Despite being released two years after the original game, you can’t really expect much from Keepers of the Dark. This isn’t so much a sequel as an expansion, but played much differently. Instead of a linear path going forward, you have access to eight “realms,” which are just small sections of the first game recycled. Each realm consists of two ghosts that you must banish, with one serving as the main ghost that must be counted towards the final total to unlock the main large gate in the main hub. This was actually a neat idea, and I liked this game better than the first. While the combat is the main focus of the game, it still works, as you can consider this a boss rush game and only have to deal with one ghost at a time.
Each realm has a variety of items to pick up to make defeating ghosts in other realms easier. For example, you need to find 14 needles to make fighting a ghost in a specific realm much easier. In total, there are four notes to pick up in order to fight an optional ghost in another realm. These items aren’t too difficult to find on your own, as the “realms” are just small linear areas with little space to explore. I still find the stiff animations, the “limbo” death ritual, the sprinting stamina, and the long knockdown animations quite annoying, as they remain unchanged from the previous game. I also found the lack of any type of health meter irritating, as some bosses took up to two dozen shots to kill. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if the game had glitched or I was doing something wrong.
I did, however, run into a glitch in which one of the Nerd notes was not where it was supposed to be. This locked me out of an otherwise 100% first run, which is maddening. There are still graphical glitches, pop-ins, and clipping that shouldn’t be there. This shouldn’t be happening in a game in 2016. The lack of a cohesive story still irritates me, and the majority of “cutscenes” rely on in-game engine stills for narration. There are eight main bosses in total (one in each realm) and maybe 3-4 cut scenes. Overall, I feel like this game worked with the limitations of the first a little better.
If you were dissatisfied with the first game, you will likely dislike this one, but if you found the first game enjoyable, you may find this one to play more smoothly. Although it is a direct continuation of the first game, those seeking a compelling murder mystery or a compelling story in general may find it lacking. While the bosses draw inspiration from Indonesian urban legends and folktales, their lack of exploration and explanation renders them incomprehensible to those beyond Indonesia. Hopefully with a sequel the game can improve on the camera-obscura gameplay and dive deeper into the lore, but as it stands these two games are lacking too much to recommend to anyone who isn’t a die-hard survival horror fan.
I turn to indie horror games for my fix because AAA horror titles just aren’t much of a thing anymore. Back in the day when we got regular Silent Hill releases and games like The Suffering, Obscure, Haunting Ground, and Resident Evil, there were more than you could count. Today, the majority of indie horror titles range from bad to subpar, with only the rare ones being truly good. DreadOut falls into the badto subpar category, but it doesn’t come with the majority of problems that most indie horror titles have.
The story itself relies heavily on Indonesian folklore, and unless you are adverse to this subject, you won’t have any idea of what’s going on. In essence, the story unfolds as you embark on a school field trip, encounter an unexpected bridge, and ultimately find yourself inside a haunted school. The explanation for the appearance of this bridge, the existence of a haunted school in this town, and the other events in the game are mostly left to the player’s imagination. There are hints in the notes, but I never figured it out. I mainly came for the scares, and DreadOut does provide some.
The combat system is similar to Fatal Frame in that it uses a camera obscura to battle ghosts and poltergeists. In this game, you can only see them in the camera frame (or phone screen). You do get a DSLR later on, but I found this a bit pointless as it doesn’t increase your “attack power,” and you only get a light if you press the flashlight button by creating a large flash around you. The phone actually uses the camera light as a flashlight, and it works well in most dark areas. The game employs a vignette around the screen to indicate the presence of a hint or object nearby (blue) or an enemy (red). If the vignette is red, it requires you to pull out the camera and search for anything moving. Unfortunately, most of the time, the ghost was nearly impossible to see, either because it was too close to the walls which required me to press the shutter button at random. The phone screen will “glitch” when a deadly shot is ready. When this happens, gold particles fly out of the ghost, and you know it took damage.
Thankfully, unlike most horror games, combat isn’t the main focus. They’re rare and you never fight more than one ghost. There are a few boss fights in the game, and these are the most captivating of the ghost designs. They aren’t difficult, and dying doesn’t reset any progress. Your punishment is a further walk from limbo to “the light.” You can acquire an item to nullify this walking distance or change it in the settings. I was unaware of the purpose of these items, as the game provided no explanation and was extremely ambiguous. When you enter the light, you simply pick up right where you left off. You can usually take 3-5 hits from a ghost before “dying.” It’s not very punishing at all.
Exploration would be the best part of the game, but it is incredibly ugly and dated (even for its time), with low-res textures, stiff animations, low-res models, and very little detail in anything. This looks almost like a first-gen PS2 game. The game’s release was just before the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One, making the graphics engine, which was already a decade old, unjustifiable. Most of the game is very linear and straight forward, but the first area in the school was a confusing mess of hallways and doors, but other than that, it wasn’t difficult to navigate around.
You can finish the game in 2-3 hours, but honestly, there are many other games, like DreadOut, that not only look better but also play better. The voice acting is mostly passable, and there isn’t much dialogue to begin with, including a lackluster story. Why would you bother with this game? Well, if you really love horror like I do and enjoy the atmosphere of these games, which DreadOut does well, then this game is definitely worth your time. The music is also surprisingly excellent and really sells the haunting and uneasy atmosphere. The game has a few decent jump scares, and I felt uneasy through most of the game, so it at least accomplishes that.
I’m not a huge Indiana Jones fan. The only one I remember is the fourth movie, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. When I was a child, I watched bits and pieces of the original trilogy when my parents would put it on, usually when it showed up on a cable network, but that was it. This is my first ever Indiana Jones game, and I have to say that I came away quite surprised with people giving it such high praise and holding it as the best Indiana Jones game to date. The story is cheesy and corny; the dialogue is terrible, and the characters lack depth. Indy himself has no backstory or context. You clearly must already be a fan of the movies, and the developers anticipated this. The storyline suggests that Indy finds himself in the midst of a task for a client and encounters obstacles. Then, the Chinese government hired him to find the dragon’s heart. He eventually encounters Nazis who are also in pursuit of the same object. It’s pretty pointless, and there are so few cut scenes that it really doesn’t matter.
The first half of the game is actually the worst. Stiff animations, clunky combat, and terrible platforming plague the entire game. The puzzles themselves would be neat in a Tomb Raider game, but here they showcase the poor level design. Indy either climbs things, pushes levers, does hand-to-hand combat, or shoots guns. That’s all there is to the entire game. Levels in the first half mostly consist of hand-to-hand combat, as ammo is very scarce. You can replenish your health by using medkits or drinking from your canteen, which refills at water fountains, a resource that becomes increasingly scarce as the game progresses. The canteen upgrades only work for the level you’re on and don’t carry over. There are also artifacts that need to be found in order to unlock concept art, which, to be honest, is a lame idea.
The stiff animations contribute to the clunkiness of platforming. Indy is really jerky or just doesn’t respond instantly to button presses. Because of this, I ended up falling off cliffs or missing jumps more times than I can count. You can also whip-swing, but the stiff animations feel sped up during the swing compared to the rest of the jumping. Having to cold jump to a ledge right above you is a chore. Indy must be precisely aligned to secure a grip. There are ledges you can shimmy across with a dedicated wall hug button, but the combat is even worse. Idy auto-aims and works most of the time, making shooting the best part of the game, but ammo is scarce in the first half. Melee combat just drags on forever. Enemies are fist sponges, and even with a melee weapon such as a sword or bat, opponents would take 20-30 hits to die. You can use your whip to knock weapons out of their hands, which is mandatory if they have a gun and you don’t. When more than two enemies gang up on you and back you into a corner, it becomes a chore to fight them off.
The level design is generic; even for 2003, it’s pretty bad. The game is bland and void of character, with a lot of rectangular empty rooms and hallways. The game occasionally shows something more when you are outdoors, but this doesn’t happen until mid-game. The game accelerates by letting you play one of the two on-rails sections, which it needed more of. The Nazi base is less puzzle-solving and more platforming and combat, which is what I prefer. The temple level proved to be the most challenging, primarily due to its underwater nature and poor swimming mechanics. Indy can only swim fast underwater, and there are sharks that can kill you. Boss fights are also a rare occurrence, but they were one of the few more intriguing elements of the game, as each boss fight needed something in the environment to weaken them before you could take them down. They were almost a mini-puzzle themselves.
Overall, the game is a mostly frustrating and overly long affair. The game can take up to 8 hours to finish if you don’t die frequently, but the devs could have completely eliminated the first half of the game. It’s the weaker half anyway. The unfair checkpoints also don’t help; you have to restart entire long sections every time you die. There are a few fun moments, such as the boss fights and on-rails sections, and the platforming is more enjoyable than the puzzle-solving, but the generic visuals, paper-thin plot, and cumbersome controls and animations hold this game up quite a bit.
The series Alone in the Dark appears to have a perpetual curse. While the earliest 3D titles, such as The New Nightmare, received fairly positive scores, these last two reboots just can’t seem to get things right. I’ll grant the 2008 reboot some leeway, as it attempted to innovate and reinvigorate the series, despite its minimal connection to the lore of Alone in the Dark beyond the protagonist’s name. This new reboot is more faithful to the first game—exploring a creepy mansion, solving puzzles, and having basic combat. It did feel more like The New Nightmare and much less like the 2008 game, but it didn’t boost the series to new heights either.
You can play as either Detective Carnby or Emily Heartwood. The differences here are limited to a few different scenarios in a few levels, but you must play both sides to find all the collectibles. Emily’s uncle is living in an adult family home for the sick, and she needs to get him out. As she explores the mansion, she appears to be trapped in a paranormal dimension, alternating between what might be reality, her uncle’s reality, or her own mind. One of the first issues with the game is that the game isn’t really all that scary. The monster designs are kind of neat but not super interesting, and the atmosphere is more Haunted Mansion and Scooby Doo Fright Night than Silent Hill, but that’s not the biggest issue.
The combat in Alone in the Dark is quite boring and terrible. The melee combat just consists of wildly swinging an object around. You have both a regular hit and a power hit. Items are breakable, but you can carry one around at all times. This is fine if you’re up against a single enemy or can’t reload in time, but most of the time swinging the object causes your character to lunge forward, and it just feels awkward and stiff. There’s not a block or parry button—just a dodge button. The remainder of the battle involves firing a revolver, shotgun, or Tommy gun, with limited ammunition available. In most scenarios, I felt that there were too many enemies coming at you in the tight and cramped spaces you are in. There are some throwable objects, but the only useful ones are the Molotov cocktails. Throwing bricks is pointless because it doesn’t do any damage. Occasionally, there are stealth sections, which are incredibly short (requiring you to weave through three rows of barrels for example) or impossible to complete due to the enemies’ lack of set patrol patterns.
The game primarily consists of aimless wandering while attempting to solve obtuse puzzles with vague hints. The game features combination locks, math, and puzzles that evoke nostalgia from the year 2005. There’s an Egyptian Temple level in which you need to find three lenses to bounce light around to unlock the main door. This consists of a constant back and forth through labyrinthine hallways. You need to find the switch to unlock the lens door, but that switch triggered a collapse, so now you have to find another switch to open the shortcut door. This just feels like lazy design and prolonged play time. The mansion itself is the most monotonous, with repetitive hallways and locked routes in each chapter. Even if you manage to find a key or unlock a door, it remains bolted or blocked in another chapter. This leads me to my biggest issue. Game-breaking bugs. I rarely encounter these in games, but I encountered a bug where a door was blocked, leading to the end of Chapter 4. I couldn’t progress, and that’s where my game ended. Restarting the entire chapter wasn’t a guarantee that it would fix the bug.
The visuals are pretty acceptable for what they are. They aren’t ugly, but they don’t feel like Alone in the Dark at all. The story is pretty forgettable, with uninteresting characters, fairly lame dialogue, and average voice acting. The stiff controls, animations, and combat bring the game down quite a bit, but the game-breaking bugs, absurd level design, lame stealth, and repetitive backtracking add up to a not-so-great adventure.
October 7, 2003, was a day to remember or completely forget, depending on who you were. The original N-Gage model sold for $299 ($462 adjusted for inflation) and was a graphical powerhouse on par with the original PlayStation. While the seven original launch titles were all ports from GBA and PlayStation, they ran from very well to questionable, and the system showed a lot of promise. I remember seeing the N-Gage in GameStop as a broke 13-year-old, wishing I could get one. The ads for Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, SonicN, Tony Hawk, andTomb Raidermade me green with envy. I was envious of all these amazing games that I could play on the go! It was way better than the dumb GBA! Actually, it wasn’t, but Nokia squandered its potential due to the immense power under the hood.
Ultimately, there are great videos on YouTube documenting the system’s history, but in the end, the original model most likely killed the system. The infamous “Taco” phone was sweeping the press and turning gamers off. A former GameStop employee told me that people frequently came in to roast the system and make fun of it when they saw the ads for it. It was the laughingstock of the industry, especially for Nintendo fanboys, and everyone knew it was going to fail. Whether that was accurate at the time remains a matter of debate, but it did not boost sales. They just couldn’t get enough. The portrait screen also turned off many users, necessitating manual customization of most games for the experience. Released just 7 months after the Taco model, the QD lacked features such as a USB port, MP3 playback, dual-band antenna instead of tri-band, and the same operating system, even though Symbian 7.0s had already been out before the QD’s release. This implies that gamers continued to rely on 1st generation Symbian games for content beyond the N-Gage library.
So what’s the QD experience like? It was frustrating, to be honest, but in the end, I grew fond of the little system. I have created a comprehensive guide explaining how to begin the collection process and set up the system, but it’s not an easy task. You need a standard-size SIM card, an MMC memory card (not made anymore), and a card reader for it. The N-Gage library is rather expensive to collect, with many going for $50+. There are a ton of great games available for the N-Gage. In fact, in its sad 65-game library, there are more good games than bad.
A new copy of SonicN sold by GameStop that I purchased
Physically, the QD feels good in the hands. It features a thick rubber bumper around the entire outer edge. The top sports a rubber stopper with the headphone jack and charger port, and the bottom has one for the card slot. These stoppers are a serious pain! They were always intended for older cell phones. Usually, the stoppers for the charging port or headphone jack will eventually tear and break. If you have a large N-Gage library, you’re going to eventually rip these stoppers. Maybe hard plastic would have been better, but this is a budget re-release, so I digress. The back has a removable battery door, and underneath is a spot for the SIM card. The front features a D-pad and various menu navigation and selection buttons on the right, as well as the standard numpad on the left. There are two raised buttons (5 and 7) that function as “game buttons.” You also get an orange backlight. The screen is a backlit 2.1″ TFT LCD at 176×208 resolution and looks pretty decent. At least it’s backlit, which is a nice touch.
In terms of software, the OS itself offers minimal customization options. It’s a standard affair, with the only customization being the wallpaper for the home screen and welcome screen. This is about all you could do on your phone back in the day. There isn’t even an option to customize the ringtone, really. The only special thing about this phone is the form factor and the unique game library, in which there are many awesome games available. If you can get an MMC card up and running, you can play cracked games since the library is so expensive.
How does it feel to actually play the games? Well, it’s a bit awkward at first as the face buttons are so close together. While the 5 and 7 keys have a distinct height, I can still easily hit other buttons, and the D-pad feels surprisingly comfortable. You can roll your thumb around it easily enough. I think shoulder buttons or a push-out keyboard could have helped here. But let’s get to the true reason why anyone would want this. The games. How do they feel and play?
They vary greatly. Sadly, the system didn’t have a long enough life to really iron out the kinks and let developers hone their tools. Some games feel great on the system, like they were hand-tailored, while others feel completely shoe-horned in just to make a quick buck on some hype. The N-Gage isn’t anything special in that regard. The N-Gage received the same treatment as every other console. The portrait screen is probably the system’s biggest fault. Although developers can adapt control schemes to the screen, they must completely tailor games to the orientation. No other console has ever done this before, unless you count the Vectrex or something else. Either stick to widescreen (16:9) or 4:3. Heck, even 1:1 would have worked just fine. I also wish the screen was a little bigger. Even a mere inch would suffice. There’s plenty of detail here, as the TFT LCD is pretty nice for the time period, but that orientation really narrows your field of view.
When it comes to performance, the N-Gage did pretty okay in 3D. It is certainly better than the Gameboy Advance, but not as good as the PSP or even the DS. Games that seem like they were really well adapted ran fine on the system with a little slowdown, such as Ashen, but other games like RedFaction and Tomb Raider run at a sub-30 FPS most of the time. However, some games, such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, consistently run at 60FPS or even higher. While control schemes with a few buttons work well on the system, anything that requires the entire keypad can get cumbersome due to the layout. Ashen requires the whole keypad, including buttons, to free-look. While it certainly works and takes some getting used to, it’s not ideal at all. It’s the same issue the PSP had with no second analog nub.
Nokia aggressively promoted their N-Gage Arena online gaming, which bore a striking resemblance to Xbox LIVE. This allowed for multiplayer via cellular or Bluetooth connections. Although I am unable to test it at this time, my research indicates that it functioned reasonably well as long as you had adequate coverage in your location. It also depended on the game’s specific net code. I can imagine this being a big deal back in the day, as there weren’t any online wireless portable gaming systems like we have now. The only other portable system to offer cellular online play would be the 3G PlayStation Vita almost a decade later, which bombed spectacularly. Interestingly, the N-Gage Arena launch page remains active as of this writing, but all other links within are inoperable. After the N-Gage devices died out, the N-Gage gaming service survived for a few more years, ending up on their higher-end N-series phones. These were the last Nokia Symbian-based phones before smartphones took over. The N-Gage 2.0 was more of a gaming device than a completely new gadget. These only ran on higher-end phones, such as the N95 (mine pictured below). Games such as Metal Gear Solid Mobile were large names that would hopefully make mobile devices a serious gaming platform. Regrettably, this realization came too late.
Overall, the N-Gage QD was the system that should have been out at launch. While it doesn’t feel as well-built as the original model and cuts some features, it makes gaming on the thing—which was the main marketing push for it—better and just more accessible. Better buttons, easier access to the game slot, a smaller form factor, and just a few other tweaks were enough to consider this version the definitive N-Gage experience, but it was too little, too late. Indeed, the N-Gage library boasts a surprisingly robust selection of games, surpassing the quality of many “failed” systems. Released at the height of the handheld era, the N-Gage faced inevitable failure due to the dominance of the GBA, rumors of new handhelds from Nintendo and Sony, and its eventual higher price compared to both systems. The exclusion of children from the market due to the need for a cell phone and a talk plan further increased the cost, a burden that parents were unwilling to bear. The much cheaper Game Boy Advance was a better alternative. If Nokia had released a game-only version at a price that was more than half the original price and made some adjustments, it might have been a more viable option. Who knows? But it’s still worth having in your collection.
Less than a year later, the much-loved Twilight of the Spirits sequel released to little fanfare. I expected a lot of improvements and more of the same, but this game was a huge departure and mostly recycled content. You play as a seemingly generic character named Edda, a young boy from Cragh Island who is the last surviving excorcist. You now have a Slothian Deimos companion, Hemo, who is annoying and tags along for most of the dialogue. The story seems like it would start out as a normal sequel, picking up right where the last one left off. The previous heroes are all in new senior roles or retired now, but that’s not the case—far from it in fact.
The story essentially goes nowhere. The entire battle system is now real-time, but in a detrimental way. You can attack enemies in arenas with a basic attack button, but you can only use magic if your card is equipped. The card system undermines the foundations established in the initial game. There are special “gimmicks” and part cards. You can purchase the part cards for armor and weapons from vendors or find them in the field. You also have the opportunity to play as all the heroes from the previous game, provided you find their cards hidden somewhere in the world. The frustrating part about all of this is your hunter rank. To rank up at the arena, you must complete repetitive quests such as escort missions, kill X amount of enemies, find X items, and so on, earning two different types of stars in the process. You take a test, and after you rank up, more missions unlock. There doesn’t appear to be much of a story in this game. There are a few story-based missions you can take on, but the combat is so atrocious and downright boring that I never made it past the third rank.
When I refer to areas that are recycled, I mean that they are taken directly from the game. While it’s cool to see the old locales and heroes, the removal of their models from the game creates an uneven visual mess. The newer assets appear marginally better than those from the previous game, but when combined with the older ones, the overall aesthetic is unimpressive. End of Darkness, a 2005 game, just looks plain generic and awful. There’s no personality here. One of the only things that held the previous game together was the excellent story and interesting characters, but they just don’t exist here. The dialogue is dry and dull, and there is almost nothing to like here. Combat could have saved this game, but relying on boring real-time combat and repetitive quests in reused areas just doesn’t cut it.
There have been no improvements in the quality of life. Cities contain hidden holes that Hemo can crawl through. You would think that each hidden hole would hold a cool item or a card, but most of the time, all you get is recipe advice and hints. An absolute waste of time. If that wasn’t enough, there’s nothing else to do in this game except complete the hunter missions and do the ranking trials. It’s also a very short game, if you can get through it without dying of boredom. The game is about half the length of the first one.
Overall, End of Darkness feels more like a side experiment rather than a full-fledged reboot or sequel. It feels like Cattle Call didn’t know which one to choose and decided to try to be both. The new combat system is boring, tedious, and awful. The story is almost non-existent, and the visuals haven’t significantly improved. The new card system is unwieldy and uninteresting, and playing as previous heroes feels pointless.
Around 2004/2005, towards the end of the sixth generation console cycle, games began to take a new turn. AAA titles were becoming something bigger. Blockbuster video games with cinematic gameplay were all the rage as consoles became more powerful. Stormfront Studios was all the rage with their smash-hit movie tie-ins to Peter Jackson’s last two The Lord of the Rings films. The linear gameplay, coupled with unique combat for each character and the ability to bring the world of the movies to life as a playable game, was fantastic and executed well. Here, there’s not much. Having the Dungeons & Dragons license at your fingertips and doing none of the D&D stuff with it is a crying shame. This game could have worked as a generic fantasy title if they just changed a few of the characters’s names.
The game features a captivating opening level. You start out right away in the heat of the action, similar to The Lord of the Rings games. The backgrounds are full of action, battles, flying dragons, and collapsing structures. It’s all here. Each of the three characters introduces you to their combat. The three characters are Rannek, a warrior, Illius, a sorcerer, and Zhai, a rogue. Each can perform the typical tasks associated with their respective classes. Rannek is a powerful fighter with a large sword and heavier armor. Zhai is able to turn invisible for a brief time and sneak attack foes. She is also the fastest with dual knives. Illius can attack with his staff, but he’s best at long-range magic shooting at enemies. This sounds great and all, but the combat quickly falls apart, and its problems show long before the first level ends.
You can switch between each character at any time. Each character’s health meter is located in the lower left corner, as well as a power meter. This meter fills up, and the characters can do a powerful AOE (area of effect) move to clear out enemies. If they all have their power moves ready, you can make an ultimate attack and have all three do theirs at the same time for maximum damage. The initial drawback is that receiving a hit causes your power meter to decrease. This makes no sense. The combat system’s configuration, where groups of enemies relentlessly assault you, lacks a method for evading or parrying. There are two and three hit combos, as well as a ground stab, which is completely useless because enemies don’t fall to the ground outside of a single stage.
This made combat feel like a mindless button masher. I didn’t bother with combos, as they held no significance. The areas are also so cramped that I couldn’t get Illius back far enough to use as a range support. Most of the time, Zhai felt completely useless. Enemies will drop health and power meter bottles, and occasionally you will find treasure chests with coins or maximum health upgrades, but most of the chests are empty. Again, another pointless gameplay addition. I had to exploit the health system, as AI-controlled partners will not die about 99% of the time. When I was down to my last hit, I would switch characters, as it would always seem that health potions would drop more for the AI characters than for myself. The boss fights feel epic in scale and are indeed cinematic, but they feel janky, and most can replenish their health for no apparent reason other than to prolong the battles.
The game is also full of unfair checkpoints. At times, you are forced to replay entire sections with dozens of hordes pursuing you, and you cannot skip cut scenes. This became increasingly challenging as the game progressed. Demon Stone steals the only RPG elements from the D&D setting, offering moves and attributes that you can purchase with either gold or experience. There is an auto-buy feature that I used because it didn’t matter what you bought; you always felt underpowered, or only a single character would feel more powerful. Everything is incredibly imbalanced. To make matters worse, the game only has 10 levels that can be completed in around 4 hours if you don’t die a lot during the last couple of levels. There are some extras to unlock, but they aren’t worth it.
With that said, the story is lame and pointless. We know we need to trap Ygorl, the main antagonist in the Demon Stone, but there’s no lore here. The characters have no backstory at all. There’s the occasional one-line quip about Zhai’s half-breed roots, but the length of the game doesn’t give you enough time to develop a deeper story. Despite the inclusion of well-known voice actors like Patrick Stewart, Michael Clark Duncan, and B.J. Ward, I found the game lacking in depth. They each have a couple dozen lines, as the cutscenes are incredibly short. Despite the obvious high production values, impressive visuals, and good sound design, the overall impression is one of shallowness and flatness. The game could have benefited from additional time to develop into a more expansive adventure, rather than a rushed and cramped corridor hack and slash.
Clock Tower starts out well enough. There aren’t many point-and-click adventures on the Super Nintendo, so I can see why this slower-paced game never made it outside of Japan on the SNES. Initially, the controls are peculiar and challenging to adapt to. Using the L and R buttons causes Jennifer to continuously run in that direction. She will continue to run in that direction up any stairs, obstacles, or doors until you press the buttons again to stop her. The story is mostly difficult to understand and grasp. You end up in a scary mansion with a group of friends, and then they slowly disappear. The “Scissor Man,” who appears at random, chases you as you search for them.
The gameplay necessitates a comprehensive guide. This game is unlike any other I have ever played on the SNES. You can spend hours wandering around and looking into all the rooms, never truly knowing what to do or where to go. The idea of running away from the monster is novel, but without the guide, I would not have known that you need to do most things in a very specific order. Certain orders provide different endings, and you can also easily miss one of the few hiding spots in the game. When Scissor Man appears, you must keep running until you can hide, or he will not go away. It’s important to memorize the mansion’s layout and where each hiding spot is. My issue with a game featuring so many rooms is that many of them share a similar appearance. Despite spending a solid 4-5 hours playing this game, I often found myself lost, even with a comprehensive walkthrough. Some rooms will also lead to insta-deaths as well which made things more frustrating.
I’m also not sure how I feel about the game’s sound. It’s almost nonexistent. Outside of Jennifer’s shoes tapping on the ground, there’s nothing here to listen to. When the Scissor Man appears, his theme song plays, and if you’re lucky, you can use the panic button to escape his grasp. As you run out of stamina, your portrait icon will turn red, and you will need to rest by kneeling. You will find yourself engaging in this activity frequently. There are some items you need to find in order to unlock doors and various objects, but these will be impossible to find with Scissor Man constantly chasing you halfway across the mansion. Each playthrough randomly changes a few rooms, making it difficult to distinguish between the main hallways. Despite the tension of Scissor Man lurking around every corner, there aren’t any other enemies in the game, and the lack of sound effects and music removes any would-be tension.
Overall, despite the slightly interesting story and plot twists, many players may find the labyrinthine hallways, obtuse objectives, lack of hiding spots, and overall trial and error required to reach the game’s end frustrating. Although the concept is intriguing, the execution falls short.
I am absolutely fascinated with the human psyche and how to brain works being in a dream state. I find vaporwave aesthetics incredibly pleasing, and I can immerse myself all day in the border between retro analog objects and digital dreamscapes. Hypnagogia explores the real-life state of being in between dreams. The trippy PS1 aesthetic visuals mixed with classic platforming and storytelling of yesteryear make for one of the most nostalgic games I’ve played in a long time, but this also comes with its own set of issues.
The game’s goal is to collect nine dream shards for a mysterious bird in this hub world that you enter. Each similar to 32-bit era games like Crash Bandicoot, each shard resides in a unique level. Levels range from basic platforming to puzzle solving, and some levels are more entertaining than others. Some levels are more familiar to gamers who grew up with Banjo Kazooie, with your character meeting weird cartoon-like creatures engaging in simplistic dialogue, retrieving an item for them, and unlocking the next area. These were quite enjoyable, as they didn’t require a lot of brain power. Later levels, like the dreaded forest level, are way too long, have too many labrynthine levels, and have obtuse puzzles that drag the experience down. This particular level took me several days to complete, primarily because I was unaware that there was no save feature during the level. I would quit and have to start all over again from the beginning.
Zelda-like dungeons are present in the aforementioned forest level, but they lack effectiveness and enjoyment. The later levels resemble a walking simulator, involving some backtracking, until the final couple of levels abruptly transform into a terrifying Silent Hill-style experience. The game clearly pays homage to the games that shaped the gaming genre of that era. The floaty platforming can get quite annoying for the more platform-heavy levels, such as the second one, where you are in a giant ocean and need to retrieve keys from various corners of the level. The first half of the game just doesn’t have excellent pacing. While the atmosphere and visuals are fantastic and immersive, the gameplay itself can pull you out or make you quit for good.
That’s not to say the gameplay is inherently bad. It’s quite manageable, but the level design itself is quite atrocious and can even be downright boring. For instance, in the cyber level towards the end of the game, you must float through the air to collect cubes that unlock additional paths. However, this requires a significant amount of backtracking, and the act of floating around can be challenging to control. Many times it was difficult to figure out what the goal of the level was, and I wound up just wandering around talking to all the creatures until something happened.
The visuals are the game’s main attraction, and each level is oozing personality and wonderful texture work that make it feel like a PS1 game. The mall level in particular made me feel something. Being in a closed down mall and having it transform into an abandoned mall is something I enjoy watching UrbEx explorers discover. The reflective water, bright pinks, whites, and blues give it a vaporwave vibe, and a few levels have just enough of the game they are trying to copy to make you smile when you realize it. Overall, Hypnagogia is a fantastic game for those who are seeking this type of visual aesthetic or looking for something to itch their nostaliga. Just don’t expect a compelling story, good controls, or consistent level design.
As a child, I remember seeing this game everywhere. Every store had ads for it, BlockBuster always had it rented it out, and TV commercials for it were constant. What turned me off was the turn-based strategy aspect, and the graphics did not look that great even for their time. Arc the Lad was a new IP for the West, as the first three PS1 games never had a localization. I remember everyone raving about the story and characters, but I also knew the game was going to be very long and hard. That part was not incorrect.
You play as two characters in this game. You alternate between Darc, the Deimos, and Kharg, the Human. The plot itself is rather simple, but Cattle Call did a commendable job of trying to enrich the story with lore and fill the world with life. The story revolves around the basic concept of humanity polluting the Earth and never being satisfied with their achievements, always seeking more. It is similar to many Studio Ghibli films of the past, with stories of pollution and the need to love the planet more. There is also a fight over the balance between light and dark, and how one can’t exist without the other. Tribes and groups of species are constantly engaged in conflict with each other. The Deimos, the humans, the Drakyr, and numerous others engage in constant conflict. Everyone wants the five spirit stones, created a millennium ago, to gain the ultimate power. Thankfully, the story involves the characters quite a bit and fleshes them out, and I actually really enjoyed it.
The battle system is a different story. After the first couple of hours, most people may shut the game off. The story doesn’t really pick up until a few hours in which is long past when the combat can get on your nerves. The game is a turn-based strategy, but you move within a radius. Each character has an attack range and can use magic in the form of spirit stones. When a character has an aura surrounding them, you can unleash a combined power attack, but it requires proximity to another character and occurs automatically during an attack. Battles are slow, dull, and rather boring. The attack range never makes sense. Characters equipped with guns are limited to shooting only a few feet ahead of them, and retrieving dropped items consumes your movement turn, thereby limiting your action options. This significantly impedes combat and necessitates constantly grouping your characters together.
I also don’t like that there are auto-battles on the overworld map. This is the only time auto-battles occur, but unless you need to grind, you must wait for the battle to load, wait for the condition message to disappear, select your characters, enter the battle, wait for the camera to sweep, then retreat. There is no retreat option in the pre-battle screen, which makes no sense. Battles are also heavily unbalanced, ranging from dull and easy to a barrage of them with no save point or store in sight. There aren’t many bosses in this game, but most of the battle conditions just require you to kill everything. Given that this is a strategy RPG, this approach seems illogical. It would make more sense to be a traditional turn-based RPG like Final Fantasy. It would help if there were alternate win conditions to easy the difficulty or add more strategy to the game.
The dull and dated visuals also detract from the game. The black voids and incredibly basic visuals clearly mark this game as a previously-in-development-for-the-PS1 game. No lip-syncing, terrible animations, blurry textures, and flat, dull environments plague this game. The towns feel void of life and are super tiny. Additionally, the voice acting is scarce, and what is present is mediocre at best. There is a significant amount of written dialogue and extensive reading. Sometimes I would go 15–20 minutes only reading dialogue in between fights. There is no exploration of the area. Outside of two object hunting quests, there are no side quests, and the armor and weapon system is odd and strange. There is just nothing to do outside of combat and watching cutscenes.
Instead of receiving brand-new weapons as in other RPGs, you receive weapon parts. You can equip up to three parts of armor and weapons to adjust various stats such as health, dexterity, and the usual stuff you find in JRPGs. Winning battles earns you gold, but enemies can also drop them, resulting in a wasted movement turn. Only chests can be found in the levels towards the later fourth of the game. Some dungeons are a little labyrinthine and frustrating to navigate, too.
Overall, the game has a story with a lot of heart and soul, and the characters are great despite the elementary writing and cliche personalities of the main heroes. There were a few plot twists, and I was pleasantly surprised by some of the turns the story took. However, this all comes at a heavy cost. The combat is dull, boring, and slow, and the difficulty is all over the place. The graphics are awful, flat, lifeless, and dated. The voice acting is barely passable, and some may hate the dozens of hours of reading. However, the game does have the world’s lore fleshed out, and you feel a part of it, and it feels alive. There are books to read, characters to get snippets of lore from, and it all feels like a living and breathing world. Visually, the game fails to capture this essence, which is truly disheartening.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.