Cole Phelps is L.A.’s public menace #1

Causing a ruckus in open-world games like Grand Theft Auto III or Red Faction: Guerrilla was always  fun, but short-lived. You can only go so long destroying things and being a jerk before somebody takes notice. Heck, creeping over the speed limit in Mafia/Mafia II is enough to get the sirens singing, and then the law’s on your tail, switching your biggest concern from running down mailboxes and street-lamps to running from the cops. Usually, that scenario ends with a horrific crash and reload, wherein you lose some money and respawn at the local hospital or police station. Ah, the price one pays for spoliation.

Well, since L.A. Noire‘s Cole Phelps is the law, he can do whatever he wants, nice or not, as evident below:

Public Menace (30G): Rack up $47,000 in penalties during a single story case.

The thorn in this Achievement’s side is that there’s no way to openly track how much damage in penalties one is amassing during a case. You only get these statistics at the end of a case, but I assumed that totaling a lot of cars and driving on the sidewalk for long stretches of time would be the best way to racking up fines. After an hour of this mayhem, I went ahead and finished up the case–“The Black Caesar” for the curious, which was a bad choice as it’s a pretty lengthy affair–and waited eagerly for the statistics screen to pop up. I was confident I had done enough damages, and I was right. Way too right. Ended up going overboard: $68,000 in car penalties alone, with another $8,000 or so for messing up the sidewalks so badly.

But man, crashing cars in L.A. Noire is fun…and funny, especially when you hear the things citizens say to Cole’s constant obsession with ramming them head on. “These people!” is probably my favorite of the bunch. Another nice aspect to being reckless in the 1940s is that the cars don’t blow up and Cole doesn’t go flying through the windshield with every crash. Guess that tech hasn’t been invented yet.

Now that Cole and I’ve gotten this out of our system, we can go back to being goody two shoes, in hopes of replaying all the cases and earning five-star ratings. Well, not all of them. I did great on some, but others I totally funked up, accusing the wrong dudes of crimes they didn’t commit. My bad. Also curious about some of the DLC cases; Tara was certainly excited to learn that there were more cases yet to play, but I just don’t know if they are worth the space credits or not. We’ll see how bored I get after finishing up Deus Ex: Human Revolution and waiting for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to land…

Second boss fight in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is worse than the first

I’ve not been enjoying Deus Ex: Human Revolution as much as I would like; on paper, everything sounds like golden mac and cheese, with plenty of sneaking and interrogating and unraveling and augments, but it turns out that playing it the way I like to play RPG shooters is probably not the best way to play it. Sure, it’s a way, but one easily described as elephantine difficult. I die a lot, I get spotted a lot, and I can’t read a majority of the emails thanks to tiny text syndrome, which means I only hack computers to gain XP for hacking, not for delving deeper in the world’s lore and bad grammar. It’s all a bit of a shame, but I feel this pressure to push on, to finish it, in hopes that I could play it again, this time with a run-and-gun approach, which seems simpler, but ironically safer.

The first boss fight in Deus Ex: Human Revolution nearly had me putting the game’s disc back in the box, the box back on the shelf, and the whole thing out of sight and mind. However, I pushed on, stubborn, and finally got through it. The whole thing was a disappointment, and I knew that more boss fights were to come, but a part of me assumed that maybe they got better, more varied, with some options still for pacifist players. If Yelena Fedorova is any indication, then no–they get worse.

Mute and augmented to the height of 6’7″, Fedorova is one helluva assassin. And if you want answers from Eliza, you need to take her out, which is no easy task. The boss battle takes place in a circular room, with an inner circle and outer circle. The floor is wet, not a detail to dismiss. Along the outer circle ring are four generators, which when destroyed send deadly electric zolts across the floor. If you were not playing the way I am playing, you could shoot Fedorova with guns, stunning her near the generators, and then explode them with more guns or grenades. If you have the right skin augmentation, you can take less damage from the electrified floor, otherwise you have to hop around like a noob on hot coals, praying your health holds up. Here’s the rub: I have no deadly guns and no skin augmentations. As a pacifist player, you have to hang around the generators and wait for Fedorova to charge at you, damaging the generator in the process. You receive damage from this, and then you also have to survive all the electrical damage. It’s tough. I tried numerous times, and the only solution was to switch the difficulty down to easy, which reduced the amount of damage Jensen took from the floor. Three exploded generators later and several popped painkillers, I got this:

The Mantis (25G): You defeated Yelena Fedorova, elite member of a secret mercenary hit squad.

During the first part of the game where you spend a lot of time in Detroit on the streets, I went after most of the sidequests before leaving the area and losing the chance to complete them. It’s the RPGer in me, having to finish up all those little mini tasks or at least see what they are about. Now, I skip them all and just want to finish up the main storyline as I’m so disheartened about my first playthrough (especially since I think I screwed myself over on the “don’t kill anyone” Achievement by using robots once) that I just want to see the whole story and then play it again very differently. Stay tuned for grumbling about the next boss fight, which I’m sure to hate.

Games Completed in 2011, #30 – Portal

Always late to the party, I finally emerged from my rocky home this summer and played Portal–this time, all the way to completion. I guess I can now join society and nod appreciatively at jokes about cake and cubes. See, I did give Portal a try back in May 2010, as it was released free for those on Macs via Steam. Unfortunately, my relic of a machine was unable to run the game well, even after tinkering with a lot of settings, so I never went back. However, over the summer, needing a little something-something to play, I picked up The Orange Box, a collection of Valve games, namely: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.

And this time, it was playable. I did not spend 45 minutes trying to get Aperture Science Enrichment Center test subject Chell out of that tiny room with the toilet. That alone was impressive. And a controller in hand felt better than clicking a mouse, but that’s just me.

Portal is a story of isolation and determination. Puzzles, too. Chell awakes in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center with no idea how she got there and/or why. Actually, she might know–but she’s a silent protagonist, so mum’s the word. GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) informs Chell that she is to take part in a series of tests, and off we go to create portals and travel across large, open spaces and free-fall for minutes on end while potty breaks happen. There are 19 puzzle chambers and a much different final level, which I’ll get to in a bit. Funny and sometimes untrustworthy commentary from GLaDOS at the beginning and end of each chamber help expand Aperture Science’s lore and background without stopping gameplay.

Using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device–Portal Gun, really–and Companion Cube, players will have to navigate through chambers and reach the exit. Earlier chambers are very straightforward and tutorial-like, but as they progress, fresh tactics and tricks must be put to use, such as using momentum to reach new heights and manipulating energy balls to go where one wants. The puzzles really do test the player’s skill and patience, as rushing ahead is generally never the way to go. I have no room to brag, but I did pretty well, completing chambers 1 through, oh, 15 without having to use any kind of online guide or walkthrough. After that…phhhbbbt. Math has never been my strong point, and while you might think a game like Portal requires no math…well, it does. There’s timing to consider and mapping grid points and figuring out how to get from A to B in the quickest way possible, like reducing fractions.

I grew frustrated with the last four test chambers, but all grumbling and hate subsided the moment the final level began. As the tests progressed, GLaDOS’ commentary became harsher and colder, her motives beginning to shine through. Also, Chell discovered some previous test subjects–awkward would sum that up. And suddenly, live fire turrets are all around, brimming with glee to murder yet again. By the time GLaDOS began funneling us directly down into a furnace, Chell (and I) had had enough. Time to escape, but escape is no easy thing, even with portal tech. Everything we had learned from the beginning of the game is needed to make it out alive as there are no clear exits and entrances, just a lot of trial and error. Eventually, Chell finds GLaDOS, and we have a boss fight that is made all the more tense by the addition of a countdown clock. Hate those things. With victory, we get sunshine and song. Ahhh…

I wish all of Portal was like the final level. It required thinking, just like all the test chambers, but this was free thinking, with no hints or pictures to help Chell along. All the more rewarding. Making one’s way up through vents and across piping truly felt like escaping, and finding creative ways to knock out dangerous turrets is a joy, even if they sound so sad.

And yeah, the end credits song is pretty great. I’ve replayed it countless times since first hearing it around two in the morning, mostly in a daze. I am glad I got to first experience in a traditional sense, but my lack of sleep, sweaty fingers, and exhilaration at completing the game overwhelmed everything at that point, including robotic tunes. That said, I liked Portal for it compact size, its clear push forward, its just enoughness–I don’t think I would enjoy Portal 2 as much, and definitely have nobody to play co-op with, so I’ll just leave Aperture Science behind, free to continue on being cool and crazy. They’ll be fine; they have plenty of cake to go around.

The best road to progress is the Lonesome Road in Fallout: New Vegas

It was with great excitement and muted sadness that I purchased Lonesome Road last night, downloaded it, and then loaded up my character Kapture, a creepy man sitting pretty at level 34 that loves his Energy weapons. This hardened weirdo has conquered the Mojave, visited a grand casino, met the Burned Man, and obliterated a bunch of crazy brain-obsessed robots. And now, he has one more adventure, a road, dangerous and unpredictable, riddled with bombs and monsters, and he must walk it alone to find the answers of his past.

I played for about two hours or so last night, and it was a good time. Fun new weapons and the wonderful gift of a newish companion. A little scary, a little too much talking, and a little tough in certain parts. And yes, I also died probably nine or ten times, but that’s not my fault. Nobody told me there would be Deathclaws. Anyways, you get a Pip-Boy message, alerting you that a man named Ulysses is looking for you. Supposedly, this is the courier that was originally meant to deliver the Platinum Chip. Seek him out and discover his reasonings for turning the job down. Once in the Divide, you’ll follow a fairly linear path, all while Ulysses talks to you. And he talks a lot. Unfortunately, while the subject is interesting, listening to him is not; he has this slow, odd way of speaking, drawing every word and phrase out longer than it needs to be. There was a ton of chatter in Old World Blues, but the writing was much more surprising there; here, a lot of Ulysses’ thoughts are easy to guess before even picking the dialogue option, and then waiting for him to finish up his dramatic drawl about homes and roads and Old World blah blah blah is like torture.

But yeah, new locales, new weapons, new perks, new items, new recipes, an increase of +5 to the level cap (now sitting mighty at 50), and new enemy types. It’s what one now expects from a DLC pack for the Fallout franchise, and I’m enjoying it so far. I don’t want to rush through it too fast, seeing as it is the final hurrah until Fallout 4 or Fallout: New Jersey. Granted, I still need to do a Hardcore playthrough…

I didn’t realize I was doing this, just finishing the quest The Launch, but here ya go, the first Achievement unlocked in the Lonesome Road DLC:

Condemned to Repeat It (20G): Decided the fate of all the Divide Dwellers

I also learned from our last story-driven DLC that I was pronouncing ED-E wrong in my head. For some reason, I was calling our little trumpeting eyebot eee-dee-eee, not ed-dee. Like Eddie. Turns out, the dude who made him, well…calls him Eddie. I get that now. However, my brain still refuses to get it right. Oh wells.

And now, some random gameplay tips:

• Make sure your lockpicking skill is decent, at least 50+ with some skill magazines to help from time to time. There’s a lot of lockpicking so far.
• Watch out for glitches where Deathclaws randomly appear inside a ruined trailer and smack the skin off your character. It happened to me, and Tara is a witness. She thought it was a dinosaur at first. I then came up with a new song, which I sang all the way through that Deathclaws-infested stretch of road.
• Pack a lot of Rad-X and/or RadAway. Heck, bring along a Radiation Suit just to be safe. The Divide is not a place one wants to take a deep breath and smell the roses.
• Auto-Inject stimpaks are brilliant; pick up every one you can.
• Don’t stand directly in front of a not-yet-detonated nuke and shoot it. DON’T DO IT.

Good luck, fellow Couriers!

Hack and slash through dungeons in Crimson Alliance, but don’t pick up loot

I gave up trying to beat Barrett in Deus Ex: Human Revolution last night well after my twenty-fifth save reload and decided to scour the Xbox Live games marketplace for anything else, to see what was new, to find an easier experience that would get me muttering or wringing controllers’ necks. And I found it relatively quickly with Crimson Alliance, a new downloadable game that gives off a Diablo/Torchlight vibe, but with a co-op slant.

And it is that. It’s totally a Diablo/Torchlight clone. Minus the great loot. There’s little loot to speak of. More on that in a moment.

Actually, the main reason I downloaded Crimson Alliance was not because it looked like a simple, mindless hack n’ slasher–one that would not get me even more worked up inside–but because it was FREE. That’s right. It’s a free game. Says so on the tin. Well, maybe. The lines between free game, trial, and demo are significantly blurred here, and I’m sure this is all just a big trick being played on consumers by Microsoft Studios and Certain Affinity to get folks in for an appetizer and then staying for dinner. To add even more words to the mix, if one purchased all Summer of Arcade games this year–Bastion, From Dust, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Fruit Ninja Kinect, and Toy Soldiers: Cold War–then one definitely got a free–and full–version of Crimson Alliance.

So, I downloaded this free game as a storm began brewing outside. Rain and lightning and rumbling thunder. Wonderfully atmospheric gaming sounds, so long as the power doesn’t cut out. Upon starting up, I was given the choice of one of three characters: the mercenary Gnox, the wizard Direwolf, and the assassin Moonshade. I went with her, and the game informed me that if I wanted access to all things Moonshade, I’d have to buy her. See, you can either buy the game completely, purchase classes individually, or, uh, play the free version with little to no fanfare to speak of. And it seems like you can play about the entire first level, a little bit of a shop, and a smidgen into the second level before being booted back to the main menu. The game constantly reminds you that, hey, you can unlock the full game if you want, just press here to do so. You want Achievements or better equipment or the nudity code? Unlock full version here.

Speaking of Achievements, for some reason, I now have Crimson Alliance added to my list of owned games. This means I can look at the list of 12 Achievements, something you don’t get to do with game demos, and see what there is to unlock. However, can’t unlock anything. Gotta upgrade for that sweetness. Which leaves me no choice but to delete the game from my hard-drive and hopefully permanently remove it from my owned games list. Cause I’m not interested in owning it, and that’s mainly because it’s more Gauntlet than Torchlight, and I’m all about the loot over social beatdowns. There’s less focus on loot and RPG elements here and more on slashing at waves of enemies and solving room puzzles with a partner.

That said, the game has some striking still art, strong narration, and an easy-to-get-into feel. Just a lack of crazy cool gear. Not for me, but your mileage may vary.

Mafia II is all about the money

I understand the concept of money as a motivator. It’s what fuels a majority of life, from food to gas to bills to pleasure. You can buy everything but love with it, if songs are to be trusted. But for me, within the context of videogames, it’s not enough to warrant doing horrible, atrocious acts of violence. I mean, it’s not like real money is being printed out of the Xbox 360’s disc tray; this is digital money to purchase digital things, and while I don’t mind doing miscellaneous tasks like writing fake blog posts or trimming Tara‘s bush in The Sims Social for some Simoleons, stealing cars and murdering those in wrong place at the wrong time for, um, $300 is not what I’d call justifiable. Unfortunately, all Mafia II has as a motivator is money.

Vito Scalleta is a war hero–that’s according to his childhood friend Joe, a crook and crooked man that eventually gets our young leading lad mixed up with the mafia. It starts out innocently enough, with Vito returning from World War II to snow and Christmas songs and the bad news that his sister and mother are still trying to pay off his father’s debt. Vito immediately wants to help, which shows off his good quality, but he’s willing to simply murder men trying to stop him from carjacking their ride, which shows off his videogamey quality.

I’ve only completed chapters one, two, and three so far, having started chapter four at this point. Vito is now tasked with sneaking into an office building and stealing gas stamps, and he’ll be rewarded better if he goes undetected. My kind of mission actually despite all my latest stealth failings with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. However, those first two chapters did not leave me excited about how Vito will grow as a character; basically, at this point, I’m writing him off as yet another Niko; oh hey, look at that, their names are similar too.

In chapter three, after meeting with the man that Vito’s father owes a ton of money, Vito was given the job to move some crates on to the back of a truck. For $10, which, I dunno, in the late 1940s, could probably get you a lot of thingies. Bread, milk, a porno mag. You go up to the crates, press X to pick one up, walk it over to the truck, press X to put it down, and repeat the process all over again. Mundane, but that’s how a lot of grunt work is, and while there were probably something like 4o to 50 crates, I was willing to carry them all back and forth because a job is a job, and I’ve always done whatever job I’ve been given. Vito, however, was not having it, complaining with each crate until he simply refused to carry any more; I was given the false decision to leave when he’d had enough, and with nothing else to do, I had to play into the role of Vito, who was not interested in doing what he dubbed “slave labor” for a measly $10. For shame, man. However, beating the crap out of warehouse employees not willing to chip in for a mandatory haircut collection is more wholesome work, mostly because it pays better. Sigh…

Fantastic tunes on the radio though. More games need this much Dean Martin love. And there’s a great attention to detail here, with the city looking very much alive, just like L.A. Noire. But at least that game had a likable main character, one with a soul, as flawed as it became. Here, with have Vito, who will do anything it takes to make money. Again, these sorts of people do exist, but they aren’t fun to roleplay as there is only one path to follow. Heed the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.”

For a nameless story, Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 – From the Abyss is quite a mouthful

I think I’m losing my mind. Also, not sure if the above screenshot is correct for the game I’m going to be talking about, but whatever–mind lost, deal with it. The house Tara and I just moved into over the weekend is still without power, with a guesstimate of maybe coming back on some time over the next five days; the basement is no longer flooded and it seems like those deadly branches have stopped falling from the sky, but we’ve yet to get back there and truly start living. I’m without all my comforts, my staples, my coffee pot–my console gaming systems. Yeah, no Deus Ex: Human Revolution yet. And trust me, I’m grateful for having a place to stay at Tara’s parents’ house, but time is moving forward, and all I want to do is get back to the house. Snargle-dargle-blargle.

Last night, while waiting to go out for Tara’s birthday dinner, I hopped online to the 3DS eShop to see if there was any new info about the forthcoming Ambassador NES games. There wasn’t. However, I did notice an irksome $3.67 in my account, which is not enough to get a big name game, but definitely enough for an indie thing or a calculator or one of those grouped under the $1.99 category. Remember, these downloads still get taxed after you select to purchase ’em. And something about Anonymous Notes Chapter 1 – From the Abyss caught my eyes, most certainly not its title. I’m guessing its look, which evokes that charming, 16-bit era of dungeon crawlers of yesteryear like Children of Mana and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. You kill monsters, get better equipment, and protect your hometown–that kind of experience.

So far, I’ve hacked and slashed some a whole lot of monsters, gathered some items into my inventory, got killed, and lost all of my items. Wee! It’s hard to tell if this is its own game, or just like a snippet plucked from the full DS retail release, just called From the Abyss. Disappointingly, I haven’t found a single anonymous note. The plot involves a guy conveniently named Raid meeting up with a girl named…Helen and then fighting down screen after screen of monsters and trying to destroy the monster boss to keep the lands safe and sound. Rinse and repeat. You can absorb abilities from monsters too, maybe just like in the wonderful Brave Fencer Musashi, but I haven’t really gotten the hang of it yet. As this is merely a single chapter in a longer story, I’m not expecting much, but then again, the game cost just about as much as my morning cup of hazelnut coffee (cream and sugar), and satisfied me for long enough. We’ll see if I keep grinding. Probably not considering tomorrow I’m getting 10 free NES games for my Nintendo 3DS. That’s all well and good, but I really just want to go home.

About time I got my slime on with Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker

I finally got to play a bit of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker last night despite purchasing the game a couple weeks ago. That seems to happen a lot with Nintendo DS titles for me. I buy them…and then don’t play them for a bit. I think it’s because I’m less excited to play my portable gaming device when in my own home, as I consider it more of a traveling thing, a road-side companion, a portal that helps pass time. Also, DQM: J was an impulse buy, something I picked up while waiting for Bullet to get an oil change; it’s not like I’ve been dying to try it out, just figured it would be interesting to see how it compared against its forefather, the mighty Pokémon franchise.

From what I’ve seen so far, there’s more visible depth in DQM: J than, say, Pokémon White. The key word is visible. We’ve all heard about the crazy amount of stats and breeding spreadsheets and EV madness and so on for those pocket monsters, but a good majority of that is behind the curtain. You have to go online and read. For DQM: J, it’s all right there. Stats, weapons, learning abilities, and what’s next for your mischievous mole or platypunk. There’s even a monster synthesis option, allowing you to fuse two monsters together in hopes of creating a better fighter. I like that, even if there’s not much I can do yet with my two-monster team. Hopefully things really open up after Infant Isle, and I can focus on grinding my team into something truly monstrous.

Also, while I love the classic sounds and elements from many of the Dragon Quest games…do they constantly need to get reused over and over? Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Dragon Quest IX, Dragon Quest Wars, this –they all sound exactly the same. Granted, catchy tunes and soundbits, but not after the eightieth time. Save for the level up tune. That one always warms my cockles.

Anyways, I took notes of my first half-hour playing DQM: J. You’ll be able to read what kind of crazy adventures I got into with our young monster trainer Hodor over at The First Hour. Um , soonish. Just gotta, uh, type up my hand-written notes–scribbles, truly–and clean up the review. Not to get too spoilery, but the last two minutes are basically me channeling Darth Vader. Yup. Until then, goo luck scouting those slimes!

Witness that I am intrigued over Jonathan Blow’s The Witness

Great, truly unique puzzles are hard to come by these days. We’ve seemingly done everything across a myriad of videogames spanning the past, present, and future: move blocks, match colored gems, flip switches, use portals to our advantage, bend time,  and so on. I thought the cloning and time-heavy puzzles in The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom were fantastic, excruciatingly tricky and humbling. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge had a few brain-twisters, too. But other than that, it’s all been pretty ho-hum, and yes, I’ve not yet played Braid, but do plan to soon.

And so with that said, I’m pretty excited about The Witness, Jonathan Blow’s next game after Braid, and I’ve barely seen much of it in action, just read several lengthy, praising articles over the last couple of days about the stuck-on-an-island puzzler. Which is all about discovery, and listening, and looking–and seeing. Seeing is solving.

The Witness has a Myst feel to it, playing from a first-person perspective and exploring a lush, but isolated and empty island. Why is it people-less? Who are you, anyways? What’s with all the tech? Questions, quizzical uncertainties, a pristine and thriving locale void of human life…only one way to figure it all out, and that’s to go exploring, picking up recordings for deeper insight. There are blue computer screens littered across the island, and they all seem to be connected to a door; to open the door, a player must draw a line from point A to point B, and that sounds simple, but it seems like the kind of thing that can grow dangerously difficult over time. Some of the answers for the line are actually found by looking around at the island; that group of trees, perhaps, with their weird-looking branches; that bird chirping overhead, chirping high then low then high again; these are not just bits of nature, they are answers. Seeing is solving.

It sounds fantastic. However, if I’m truly going to love The Witness, I’m going to have to stop reading about it, as I don’t want to know all the puzzle solutions long and before it even comes out. The lesser known, the better.

And here’s some lo-fi video footage of the game in motion:

Bouncing around the cosmos with Osmos

I think it’s safe to assume that I’m going to be talking about many of the indie games I’ve recently added to my collection over the last week or so. It started with just five darlings from Humble Indie Bundle 3, but that list quickly expanded as bonus games were added to the collection, including everything from a former bundle, one that I missed out on when it released in December 2010. Let’s just make things simple and list ’em all, okay? Okay, good. Glad to hear you’re a fan of lists, too. Ka-ka-kaboom:

• And Yet It Moves
• Atom Zombie Smasher
• Braid
• Cogs
• Cortex Command
• Crayon Physics Deluxe
• Hammerfight
• Machinarium
• Minecraft (free for a limited time)
• Osmos
• Revenge of the Titans
• Steel Storm
• VVVVVV

Yes, I put them in alphabetical order. You wanna make something of it?

Anyways…thirteen games. Probably half don’t work on my crappy Macbook. I dunno. I haven’t spent too long trying to see. I do know that Atom Zombie Smasher, Cogs, and Crayon Physics Deluxe definitely don’t work. Will have to try others later. I really really really hope Braid plays as it’s something I’ve been interested in for a long while, having heard it’s a great puzzler and a great story.

One game that does work on Mac OS 10.5.8–and plays extremely well–is Osmos. It’s an ambient strategy game set in outer space, giving the player control of a tiny mote which is trying to grow bigger by absorbing larger motes. You do this by bouncing/pushing the mote across the galaxy; however, moving the mote makes it lose some of its shape, getting smaller and smaller, making each click vital to its very survival. You better be hoping you’re moving towards another mote you can absorb, otherwise it’s best to just restart the level. As Isaac Newton would say, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This actually leads to a surprising amount of strategy.

Oftentimes, strategy can equal stress. You plan and plan and plan–and then everything goes wrong, leading to last-minute decisions to save your skin or keep things together. I didn’t really find that to be the case with Osmos though. It’s actually quite hard to plan ahead; the level starts, you see a mote nearby, try to click over to it, and then watch as it is absorbed by an enemy mote, turning it red, turning it deadly. You have two options: try to click away or just charge head-on, meeting death, which is the quickest way to restart the level. Other levels require you to be big enough to absorb a specific mote or chase down this one mote that is constantly avoiding you. Can get quite challenging, but even after failing like seven times in a row, I was having fun, learning, and just enjoying the all-around chill vibe the game’s soundtrack evokes.

I especially like zooming out using the mouse-wheel. Really gives off a great sense of size and wonder, and strengthens the idea that we’re all just tiny motes in a vastness, desperate to get bigger, hungry to get big.

Have only done the first few levels, having gotten to the point where I can decide my mote’s path. Looking forward to more Osmos, especially after chatty titles like Bastion, horrible vehicle sequences in Half-Life 2, or simply pure boredom on my Nintendo 3DS.