout 4 was released only three years ago, but it was still a pretty great teaser.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia on the 3DS was my first foray into the Fire Emblem series and while I was more than happy with SoV, the style and tactics of the series definitely got its hooks into me, so now I am awaiting this game as well.  Let us just hope that the game is not sold in three separate editions where you have to buy each one in order to experience the entire story, although I can easily see either DLC or amiibo related DLC as a component here.

Outer Wilds

You know, I really like the visual aesthetic here, possibly because it reminds a little bit of RiME, but obviously more detailed.  Also the music is a major factor in being drawn to this game.  I also liked that they specified that it was "hand crafted" as opposed to procedurally generated, probably to distance itself from being labeled as another No Man's Land.

Rage 2

I really liked the first Rage game so I was pretty excited to see the Walmart announcement that Rage 2 was going to be showcased at E3.  The trailer looks like more of the same of what I liked from the first game, although this one seems to take place closer to after the asteroid hit earth than the first game, which is you basically saving the world.  Either way, I will have to upgrade my computer if I want to play this thing.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
After watching the trailer, I would have been surprised if this was not a game from FromSoftware as it seems very Japanese (in the best way possible), and very Dark Souls-esque, although the combat seems looser and more fluid that either Dark Souls or Dark Souls II (I have yet to play any other game by FromSoftware, but I feel like those are good tastes of their style).

So those are a handful of games that I felt like talking about that were either announced at E3 2018 or were news to me after the week long HERE'S OUR STUFF fest.  I realize that if you were coming here to find out what all the top games were and how our predictions matched up to reality, then I welcome you to our site for the first (and maybe last?) time, because that is not how we do things here, but you are more than welcome to stay nonetheless.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Cause You Make Me Feel So Brand New