An atmosphere is what delivers emotion and overall feelings in the game. The atmosphere can make a game scary, colorful, cartoony, or make you feel alone and sad. Atmosphere much matches and represent the idea of the game. Sometimes the atmosphere isn’t delivered right and can make a game feel boring, or just look bad.
The Best Atmosphere category was even harder than last year’s because so many great AAA titles came out with strong atmospheres. There were also some games I didn’t get a chance to squeeze into the runner-up’s area so that tells you how well this category did this year. While some of the others may have better art to back up their atmosphere L.A. Noire does something that most can’t: Make an atmosphere without fancy art or licenses. L.A. Noire is a new IP and pulls off a 1940’s era in realistic detail and really pulls you in and brings you into a time period that most games don’t explore outside World War II. L.A. Noire had amazing visuals to back it, but to make the game feel so true to an era is very hard to do. You don’t need fancy art for that.
The Warhammer series is an extremely expensive tabletop game that has grown to be more popular as an RTS game than anything else. Space Marine is the first outing in the genre, and with lots of speculation, it was deemed to be a complete failure. Relic proved everyone wrong by delivering a good game that has tons of action, gore, and a good story that the RTS games pack in. You play Captain Titus of the Ultramarines. You are the leader of the elite force, which is part machine and can take out whole battalions of troops that regular marines couldn’t. The Space Marines believe in the religion of the Machine God, and anything else that isn’t machine-related is heresy. You and your three squadmates are fighting back the Ork invasion and are trying to reach the Titan Manufactorum, which holds the most powerful war machine ever built. On the way, some weird twists happen, and you end up fighting the Order of Chaos and Daemons towards the end. How that happens, I’ll let you find out for yourself.
The story is decent, not very deep, but it’s entertaining, and the voice acting is superb. Relic got the art style and feel of the Warhammer universe across, so the game looks good, but technically it’s nothing special (using the Unreal Engine 3). The fighting system goes two ways with melee weapons and guns. There are a lot of cool guns to shoot, and they are unlocked slowly throughout the campaign. They each feel different and powerful, and you have to mix up your strategy of how you’re going to use what weapons for what situation. You can’t just use the same ones throughout the whole game. The melee weapons are smaller in number but just as cool to use. The chain sword allows you to tear enemies to shreds, and executing awesome kill moves is fun. This is actually how you get healthy, but it’s flawed in a way. When no ground enemies are around, you can’t heal and have to rely on your shield charging, so it’s a unique idea, but we need a way to heal up when fighting aerial units. You also get to use the Thunder Hammer and the Axe, which are all great weapons to use, but the hammer only lets you use the pistol and bolter, so no heavy weapons can be used (I’m assuming a balancing issue).
While you chop down Orks by the dozens, you will get to use the jetpack a few times. Launching into the air and pounding the ground while enemies fly around is great, but you don’t get to use it enough. What is enough (actually too much) is everything else. The same orks come at you through 2/3 of the game, and the same execution moves are repeated over and over again. By the time you get 1/4 of the way through the game, you wonder if there is anything but Orcs that exists. A few different types show up throughout, but not many, and the game just gets harder and harder as you go along instead of throwing in variety. Towards the end, you can’t really do much melee, and you start relying solely on guns because charging in will just get you killed. I didn’t like this form of balancing because a melee is much more satisfying and fun than shooting everything.
Overall, the game would have been even more amazing if there were some scripted events instead of just the same run-and-kill scenario over and over until you puked. The multiplayer is ok, but just has two modes and gets boring after a while because it’s the campaign, but with human players. I loved the characters, story, and world of Warhammer, but let’s add some more depth to the action, some more enemies, and make the game feel more intense, besides ramping up the difficulty. We didn’t even get to use the Titan! Sure, you get to be on top of it for a few minutes, but these are the events we need to make Warhammer an amazing action experience.
The Alice in Wonderland series isn’t something you would expect to be a game or even good at. American McGee took the series and twisted it into a sick gothic horror adventure back in 2000 on the PS1 and PC. The game’s atmosphere, art, and overall design were amazing for the time, but everything else was subpar at best. The game returns 11 years later and with tons of improvements. If you haven’t read the books or seen any of the many films or TV shows, then you’ll be fine. The story is kind of confusing, even at the end, but the story is supposed to be. The whole world of Wonderland doesn’t really make any sense except for the fact that Alice has been locked away in an asylum because she can’t get over the death of her sister. She lost her family in a fire that burned her house down, but there are some shady characters around her that seem to be manipulating her. She falls into Wonderland (her own mind) and has to stop the Infernal Train from destroying the place.
You get to meet classic characters like the Cheshire Cat, Caterpillar, The Mad Hatter and March Hare, the Door Mouse, The Queen of Hearts, and so on. Each character is wonderfully designed for the atmosphere, and they are just sick and twisted, unlike anything I have ever seen. However, the game is made up of two main parts: combat and platforming. Each is equal in flaws, but both are better than the last game and are a lot of fun.
Platforming consists of puzzles, shrinking down on the fly to find invisible platforms, hiding keyholes to find hidden items, jumping around, floating, gliding, pulling switches, avoiding traps, and heading through obstacle courses. Each level is very unique and looks completely different from the last, but the same elements apply to each level, and towards the end, it gets kind of boring and repetitive since it’s the same thing over and over without end. The combat and platforming are balanced, but by the end of the game, you just get too much of both because the whole game mainly focuses on just that.
The combat is fun and violent, but it’s very simple, with just one button for light attacks and another for heavy ones. You can use the pepper grinder and teapot cannon to shoot; the auto lock-on works well; but overall, you can only upgrade your weapons, and there aren’t enough of them. The hobby horse is for heavy attacks, and the vorpal blade is for light attacks, but those are the only four weapons in-game. You slowly acquired them, but I wanted to see more. The combat feels repetitive because there’s not much substance to it, and the enemies all play out almost the same. Each level has its own unique enemies with different weaknesses, but executing them is pretty much the same for each one.
While combat and platforming are the same, there are some mini-games tossed in for good measure, which is a sigh of relief. These involve sliding puzzles, chess games, and 2D platforming sections. These are fun, and each level has its own unique mini-game. Speaking of uniqueness, that’s exactly why I rated this game so high. The art, atmosphere, characters, and everything combined are just so amazing, and I have never seen anything quite like it. It’s also the fact that something so sweet and innocent like Alice has turned into a screwed-up gothic adventure (some scenes are really messed up, trust me) with dismemberment, cursing, gore, and downright freaky images. That’s what I love about Alice so much, and you always look forward to new levels to play. Even Alice’s dress changes with each level, so you can tell there’s a lot of detail going into the game. The game technically is a little dated, with some pretty bad low-resolution textures in spots, and there are a few collision detection bugs that can make you restart.
If you can get past the repetition and sometimes very difficult spots, then you will fall in love with the game. The game is amazing to look at, the characters are great, and it just oozes creativity. I just wish the combat and platforming weren’t the same throughout the whole game and were lacking in depth.
I couldn’t even begin to tell you what the story of Garshasp is about. With a weird name like that, you would think the story would be crazy. It’s crazy in a way that you can’t even follow it, and the game isn’t even long enough to flesh out a good story. All I know is that a guy with a weird name killed the brother of Garshasp, and you’re trying to kill him. The narrator pops in sometimes, but he sounds boring, and you can just forget the story.
With a God of War-like clone like Garshasp, you would think puzzles and combat were top-tier. They actually aren’t very good at all. The combat is challenging and requires strategy, but the controls are unresponsive and the moves lack any impact. You have light and heavy attacks, and you can combo them, but there isn’t any form of magic or long-distance combat. The enemies are pretty dumb and either wail on you or just stand there and pause before hitting you. There are quick-time events like in God of War, but the camera just zooms out a bit and the actions repeat for a lot of the enemies.
When it comes to puzzles and platforming, there really aren’t any puzzles. Platforming is challenging, especially with these wall-sliding segments that make you slide around parts of the wall that can hurt you. They get tough, mainly because they go on forever. There’s a lot of switch pulling and turnstile pushing, and there are even health and experience orbs that you pull apart to acquire God of War style. You can upgrade your weapon, but not like you think. You just gain experience, and you automatically unlock new moves. There are only two weapons in the game, but the Dragon Mace isn’t gained until the last 30 minutes of the game (yeah, what’s the point?). The game has a nice ending boss fight, but overall, you can beat the whole game in less than 3 hours. Wait, what?!! 3 hours?! Yes, it’s like a sample of a game, but if you can get it on a super cheap Steam sale, it’s worth maybe $3–5.
Overall, Garshasp has a lot of bugs, like when climbing ledges, he will just shimmy around unless you hit the up button (or analog sticks have more problems). He’ll hang on to objects that require checkpoint restarts, lots of collision detection problems, and other minor quips that add up to make the game even less fun. Why should you even bother? It’s decent, the art style is nice to look at, and the monsters are pretty awesome, but the graphics overall look pretty bad and kind of like plastic (remember Conan?). If you can find this at a super cheap price, go ahead if you are an action-adventure lover; otherwise, pass.
Point-and-click adventures are still abundant, but good ones are hard to come by, and even rarer are ones that make it mainstream. Gray Matter is a game that has a story that is a bit more sophisticated than your typical adventure game. You play both Samantha Everett and David Styles, who are probably the most interesting characters in the game. Sam is an orphan who is traveling the world, but her bike breaks down in London, and she winds up at Dread Hill, which is the home of Dr. Styles. Dr. Styles is researching ways to bring his wife’s spirit back after a fatal car accident, and he’ll do anything to get this research done. The rest of the characters are people you recruit for the research, but their personalities aren’t as likeable as the main characters.
The story really gets involved and has a twist ending that will surprise you, so playing the game is worth it. The gameplay consists of your typical clicking on things to find the clues and move on. However, Gray Matter is severely flawed in that you have missions to complete, and each mission has a number of points associated with finding things. If you miss a few points, you have to scour the huge world in the game to find what you missed. This can lead to hours of hunting and clicking on everything until you find it. Certain events won’t trigger until missions are done, which I really hate. There is also little to no direction on where to go and what to do in the game. There are different areas in the game you can jump to, but there are so many things to click on that the game is nearly impossible to beat without a guide. Later in the game, you run into a labyrinthine maze-type area, and this will take forever without some kind of guide.
There are a few interesting things Gray Matter does for the adventure genre, and these are magic tricks. You get a book of magic, and you have to use it to get certain things done in the game. Things bring up a new window that has you following instructions on how to map out the trick. It’s interesting and changes the pace a bit. Of course, there is a mini-game tossed in here and there, but most of the time you will be running around clicking on everything almost blindly, and this really hurts the flow and pacing of the game.
The visuals in the game are decent, but the drawn cutscenes that are just a few frames really aren’t that great. The art is smudgy, and the character design is inconsistent throughout the whole game. The in-game models will be completely different from the hand-drawn scenes, but some scenes will have the characters looking different. I found this very weird and annoying. Overall, the art is very nice, especially towards the end of the game in the Daedalus Club.
The voice acting is decent at best, but Sam’s actress is pretty bad and sounds cheesy. Most of the game is played by British actors, so there isn’t much variety. My favorite character of them all is Dr. Styles, who is struggling within himself to go out and socialize, but he feels like a monster due to the scar on his face. The game is really an acquired taste among both adventure gamers and hardcore gamers alike.
If you can stomach the goalless wandering of the game by either using a guide or just aimlessly clicking everywhere, you will be rewarded with a rich and dark story. The game also has a decent length that will run you about 8–10 hours, and that’s if you just use a guide and run through the game. I really wish the game would guide you more because it almost breaks the entire game.
If you believe in “story over graphics,” this game is the epitome of that. It always saddens me how indie games can’t get AAA budgets because there are some out there that have better elements than AAA titles. Deadly Premonition is one of them when it comes to story, characters, and atmosphere. The game looks, plays, and feels like a pre-2003 PS2 game and is just downright ugly. I’ll get to that later, but right now you have to know how excellent this riveting story is. You play FBI agent Francis York Morgan, who is investigating a murder in the small countryside town of Greenvale. You meet the Sheriff and other citizens throughout the game, and the story is always unwinding with plot twists and revealing dark secrets about every single character.
The premise is a legend of the Raincoat Killer that rampaged through the town in the 1950s. It appears that there is a “New Raincoat Killer” mimicking the old one, and Morgan must stop this guy before he kills everyone Morgan grows close to. There are two parts to the game: driving around the regular world and entering the “Other World” to investigate crime scenes and find clues. This “Other World” is a lot like Silent Hill’s, but the game never explains what this world is or why it appears in the town. I hate how that was never answered, so it feels like it may just be tacked on. When you are in this “other world,” you get to use your guns and shoot creepy zombies. These zombies are really brain-dead and can only really hurt you if you are overwhelmed or backed into a corner. The AI is cheap, but that’s fine because you just want to know more of the story.
When you enter this world, Morgan will start profiling fuzzy clues together, and it’s up to you to find them, but thankfully the game scraps Silent Hill’s labyrinthine maze-like levels for straightforward linear ones, and I never got lost. There are red areas that show where to go, so you never get lost. The puzzles are very simple and don’t even require exercising your cerebral cortex, but it’s OK because you just want the game to move on to uncover more of the juicy story. The controls are very unintuitive, but the game works around them, so it’s never really frustrating. You hold X down to run, but you hold down RT to aim and A to attack, but LT is to lock on. The controls are strange and archaic, but they work for the most part. The weapons are your typical survival horror stuff like shotguns, pistols, and melee weapons, so don’t expect much in that regard.
The rest of the game is completely boring and downright yawn-inducing. Driving around Greenvale from place to place will make you fall asleep because the cars feel, sound, and drive like something from pre-2000 games. The game doesn’t even use real-time or dynamic lighting, but static lighting! Cones for headlights? I felt like I was playing a PS1 game sometimes. The cars sound like dying lawnmowers and drive like one too. There aren’t any people walking around, and the cars appear out of nowhere, like they just came out of hyperdrive. The developers even put in side quests and some sort of collectible card hunt, but why would you bore yourself so much? It’s dry, dull, and just not fun at all.
There are some RPG elements like having to watch Morgan’s hunger, tiredness, and even how dirty his suit gets, plus you can shave. Yeah, it’s WTF moments that are thrown in like that that really make no sense. They are unnecessary, but hey, they’re there. What really saves Deadly Premonition is that the developers knew the game’s flaws and built everything to accommodate them, like quick-time events during boss fights instead of a dodge button. It makes the game very playable, and I applaud them for doing this.
The only reason to trudge through is for the amazing story. You really care about the characters, and there is some freaky crap in this game that would even put some stuff in Silent Hill to shame. The game does drag a little bit with about 15 hours of gameplay, but they could have cut the fat out and made it about 8–10 if there wasn’t the terrible “open-world” part thrown in. If you can forgive horrible graphics, terrible animations, abysmal sounds, and archaic controls, you will be rewarded with a thrilling and deep story that is unforgettable.
Back to the Future hasn’t really done well when it comes to games. There were a couple of bad games in the 8 and 16-bit eras, but Telltale Games finally picked up the license and injected its excellent adventure formula into the beloved series. You play Marty McFly, who has to go back in time and save Doc Brown from his own deadly fate. He gets a message from Doc to save him, and Marty must find out how to do it with the help of young Emmet Brown.
The story is original but uses the BthF license very nicely. The voice actors sound almost spot on, and everything from the DeLorean to Doc’s dog Einstein and even Marty’s relatives is voiced well and resembles their live-action selves. It’s great to explore the BthF universe with the same clever writing and storytelling. There is a simple adventure game interface where you click around on objects and listen to Marty explain them, but the puzzles are more involved than just slider puzzles or matching symbols. The puzzles are broader and story-driven, and that’s what Telltale is famous for in their Sam & Max games.
You can have items in your inventory, but you don’t just wander around and use them for every pixel in the game. It’s usually pretty obvious to use your recorder to record young Doc’s mumblings so old Doc can solve them. You aren’t overburdened with a ton of items that you have to constantly use a million times on everything, so it’s straightforward and simple, but you do have to think a bit. One great feature to resolve pixel hunting is a button that will show every icon you can interact with. This saves time and frustration, so you’re not wandering around and missing that one item that’s almost off-screen.
While the interface and interaction are smooth and simple, the game is very short, and it’s still lacking some gameplay depth. I would like more cerebral puzzles, but Telltale is more about the story than anything else. The game doesn’t get super exciting until the last 30 minutes of the last two sequences. You can beat the game in one to two sittings (about 3 hours), so for $25, the game is highly overpriced and not worth the money unless you’re a die-hard BthF fan. I would wait for the full season to come out and not spend a ton of money on each episode. Also, the graphics are pretty horrible considering the nice art style. Telltale really needs to upgrade their 8-year-old engine to something more modern.
Ninja Theory has had a hard time establishing itself as a talented developer. With the major hype of Heavenly Sword, Lukewarm sales of the crappy Kinect Joy Ride, and the controversy of DMC, it’s struggling. Enslaved is probably NT’s most successful game, mainly commercially, due to its better marketing. The story is probably the game’s strongest point, as character development and combat take a back seat.
You play Monkey, a guy who escapes a slave ship that’s crash-landed in post-apocalyptic New York. Along the way to escape, he finds himself stuck and enslaved, but a young woman named Trip needs his muscle to get her back home further west. The relationship between Trip and Monkey is what makes you keep playing, and their constant fight for freedom is heartwarming.
The combat had a lot of potential, but after the first chapter, you’ll get tired of it. It’s the same two combos over and over again, with a crappy camera that can’t stay put. Sure, the angles are cinematic, but if you get backed into a corner, it’s nauseating. The camera can’t stay put at all, and it leads to cheap deaths and frustration when mech after mech is beating you down. You can charge an EMP burst to disable shields and make the mechs temporarily stunned, and this is essential to defeating them due to their constant blocking and shielding. You can command Trip to use a decoy so long-range mechs shoot at that instead of you so you can climb around and get to them. Some mechs have weak points that allow faster kills, and you can use your staff as a projectile weapon equipped with plasma rounds and EMP rounds. This staff is also used for puzzles and exploring as well.
So combat is pretty finicky, but exploring can be a blast thanks to huge sprawling vistas, easy-to-see glowing handholds, and whatnot. Occasionally the camera gets in the way here or the controls can be a bit touchy, but it’s not nearly as frustrating as the combat. You’ll notice orange orbs floating around everywhere, and these are used for upgrades, but you can only upgrade if Trip is in the vicinity. There are some points where you can use Monkey’s Cloud hoverboard, and there are a few exciting moments like chasing a giant mech, but this feels a bit tacked on.
The game also has pacing issues since the first chapter is epic, and the next six or seven are the same repetitive area-to-area beating mechs up and jumping around the affair. It’s a shame that Enslaved feels like it’s only 80% complete because it needed a lot more polish. Even though the game looks good technically, it’s pretty bland, with just lots of green everywhere. There’s no unique art style or anything, and this is a shame. The mechs all look the same, and the enemy variety is less than half a dozen. Boss fights sometimes feel epic, but they repeat often, so Enslaved is iffy on every subject. I do recommend this as a great weekend rental or bargain purchase.
Game of the Year is one of the hardest decisions because so many games are created every year. But to come out on top the game must be excellent in its genre (usually re-define it) and have great production values, and not feel repetitive, and usually, it changes the way we think about games.
What sets Red Dead apart from all of these other excellent games is how authentic its world is. It feels so real and feels just like the wild west. With excellent voice acting, a huge open world to explore, lots of missions, and it’s just the subtle details that make it a winner. Hunting, gambling, horseback riding, even down to the drinks, attitudes of the people, clothing, accents, it just all adds up to something spectacular and really shows what a game can do. It’s Red Dead’s subtle details that truly make this game shine over the others.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.