Catching Up - Braid and Amnesia: The Dark Descent

A while back that ridiculous Humble Indie Bundle came out with pretty much every good game ever. Even though I already owned several of the games, I bought it anyway, gifted away my duplicates and set to playing two games I should have played already, but never got round to - Braid and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Spoilers await below.


Braid
Last night at around 2:30am I completed Braid.

I'd like to point out that I actually aided a friend in the completion of the game around the time of release on Xbox Live Arcade back in 2008, so I was up to date on the story, but enough time had passed for me to have no advantage when attempting the puzzles.

But, as those of you who have finished the game will know, Braid isn't about the puzzles. If you are under the impression that it's a quaint little indie Mario-style game with time bending mechanics then I'm afraid you've been horribly misled. I watched Indie Game: The Movie a few weeks ago (something which I would recommend to anyone at all interested in the industry), and learned that Jonathan Blow, the maker of the game actually slipped into depression not long after Braid was released. To an outsider, this would seem utterly ridiculous. The game is the highest rated title on XBLA ever, was the second highest selling game on the service in 2008, and made Blow very rich, very quickly. To him, people were enjoying the puzzles, and that was fine, they just weren't "getting" it. The philosophical and highly mature side of the story only reveals itself fully if you complete the entire game, and that is what a lot of people were missing.

As I say, I knew prior to last night's completion what happened at the end of the game, and I remembered the final level fairly vividly. It speaks to the game's quality that I remember this almost four years after its release, and yet I can't really remember much of what happened in Max Payne 3 which I played and reviewed about two months ago.

Braid is a simple story about Tim, a guy who is trying to save his Princess from an evil monster. To do this he has to solve puzzles while manipulating time. But the thing about time in Braid is that it isn't linear, and it certainly isn't simple. Not only does that relate to the puzzles, but also to the story itself. The final level in the game takes place in World 1. The level begins and Tim sees the evil Knight holding on to the Princess whilst holding onto a vine hanging down from above.

"I got you!" He sneers.

But the Princess manages to escape his clutches and jump up to a ledge above him.

"Get down here!" He shouts after her.

"Help!" She cries out to Tim who is watching all of this from below.

Just then a wall of flame erupts from the left side of the screen, engulfing everything in its path. Tim runs to the right in the lower section of the level, with the Princess above him, and they aid each other by pulling levers and lowering ladders to help each other escape their impending doom.

Tim finally reaches a ladder, and climbs up to his Princess who is on the other side of some glass. And then, whiteness.

The princess is asleep in the room behind the glass, and Tim can't reach her. The only thing that can be done is rewind time, and then everything becomes clear. Time isn't being rewound, but allowed to run forwards.

The Princess is fleeing from Tim, setting traps and blocking off routes up to her which Tim manages to narrowly avoid each time. She then sees her Knight up ahead, and knows that she is going to be safe.

"Help!" She cries out to the Knight, while Tim watches helplessly from below.

"Get down here!" He shouts to her.

The Princess jumps down to from the ledge and into the loving grasp of her Knight.

"I got you!" He soothes her, and they escape up the vine to safety.

The epilogue contains text ambiguously explaining the story of Braid. Blow has never revealed the true meaning, and that is the point - it's very open to interpretation. One of my favourite theories is the Atomic Bomb theory, which can be found by clicking this link. It posits that Tim is a scientist working on the first Atomic Bomb, and that The Princess is the bomb herself. This would explain several references in the text hinting at locations and quotations surrounding the development of the bomb, and the wall of flame at the end of the game, and some of the artwork which suggests a Manhattan setting. My favourite thing about the story though, is that we will never know the exact meaning, and that's how it should stay in my view.

Story aside, the final moments of the game are a masterpiece in level design. The fact that Blow can make a level work both backwards and forwards, and have two entirely different meanings is a very impressive achievement. I'm very much looking forward to the next game that can combine storytelling and gameplay in such a tight way.


Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Again, I've seen the majority of Amnesia being played, so I knew what to expect here. You would have thought that would negate some of the horror impact of the game. Nope.

I haven't really got very far into the game playing on my own. Conceptually I'm a big fan of the game, but then I can never bring myself to put myself through playing it, which is a shame. I did do the water monster bit though, which is no mean feat, as people who have played the game will confirm.

One day I will finish it. Maybe.

The new Amnesia game, A Machine for Pigs got delayed until 2013 recently, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I really want to play it, but at least now I've got more time to prepare for it. You can read my preview of the game I wrote by clicking on this link.

That's it for now, thanks for reading, have a good weekend whatever you're doing. I'm going to see Batman, can't wait.

E3 2012 Part 1 - Microsoft

The biggest press event in the gaming calendar is here! E3 2012 started today and I'll be attempting to watch all of the press conferences and write about what has been sparking my interest.

Microsoft Press Conference
The entire theatre started awash with Microsoft's familiar green light, and then there it was - a FMV Halo 4 trailer! Now I've never been the biggest fan of Halo, and my hopes of something new were dashed when I saw that the first enemies to be seen were Grunts, Jackals and Elites. But wait, that Elite just disintegrated... wait, what are those glowing crawling animal robot things? Awesome, something new from the Halo franchise, perhaps I'll be excited about it after all.

Next up was Splinter Cell Blacklist. I remember when these were highly unforgiving stealth games, but not any more. This origin story sees Sam Fisher running and gunning his way through hordes of enemies, and scaling walls like a monkey. I haven't confirmed this, but I don't think Michael Ironside was voicing young Fisher, which made me a bit sad, but we'll see.

I know lots of "proper" gamers don't like sports games, but that's only because they're wrong. Fifa 13 will be the new slightly improved football game for this year, and will feature Kinect support for the first time. You can make substitutions without going into menus, can call for passes and so on. My favourite part was when they showed a player being caught by the offside trap and swearing at the Kinect (it was beeped out, kid friendly show). The Kinect picked up on this however and the commentator began saying how the player was unhappy about being caught out, very amusing.

Madden 13 too will feature Kinect support, and the presentation even featured legendary quarterback Joe Montana! I found it funny that no one seemed to be acknowledging that Sega made the largely unsuccessful Joe Montana football games back in the nineties, but anyway. Montana began to call plays using his voice rather than a controller and then proceeded to score a touchdown! Against the Seahawks, with the Niners, what a dick.

Fable The Journey is a Kinect Fable game. Yay.

Gears of War Judgment got a trailer too, sparking many debates about what the correct spelling of that word is. The trailer didn't show much other than confirming that it is indeed a new Gears of War game, so there's that.

Then there was dubstep, which can only mean one thing: a racing game! Forza Horizon was on show, and this time they're leaving the track and heading out into the open world, and it looks very, very pretty. I've never been drawn to the Forza franchise despite being a big racing fan, hopefully this will do something to persuade me.

Last year we saw the new Tomb Raider game, and this year we got to see a bit more! The gameplay looks incredibly fast paced, seeing Lara running, jumping, shooting and stabbing her way through the level at breakneck speed. I'm hoping that there will be more of an exploration element to the finished game, but I guess they have to show off the exciting sections here.

Then three new titles. Ascend New Gods seems like a fantasy beat em up, in the same vein as God of War, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it from what they showed. Then they showed a trailer for a game called Lococycle, and in the notes I made for the press conference it says "Wat???????", so there you go. Go and watch the trailer. Then finally 343 Guilty Spark was floating around a test chamber from Portal and apparently that's going to be called Matter. 


But that doesn't Matter because Resident Evil 6 was next, and much like Tomb Raider the action was fast and action packed, with explosions and fire and helicopters and quick time events out the arse. I wasn't particularly interested, but then I haven't been interested in a RE game for a long time now.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park then made an appearance to grant some much needed levity to the press conference. They were showing off South Park: The Stick of Truth, well not so much showing it off as showing a trailer which gave no indication of what the game will be. You will be playing as the new kid in town who is trying to become cool and be the fifth member of the group. It remains to be seen just how this will be done and whether it will be any good or not.

Then for some reason Usher came out and sang a song and danced. A lot. And then he left and apparently that was them showing off Dance Central 3, huh.

Finally, Microsoft closed out their star studded show with the big guns, quite literally. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or CODBLOPS2 if you're feeling that way inclined showed the public what they've been showing press since the game got announced a while back. There's a female president and holographic devices, so you know it's the future. Also there's a gun which you can "charge up" which apparently means it can shoot through solid concrete to kill guys on the other side. The gameplay demonstration takes place in Los Angeles and shows the branching storylines and differing tactics you can use to approach your mission. At one point you can choose to either snipe from the top of the broken freeway or rappel down and shoot guys that way. Okay fine, it's not really revolutionary, but at least it's a step in the right direction for the ageing franchise. The most interesting part for me was the use of drones which could be controlled using a PDA thing on your wrist, and that there was a pilot-able jet. I'm unsure whether the jet is on semi- rails, as there didn't seem to be a way to alter your altitude when you wanted to, but I could be wrong about that. Also, the future is black, apparently.

So that was Microsoft's press conference. I'll be writing up EA and Ubisoft's respective press conferences early on tomorrow, and then I'll hopefully be able to do Sony and Nintendo's later in the day.

Excited about games yet? I sure am, and we're only a couple of hours in to this epic event. Thanks for reading, see you later.

Gaming News of the Week

...and now for something completely different.

I decided to try my hand at video editing and speaking into a microphone, and then somehow combining those two things into an interesting (hopefully) weekly (hopefully) feature for your enjoyment!

It will be a run down of the gaming related news from the past seven days, as well as a few extra bits here and there such as me talking about the games I've been playing.

So, here it is! The first ever episode of Gaming News of the Week!

(I'll hopefully get the video embedded soon, it's not showing up on YouTube search results at the moment, which is the only way to do it on Blogspot)

EDIT: There we go.

Thanks for reading/ watching, have a good day!

That bit where... Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Back in 2007, we were bored of first person shooters. It seemed like every month, a new game came out that was set in bloody World War II. By that time it had been done to death, we all knew the scenarios, the weapons and the outcome of every battle (the Nazis lose, spoilers).

But then, rising out of the swamp of FPS mediocrity came Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Wait a second, this is set, like, today? That's so real! It gave us a new enemy, instead of fighting Nazis, we were now fighting anyone who wasn't American or British, and in doing so the developers were staying as close to current affairs as possible...

Along with that, there were new weapons to enjoy, the guns that every nine year old can talk about at length today were largely unknown before this game came out. They also highlighted how much guns from the 40s sucked...you mean I don't have to load a new bullet into the chamber after firing every shot? War is awesome!

Five years later, we're praying for something different from FPS developers, but oh well, it was good for a while.

Anyway, there were two highlights of the game for me, one of them being the Ghillie mission, simply because it was something different. Instead of shooting everything that moved, you had to stealth your way through, picking your shots and trying not to get detected. Then there was that bit after you assassinated the guy with the helicopter which oh so nearly crashes into you! But then it stops, phew! My favourite part of the game though, was a moment of extreme poignancy that seemed so out of place and yet fitted in so perfectly.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Shock and Awe


"All U.S. forces, be advised, we have a confirmed nuclear threat in the city. NEST teams are on site and attempting to disarm. I repeat we're..."

In the mission entitled 'Shock and Awe', you are tasked with attacking Al-Asad's (the villain of the piece) rumoured position in his capital city. However, half way through the mission a retreat is called after a nuclear threat in the city is detected. During the retreat, you stop off to rescue a downed helicopter pilot who is under fire.

Everyone bundles into an evac helicopter and as you take off you see several other helicopters making their escape from the city, phew, everyone's going to make it.

And then the nuclear device detonates.

You watch as the mushroom cloud billows skywards and the shockwave makes it way towards you, destroying everything in it's path. We're far enough away, right? We're still going to make it. But the shockwave keeps coming, enveloping the other helicopters in a cloud of dust and rubble, and then it hits you. Your helicopter spirals out of control, crashes into the ground and then everything fades to black.

Did I fail the mission? That's not supposed to happen is it?

You wake up, manage to crawl your way out of the wreckage and drag yourself onto your feet. The sun has disappeared behind the smoke, and everything around you is just a shell of what it once was. At least you're alive though, someone will come soon to save you. You fall back to the ground and close your eyes.

Someone will be there soon.

It is later revealed that 30,000 people died in the blast, Marines, OpFor and civilians all wiped out. I had never played a game where such a catastrophic event occurred right before my eyes. Nor can I remember playing a game in which I had completed a mission, and several of the game's main characters died, all in one moment.

I congratulate you, CoD4:MW, not only for having an acronym longer than most game titles, but for putting this incredible sequence into a game, allowing a slight insight, just for a moment, into what it would actually be like to be in that situation. Maybe war isn't so awesome after all.

Thanks for reading.