Hey Everybody! Happy 7th
of July, or as we in the biz like to call it, shmindependence day. Not many
people know this, but today is the day in which we as a nation return all the
sh*tty gifts that all the other nations gave us for our birthday; which, in
itself is a day to celebrate. I mean, a beret? Seriously France? Now, I don’t
know about y’all, but when shmindependence day rolls around in the Mikula
household, we like to gather around our fireplace, roast some chest nuts, sing
a few shmindependence carols and read our favorite gaming blogs. Now that I’m a
part of Shlockness Industries, it is my job to make sure that you lovely and
talented readers have all of the necessary blogery you need to make your
shmindependence day something truly special. Now grab a loved one, snuggle up
with your foreign gift receipts, and celebrate this wonderful holiday with this
edition of Weekly Shlockness.
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| What the f*ck are we supposed to do with this? |
Hey,
remember a couple weeks ago when I told y’all about the Indie Humble Bundle? Well,
now that I’ve gotten Silent Hill 2 out of the way, I’ve decided to get back
into the bundle. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But John! You can’t go from
Silent Hill to regular gaming that quickly. You’ll get Silent Shock and break
your neck!” Well I accounted for that, and in order to avoid Silent Shock (as
the professionals call it) I’ve decided to easy my system back into its normal
groove by playing a game that is similar to Silent Hill but isn’t quite there.
I’m talking of course about Jasper Byrne’s Lone
Survivor.
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| I hear ya man. I hear ya loud and clear picture from: www.indiegamebundles.com |
Lone
Survivor is a 2D survival horror game with a lot of psychological elements to
it. According to the lore, there has been some kind of cataclysmic event that
rendered everyone either dead or transformed into some kind of horrible twitchy
skin monsters. Or…maybe not. Right now the story has the main character
experiencing all sorts of hallucinations and psychic trauma that I’m really not
sure if there are any real monsters or if it’s just in my head. I suppose we’ll
find out as I get through the game.
With
the story elements aside I’m really appreciating the gameplay within this
title. This isn’t one of your newfangled survival horror games with set pieces
and action; this is an old school survival horror game. The player is left with
very little ammo, few light sources, and very threatening enemies. The monsters
in this game make very distinct noises and whenever I hear one coming I can
feel my stomach drop a little bit. However, this does raise an issue that I
have with the game which is that the enemies are hard to avoid. Because of the
2D perspective any enemies in front of you will completely block your path. So
it’s not like Resident Evil or Silent Hill where you can rely on your third
dimension to simply walk around the enemies if they get to close; in Lone
Survivor, one enemy if front of you is a total road block. More often than not
I felt that my only option was to shoot my way past certain enemies, which is
kind of a bummer when you have such limited ammo. Occasionally you can sink
into little hiding spots within the walls and lure the creatures past you with
rotten meat so you can get around them; however, these instances aren’t very
common and results in the player wasting their limited supply of meat every
time they want to pass that hall way, which is probably pretty often.
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| This auto aim seems pretty gracious picture from: www.fronttowardsgamer.com |
There
is definitely an interesting UI in place here. On screen indicators are minimal
and in some cases even hidden from the player completely. Occasionally the main
character will tell the player that they are hungry or sleepy, at which point I
usually will feed my character some food you can find in the environment or
find a bed to sleep in. This is an interesting way of doing things since you
don’t have a hunger/tired bar to keep track of, but I do have some problems
with this mechanic. My problem is not with the method of presenting the
information to you but rather that it is completely unknown to me if it is even
necessary to eat and sleep at all. From what I’ve seen, being hungry or sleepy
didn’t seem to affect my character in the slightest. I’m left wondering if I’m
wasting time/resources for nothing or if there are some serious implications
for not taking care of your dude.
I’m also not fully convinced of the
art style of this game. Typically in this day and age, games that use an over
pixelated art style are either trying to pay homage to a particular genre, or
poke fun at it. Survival horror doesn’t really have any roots in the realm of
overly pixelated 2D games so I don’t see how this could pay homage to anything,
yet the tones are completely serious and don’t seem to be poking fun at
anything either. It’s an interesting choice in graphics that doesn’t quite sit
well with me. Occasionally I’ll see something that looks totally convincing and
spooky, but other times the game just looks silly. The main character is
supposed to be wearing a respirator over his mouth the entire game, but
whenever I look at him it seems like he has a big goofy smile.
The art style and the 2D
perspective are both very interesting design choices that I don’t really think
work with this genre, but don’t let that statement give off the impression that
I don’t like this game. I am totally enjoying myself when I play this game. The
gameplay is (despite its problems) very fun to behold, and the psychological
horror elements are the icing on the cake. I definitely plan on finishing this
game and I’ll be sure to let y’all know my final verdict when I do.
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| "I just brought you a Shmindependence Day brownie" picture from: www.superflatgames.com |
Now, with all of the Shmindependence
Day celebrations going on, it’s probably hard to recall everything that
happened on Independence Day. What’s left of my memories consist of a milky
haze of beer, brats, beer-brats, crappy berets, and maybe a firecracker here or
there. The one thing I can recall for certain is that there was plenty of El
Shaddai to be had that day.
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| I think I ate too many beer-brats picture from: www.gamezone.com |
El Shaddai is a spectacle fighter
(think God of War) with a heavy theme of Christianity. You play a guy named
Enoch (who is an actually biblical figure if I’m not mistaken) who is talked into
fighting a bunch of dudes by some other dude named Lucifel for some reason. I’m
sure the actual game is not nearly as vague as I’ve portrayed it, but with all
the beer-brats flying around that day it was kind of hard to pay attention. Any
way, it turns out the dudes you’re supposed to be fighting are building the
tower of babel (more bible stuff) and you have to stop them. In order to do
that, the player is left to run, jump, and fight their way up the tower and
kill all of the dudes inside. What’s interesting about the gameplay is that it
has a lot more depth than I expected. It feels a lot like God of War when you
first start playing it, but it soon introduces a whole bunch of new ideas that
make this game a very distinct variant on the formula. For instance, there are
three weapons in the game (whose names I don’t remember) and each of these
weapons gives the player new kinds of mobility and new kinds of fighting style.
The bow lookin’ melee thing allows you to perform fast attacks as well as a
double jump, while the shield thing has a very slow build up but lets you block
as you move. They may sound like generic weapons to have in a game like this
but they actually mix up the gameplay quite a bit. Everyone I’ve talked to
who’s played this game seems to have their own preference. I liked the bow
thing because it was fast and the double jump was good for the platforming
sections, but a friend of mine liked the shield because it hits really hard.
Each weapon also needs to be charged with purifying energy every now and again
if it is to be kept at full effectiveness. This makes for some interesting
situations in which I’ll be fighting some dudes and have to get away from them
in order to charge up my blade and finish the job.
The one thing that is apparent when
you boot up El Shaddai is that the game oozes visual style. This isn’t your
normal interpretation of Heaven and Hell; it’s a very trippy and surreal
version. There are tons of colors, wavy forms, and floating platforms. The
whole game is brilliant to look at and would be well worth playing just to get
a feel for the world that they’ve built. I should also make a comment on the
music. It was quite loud at the 4th of July party I played this at,
but it is my understanding that the music is quite good. I wish I could be a
little more descriptive than that, but hey, that’s the kicks.
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| "Stay back! Or I'll totally whack you with my bow-lookin' thing" picture from: www.g4tv.com |
All in all I think El Shaddai has a
lot of promise. It easy to see how this could have just turned into a Japanese
God of War, but it’s not. I very much appreciate the ideas that were put into
the mechanics of this game and I look forward to playing more at some point in
the future. On that note I’m going to wrap up this blog post. Wow! I didn’t
insult Mike once during the whole thing. I guess that’s the power of
Shmindependence Day. Okay, give me a second…Mike sucks….MMwMM is a waste of
time. Phew, that was a close one but as I always say: “give the people what
they want”. Now I’d like to close this Weekly Shlockness with a list of all the
(supposedly) misspelled words I used in this blog post according to Microsoft
word.
Shlockness
Mikula
Shmindependence
Sh*tty
Blogery
Shaddai
Lucifel
Lookin’
Platforming
MMwMM
Happy 4th/7th of July everybody! From
all of us at Shlockness Industries!
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