A slow, torturous train ride to nowhere in Sepulchre

If you know the definition of sepulchre, then you know how Sepulchre will play out after its first few opening moments. Regardless of that, it’s still an effective and enjoyable slice of old-fashioned horror, a playable short story that is all about tension and creating an unsettling atmosphere rather than having you run from some ghoulish monster, your heavy breathing the only soundtrack to carry you to some kind of momentary safety. It’s a slow, torturous ride, and  greater for it.

The story is as follows: you play as Dr. Harold Lang, a short-tempered museum curator low on primary memory aboard a moving train on its way to Augur Peak Island. He’d like some food and a drink before reaching his destination, and so he leaves his book and room, off on a mighty quest, only to discover that things–and people–are not exactly right on this train. It’s very hard to say much more without spoiling what unfolds, but let’s just say that you’ll talk to some characters, specifically a bartender and an attendant named Don, solve a few straightforward puzzles, and grow worrisome as the truth becomes clearer with each click of your mouse.

I’ve read elsewhere that the amateurish voice acting lessened the experience in Sepulchre; for me, it was just the opposite. Plus, I’m a sucker for anyone–or anything–with a Scottish accent. Sure, the bartender’s audio was noticeably lower than Lang’s, and there’s an airiness to everything spoken, but I felt that helped build immersion. When you learn the game-ending twist, the tinny voice recordings and distant feeling throughout maybe makes more sense. I also liked how naturally everyone spoke; it never came across as actors reading lines from a script, especially Don and Lang who, occasionally, had to talk to himself, to work things out. Yes, even Ben Chandler’s performance as the mumbling Grub is worth appreciating.

However, I will admit that Sepulchre does have some problems. Due to the limited number of screens making up the train Lang is stuck on, there’s a lot of walking from one side back to the other. It can feel a little tedious. The sound effect that plays when going to your inventory is a very loud thunk and was jarring each and every time I popped in there to see what Lang was holding. Some elements are maybe a bit too vague, such as the main painting and the name Lang says at the very end. Also: didn’t get whatever joke was hiding behind the “huge bags” though they were effectively creepy.

For awhile there, I thought there was going to be some strong revelation based around… dogs. The theme is pretty prominent–the bartender, after Dr. Lang gets verbally upset, tells him to let it out like “a good little puppy”; you find origami dogs in one passenger cart and give it to Grub, admitting it is not exactly man’s best friend, but should do just fine; there’s also a non-interactive painting on the wall of what looks like a small dog. Alas, nothing came of all this, but it was something I noticed nonetheless.

Sepulchre comes from Owl Cave and is written by Ashton Raze (Richard & Alice), with artwork by point-and-click connoisseur Ben Chandler (upcoming The Blackwell Epiphany and ^_^). You can play for totally zero dollars by downloading it from Owl Cave’s website, but you can also pick up a special edition for $2.99, which includes the soundtrack and some other extras. If you have a half hour to kill and want to lose yourself on an unnerving train ride, I highly recommend taking this short, but puzzling trip.

Having trouble surveying the score in Grand Theft Auto V

I slip back into Grand Theft Auto V every now and then to drive around aimlessly, look at a few jokey billboards and websites on the game’s internal Internet, and do a main story mission or, at the very least, a random event. Truthfully, I’m always on the lookout for a new Strangers and Freaks mission, really zany one-offs, but they seem few and far between these days, especially since I’m maybe now halfway through the story. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell without looking up online and spoiling myself percentage-wise, so we’ll just pretend like I know what I’m talking about and say that GTA V‘s glass is currently half empty. Or half full. Whatever.

As much as I hate glitches, especially ones that bring a gaming session to a halt, such as Half-Life 2‘s Nova Prospekt level and the randomly spawning Alpha Male Deathclaw in Fallout: New Vegas, I still do find them fascinating pieces of broken tech and marvel at what they can do to a system, both visibly and behind the scenes. So far, throughout my decent amount of time with Grand Theft Auto V, I’ve not come across many, and if I did, they were pretty minor stuff, like a pedestrian getting caught in a walking animation against a wall or being unable to switch characters for seemingly no good reason. Nothing game-breaking, and so I continued to carry on, little by little. Please note that I’m not including my troublesome time in the early days of Grand Theft Auto Online in this analysis, which was a hot mess of server problems, but also some strange connectivity glitches.

While Giant Bomb streamed for 48 hours over the weekend to raise money for Extra Life, I tried to do my part at home as well, staying up with them and playing some games. Granted, I didn’t last terribly long, but I tried to keep things fresh, jumping between my Nintendo 3DS, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Ni no Kuni, and, our topic du jour, Grand Theft Auto V. I haven’t really played in a couple of weeks from the look of things, and as far as I can tell, the next main story mission is called “Surveying the Score,” which involves all three of our colorful characters–Trevor, Franklin, and Michael. It’s basically a reconnaissance mission, there for the characters to observe their next target, the Union Depository, and plan how to strike it based on the number of guards they see and its alarm system. That’s all well and good, but I can’t seem to start the mission, and the one time I did, my game glitched hard, with Franklin literally standing inside the car, unable to leave, unable to switch out over to Trevor or Michael.

Basically, you have to go to the Vanilla Unicorn, which Trevor owns, and find him in the back office to kick things off. However, something is seriously wrong in my game. The outside door that supposedly leads directly to the back office is locked, and I don’t think that’s right. If you try to go through the strip club, body guards will chance you when you cross into the back room area, and they shoot to kill. I died three times trying attempting this, but was once able to reach Trevor’s office to begin “Surveying the Score”–with body guards still in tow. I think that had a serious effect on the mission going forward, the system confusing itself, which led to Franklin stuck in the car, kind of clipping out of it, but unable to do much else. Grrr.

I turned on the DownloadStation 3 this morning to snatch up my free copy of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen and noticed that there was a new patch available for Grand Theft Auto V. Alas, I think that’s mostly for Grand Theft Auto Online stuff, but maybe there’s a Vanilla Unicorn fix in there, too. We’ll see. I’ll keep playing until I run out of other missions on the map to do, and then I’ll try again; if I can’t get through Trevor’s strip club unscathed, I guess my dream of completing a GTA game for the very first time ever will come to a sad, but inevitable conclusion.

Persist, a backwards platformer with spirit

First you lose your arms, stripping away your ability to swim. Next, the Goddess takes your legs, leaving you as a simple head, only able to roll left or right, deeper down into a dark abyss. And she doesn’t stop there either, relishing in your torture. Persist is a backwards kind of platformer; basically, the further you get, the more standard abilities you lose, reducing you down to nearly nothing, and as the story plays out, it sort of makes some sense why such a being would do this. Don’t be deceived by the game’s retro look and minimalist gameplay–it was designed that way for a reason, and it is totally worth playing.

Again, Persist follows the story of a lone spirit, trying to reach a mysterious Goddess to ask for forgiveness for his past sins so he can ascend to the higher plane of existence. Unfortunately, this Goddess really resents him, which becomes somewhat clearer by the end, and constantly puts him into increasingly dangerous situations, both as a test and a bit of torture. This game was created in just under 48 hours by @AdventIslands for Ludum Dare 26, wherein the theme was minimalism. A couple of other games to come out of that jam that I talked about here on Grinding Down were TOOM and Gods Will Be Watching. It’s absolutely awesome how much can be crafted from the idea of “how little,” and I suspect I’ll keep finding little gems from this jam as time marches on.

For those interested, I played a bit of Persist in my new speculative YouTube adventure called Paul Plays…, and you can check out my lackluster jumping skills in the video below:

 

I did immediately keep playing after the video ends, as there were only two sections left to complete, the one where you’re just a detached head and another that I won’t spoil here. They are very enjoyable and more puzzle-based than everything before it, which is more classic platforming of the Mario kind. The story comes to a head immediately after the last level, and it takes a surprising turn, but it really could have been something more if the writing was stronger and more effectively narrated throughout. I understand that there was a time limit to abide by, but I’d love to have seen a few more levels added or lengthened to stretch Persist out, especially when you’re just a head, as figuring out how to time your rolls from platform to platform was a lot of fun. The small amount of music in the game is quite good; not loud enough to be distracting, but soft enough to jump against, and helps create a rather somber ambiance, which is quite fitting once you learn what the spirit did.

Either way, give Persist a play, and do it sooner than later or else the Goddess might take away your hands, and you’ll have to give up gaming entirely.

Batman vs. The Joker and an army of ventilation gates

As you probably already know from the previous post, I beat Batman: Arkham Asylum over the weekend. It was really enjoyable and constantly full of stuff to do, even if there’s a few aspects of it that I found bothersome–more on that in a bit–and if someone had simply told me it was more or less Super Metroid plus Deus Ex: Human Revolution sooner, I would not be as late as I am to this crazy shindig. But whatevs, I did it. Not like I’m opposed to catching up on older games. But truthfully, I think I’m now good with Batman for a bit, not feeling the need to bat-glide right over to Arkham City or Arkham Origins. Though maybe that 3DS game has potential…

At the time of kicking The Joker’s clownish ass back behind bars and completing the game proper, my final stats were as follows:

• Challenges – 2%
• Riddles – 142/240
• Upgrades – 18/20
• Character Bios – 31/42
• Completed – 73%

Not bad, not bad. But could be better overall. I’ve since gone back and upped all of those stats, now sitting at an 85% completion rate, with everything in the main campaign found, unlocked, and listened to. Whoop whoop, go moi. However, that means, in order to earn the remaining 15%, I have to not only finish all the challenges, which come in two forms, but also do them perfectly for all their medals. Which seems extremely difficult. In the Combat challenges, you fight against four rounds of enemies and earn points by combo-chaining attacks together, never getting hit, and using a ton of variety. In Silent Predator, you are tasked with taking out a group of enemies in a room from the main game itself, with three specific tasks to accomplish along the way. There’s a handful of each of these, and the difficulty between one and another appears to ramp up dramatically. I’ve tried a few and done simply mediocre on ’em, so I can officially wave goodbye to a 100% completion rate.

What I’m really here to talk about is how much you are required to mash the X button in Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s ridiculous. For all his brawn and muscles and high technology, Batman still has to mash on the X button to pull open/kick out ventilation shafts, rip down glass walls, and topple The Joker off a ledge multiple times during the final fight. That latter reason, I get–truly. But everything else feels unnecessary and is quite tiring, especially when you use the upgraded Batclaw to rip open glass walls from afar, which seem to take more button presses than anything else. Throw in the notion that you’re also, sort of, mashing X a lot during combat to dodge out of the way, and well…that button is getting some seriously loving. I’m not generally opposed to these kind of mini-mash QTE festivals, but Batman uses vents a lot, certainly more than doors, and I don’t understand why it couldn’t have been a simple single button press to open the vent. Is it more interactive? Sure, but it’s badly designed and does not make me feel like a badass superhero.

If you’d like to really stave off any sliver of interest to see how Arkham City and Arkham Origins play out, just let me know if this mechanic is still there. If so, I’ll pass on the mash.

GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH: Star Ocean: The Second Story

Somewhere in one of the various W.B. Mason boxes I got stacked around the house are a bunch of Prima videogame strategy guides from the PlayStation 1 era that I just couldn’t bring myself to sell at a yard sale or toss. Also, I haven’t bought a gaming guide since my teenage days, mostly because…well, the Internet. Though I still occasionally glance at them in stores and could probably see myself picking up some of the ones for my favorite games, like Fallout 3, for collecting purposes only, but I’d rather buy the game itself, play until I can’t, and look up a walkthrough online to help me past that roadblock. I mention all of this because I know, without a doubt, that I still have my guide for Star Ocean: The Second Story, though I definitely no longer have the game itself.

And Star Ocean: The Second Story was a pretty cool RPG, one that sticks out in my mind mostly for making the extra effort to bring its towns to life by giving each and every shop a unique name. For example, there’s The Hopping Penguin, Red Dragon Manor, Munchies, Counterpunch, Budabing Budaboom, Salesman in the Snow, Pellen Nor, The Grasping Hand, and so on. One would later see the same attention to world-building in games like Radiata Stories (not a surprise, since it is another tri-Ace joint) and  Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I vaguely remember the combat being chaotic and hard to follow, the pacing a bit off and super slow in the early hours, and the strangeness that was battle sound clips being saved to the Memory Card for later listening, but whatever. Every store felt real, blueprints, employee schedules, and all, because once you give something a name, it exists more than ever before, which is why children living on farms should never grow attached to pigs. No more generic nameless store selling the same wares as the generic nameless store three towns over; truly, it was refreshing.

The story, as far as I remember, goes like this: Claude C. Kenny and Rena Lanford, a young girl living on the planet Expel, are destined to meet. After being officially made an Ensign in the Earth Federation, Claude is given his first mission under his father’s supervision, which is to survey the planet Milocinia, where a mysterious energy field appears. Claude quickly discovers a mysterious device and, despite being told to stay away, examines it more closely. Unfortunately, something happens, and he’s teleported to Expel. Here, Claude meets Rena, who mistakes him for the legendary “Hero of Light.”  She takes him back to her village, Arlia, to confer with others about what to do next. That’s all I really remember story-wise, though the two eventually leave Arlia to go to some big, fancy city called Cross, and along the way add others to their party in the search for answers and a way to get Claude back home.

What’s pretty neat in Star Ocean: The Second Story is that players have the choice of controlling Rena or Claude, and the journey will evolve differently depending on certain choices each character makes.  Another mechanic I’m fond of was “Private Actions,” which allowed the player to influence relations between the cast of characters. Basically, during one of these moments, the party temporarily splits up when visiting a town, each character going their own way to shop, visit friends and family, or otherwise relax. Pretty similar to Final Fantasy IX‘s “Active Time Events,” really–which I loved. Claude or Rena can then interact with their friends, generally leading to actions that will either get these people to like them more or less. This can have a major effect in battle—if Claude’s new best friend falls, he can receive a major combat bonus for a short time—but also determines what ending the player will see. Evidently, there are over 80 possible endings–take that, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.

Unfortunately, not all shimmered and shined, and I absolutely hated the game’s combat. Which, for an RPG, is a big slice of its pie. Chalk it up as one of my least favorite battle systems ever right next to Unlimited SaGa‘s wheel of chance, and you can mostly blame badly AI-controlled party members for all the heartache. Combat can be played on three settings–Standard, Semi-active, or Full-Active. You can customize your party members to fight in a specific manner, but can’t really do much else after that except pray they heal when they need to heal and they attack when the moment is right. This may or may not happen–it was always hard to see battles unfolding, as their chaotic nature took over, with a dozen actions happening at once, and you left running around like a headless chicken.

Also, apparently there was a whole item creation and skill system–you could become a baker!–brimming with options and customization that I simply can’t remember anything about. But knowing what I later experienced in games like Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest IX, I know I’d absolutely eat that stuff up these days. I mean, really–who doesn’t love taking one thing, adding it to another, and walking away with something greater than the sum of its parts? Nobody–that’s who.

Star Ocean: The Second Story is most definitely a “game I regret trading in,” so if you have an extra copy laying around collecting dust, please think of me. I will gladly take it off your hands, at least to visit some of those named shops that, in my mind, are still operating today, having sales and events and being real.

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GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH is a regular feature here at Grinding Down where I reminisce about videogames I either sold or traded in when I was young and dumb. To read up on other games I parted with, follow the tag.

The Half-hour Hitbox: October 2013

I can’t believe we’re already on the third iteration of this passably new Grinding Down feature, which, in retrospect, I should have put together years ago. The months surely do seem to be flying away, but even that won’t stop me from writing a wee bit about the handful of games I got to play a wee bit of in the last thirty or so days. Again, this is probably not everything, just the ones that stick out like bright red sticks in the mud, and I solemnly swear to return to several of these at some point. Heck, I might even still be playing a few of them right now. Besides, I always seem to get a lot of gaming done during the Thanksgiving break, as I rarely go out shopping, preferring to spend those chilly days warm inside, hands on a controller, eyes somewhere far away. Which is all just to say that appearing on the Hitbox does not mean you’re a one-hit wonder, destined for forgetting.

Okay. Here’s October, in a nutshell.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Many moons ago, on the Xbox 360, I downloaded and played the huge demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I swear it was around 2 GBs or something near that. Anyways, I found it an okay experience, with the bright, fantasy-ready colors being my favorite part of the standard action RPG fare. However, it suffered from tiny text syndrome, which made the lackluster dialogue and subsequent dialogue trees even harder to endure. A shame, as I am always mildly interested in big, epic RPGs, the kind that hold more than enough to keep one busy for a few months. Thankfully, this month, the game was given out for free to PlayStation Plus subscribers, and so I got to try again, and the tiny text is no longer a problem. However, I have only played a sliver further than I did in the demo, and I just can’t commit to it right now.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

A puzzle game with a surprising amount of attention spent on story and characters. The actual puzzle part revolves around grid-based battles, wherein you have to move units around to create super units to deal damage and protect yourself. It’s easier seen than described, and I thought I was doing well with it, but the difficulty ramps up dramatically fast after the first chapter, leaving little room for error. Might & Magic certainly has a lot of style, but its hooks aren’t very deep in me; I also tried battling online and got my tush handed to me by, what definitely sounded like, two little boys.

Tetris Blitz

Another free game on my Windows 8 phone. It’s Tetris on speed. Speedy Tetris. Speed the Movie: Tetrisication. Whatever you want to call it. Basically, you have two minutes to clear out as many rows as possible and score big. This is helped immensely with power-ups. Of course, since it is a free-to-play title, there’s microtransactions and ads for them everywhere, and it seems sort of hard to get a really high score without paying a little money for those killer power-ups, which are quite expensive if you are attempting to pay for them with the in-game currency. Meh, that’s not me. But it’s a decent two minute killer, and who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and score over 200,000 points all by my lonesome one day. Stay tuned for that…

Halo 3

Another month, another Halo game tried. This time, it’s Halo 3, given to us petty Gold members for free from the Microsoft overlords, and I played the first two levels on whatever the default difficulty is–and it went all right. Not really following the story much, since I never played anything in the series before it, but Master Chief is found on some planet, told to go forward and shoot aliens, and, well…there you go. Died a bunch of times, actually, as I don’t yet have a grip on the combat. And at some point, Tara came over and said, “You’re playing this again?” She thought it was Borderlands 2. Not sure what to make of that.

Poker Night 2

Already wrote a bit about how bad technically Poker Night 2 is, and I’ve not really gone back into it since then. Sorry, Brock and Claptrap–not your collective fault. Though now I am tempted to at least check out some of those Sam & Max games I have on Steam…

Dead Island

There’s a good amount to like about Dead Island, but I just can’t get over its breakable weapons. Now, for starters, I’m actually okay with weapons having durability and such; in fact, some of my favorite games, like Fallout: New Vegas and Dark Cloud 2, have you constantly repairing your gear to ensure you are in tip-top shape. However, on this island of living dead things, your weapons break fast, and you can only carry so many with you, which left me a number of times empty-handed and surrounded by enemies. Not an enjoyable system, especially when you can still lose a weapon you spent a lot of money on improving and upgrading. I get that it’s more realistic, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Otherwise, it’s good, with plenty of side quests to keep you busy. Love the kick button and looting every suitcase I come across. Some of the voice acting and character models are sub-par, but the zombies are effective and varied. Also, I’m going to admit that it took me several tries to get a vehicle moving, as for the longest time I didn’t realize the steering wheel was on the other side. Oops!

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Despite my lackluster love for Batman as a superhero character, I’m quite enjoying my time exploring the inner (and outer) workings of Arkham Asylum in…um, Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s a mix of Super Metroid, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and the combat from the more recent Assassin’s Creed games, and it’s totally a blast. The attention to detail is perfect, and everything really gels with one another, from the Riddler stuff to the exploration and even the boss fights. Alas, of the bunch, this one seems like the best, so I’m trying to take my time with it.

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The Half-hour Hitbox is a new monthly feature for Grinding Down, covering a handful of videogames that I’ve only gotten to play for less than an hour so far. My hopes in doing this is to remind myself that I played a wee bit of these games at one time or another, and I should hop back into them, if I liked that first bite.

Pretty late to the Joker’s party in Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum came out in 2009 to nearly unanimous praise, and four years later, during a PSN summer sale, after consecutively not experiencing Rocksteady Studios’ take on the Dark Knight year after year after year after year, I bought it for a silky smooth $5.00. And then a couple months later, simply because everyone was getting back to praising the place where it all began after seeing how lackluster Batman: Arkham Origins turned out to be, I installed the game, booted it up, and saw the errors of my ways over these past few years. It’s more or less Deus Ex: The Bats Revolution.

First things first, the story setup: in Arkham Asylum, the Joker instigates an elaborate plot to seize control of Arkham Asylum and trap Batman inside with many of his incarcerated foes. Subsequently, the Joker also holds the power to detonate hidden bombs he placed around Gotham City before getting himself captured. Batman must now fight his way through the asylum’s loose inmates, save some named people, and put an end to the Joker’s plans. He’ll do this by playing detective, being sneaky, hanging from gargoyles, and punching rhythmically when the scenario says so.

Before I get into my impressions, here’s a bunch of silly comics about Bats from my recently completed 365 BAD COMICS project:

Right. Couldn’t resist the chance to shamelessly plug my art.

Anyways, I’m having a lot of fun in Arkham Asylum, and I’m only at a 14% completion rate. This is even more surprising when you realize that, as a superhero comic book character, I don’t find Batman very interesting. Definitely more so than Superman, but that’s it. Everybody else comes ahead. I’m more of an X-Men follower, but Bruce Wayne is kind of just a rich man in a costume beating up poor criminals with fancy gadgets and a throaty voice. I’m sure I just made a lot of people angry with that statement. However, all his toys do make for fantastic gameplay, which is what this game delivers on tenfold.

Batman is trapped in Arkham Asylum, which is actually called the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane and found isolated just outside Gotham City. Has hints of Alcatraz prison. You’ll come across good guys and bad guys as you move from building to building, all while the Joker teases you from afar, promising a party you’ll never forget. It’s a mix of open-world-like areas and more linear hallways and rooms, and I think it works great. You can explore a bit and find interview audio logs and Riddler trophies or you can stick to the pretty obvious path to see the story unfold at a healthy clip. I’ve done a little bit of both, but I think I’ll just keep pushing the story forward from now on, even though those Riddler trophies sure are dang tempting and do at least reward Batman with a pinch of XP. And you need XP to unlock gadgets, combat moves, and armor upgrades.

Combat requires rhythm and reminds me of what the Assassin’s Creed series has been doing as of late, with countering attacks simply keeping the flow going so you can chain together attack after attack for bonus XP. Personally, I’ve tried getting through most scenarios as a silent pounder, loving the inverted takedowns from gargoyles. But unfortunately, you can’t play the game the whole way in that fashion, especially when boss fights pop up. Detective Mode really helps, which makes enemies appear as visible skeletal frames on the map, so you know exactly where everyone is. Reminds me warmly of the good times in Deus Ex: Human Revolution–see: not the boss fights–of sneaking through vents and using the augmentation that lets you look through walls for enemies.

So call me surprised. Call me stupid. I wish I had started playing Arkham Asylum a long time ago, but I’m pretty okay with seeing it now and enjoying a slower pace through the halls of this creepy psychiatric hospital. I might be late as frak to the party, but I’m still celebrating.

Wake up or just keep dreaming in Deep Sleep

I apologize for being late to the party–though I’m always late to the party or never invited to begin with, cue the industry standard wah wah waaaaah sound effect–but I’ve just discovered this Game Jolt website, which is full of free-to-play Flash and downloadable games, spanning all the genre categories we’ve come to embrace over the decades, such as action, adventure, platformer, and so on. Basically, it is stuffed with stuff, and I’m sure not everything is the height of excellence, but one will never know until they look. I already examined my fear of lakes with Lakeview Cabin, which I found to be really engaging despite the lack of a clear goal, and now I’m here to share with y’all the point-and-click spookiness that is Deep Sleep.

No surprise here, but the game is about lucid dreaming. That’s the rare phenomenon when a person becomes aware that they are dreaming, existing in a peculiar place between consciousness and not. I can’t really say I’ve experienced it myself, though I do occasionally have dreams where a bell or phone is making noise only to snap immediately out of it and realize my alarm clock is going off. Don’t think that’s the same thing, but the queer feeling taking over my body a second after all that goes down is still hard to shake. It’s not explicitly clear who you are playing as in scriptwelder’s adventure-horror game, but you have somehow gained consciousness within a nightmare and must find a way to wake up.

As a point-and-click adventure game, Deep Sleep works just fine. You move across various static screens and click on items to pick them up or receive a description. Some puzzles block your progress forward, but they’re designed logically, so you basically just have to think about how you would, in real life, open a very hot crank handle to a boiler. Oh, and there’s a wee bit of pixel hunting, as some screens are very dark before you get the flashlight, and even then you might miss some key detail nestled in the corner. I did finish the game without using all the items, so I’m not sure if I just missed the spot to use the piece of coal, golden statue, and hook or if they were superfluous to begin with.

As a horror game, Deep Sleep is pretty effective, though I found it more unnerving the entire way through than downright scary. The “you have to wake up” recording is exceptionally creepy, as is the monster design and unsafe feeling you get as it follows you from room to room. There’s some fantastic sound design, with locked doors still shaking me on the inside thanks to my recent journey through Silent 2‘s apartment complex hallways. The game has a grainy look to it, which actually works better than you might initially suspect. And like a dream, it is piecemeal and littered with gaps in its storytelling, as well as a dab of uncertain world-building, but that’s okay–that’s ultimately the point. It is meant to keep you guessing, a mix of the real and unreal.

It’s clear why Deep Sleep earned first place for the Casual Gameplay Design Competition #10. If the stars ever align, I hope to be able to show you, too. Evidently there’s already a sequel ready for me to play, called Deeper Sleep. I’ll probably check it out soon, or maybe I should hold out for Even More Deeper Sleep. Thank you, thank you–try the fish.

Not bluffing over Poker Night 2’s poor performance

Last month, I dipped my big toe into the videogaming poker pool with World Series of Poker: Full House Pro, which is basically a poker game captained by Avatars with some cosmetic-only items to earn to pretty up your table while you wait for other players to make their moves. It’s all right, though the camera is wonky and I found it quite easy to lose all my money in a single gulp, but maybe that latter part is my fault and not directly the game’s. I haven’t gone back since I first touched it because, well…poker. But also because it just wasn’t very exciting and actually a bit of a technical mess, freezing up on me a handful of times, enough to birth an audible groan.

Anyways, for October, PlayStation Plus was offering Poker Night 2 for free for subscribers, and I will literally snatch up anything on the DownloadStation 3 so long as the price on the store is crossed off and replaced by the word free and isn’t 145 GB big (sorry, Uncharted 3, not gonna happen–ever). I never touched the original Poker Night at the Inventory and–wait a second. Hold up, everybody. I just noticed something. Is the second game called Poker Night 2 or Poker Night at the Inventory 2? I am finding it written both ways rather consistently across the board on this strange, uncontrollable mass of data we call the Internet. Whatever, I’ll stick with the shorter title for posting purposes. Sometimes it really sucks being a copyeditor because you can’t unsee some things.

Poker Night 2 is both your standard poker game and not. Yes, you play a tournament of Texas Hold ‘Em (or Omaha) until you eliminate the other players or see yourself turning out empty pockets, and the rules remain the same. There are small blinds and betting and checking and folding and all that jazz. It’s who you play with that is strange and beautiful; these are not randomly created Avatars or even real players via online multiplayer. No, you are going head to head with Sam from the Sam & Max franchise, Brock Samson from The Venture Bros., Ash Williams from The Evil Dead franchise, and Claptrap from the Borderlands series. Oh, and Portal‘s GLaDOS takes a supporting role as the dealer and player insulter. It’s a bizarre group of guys (well, not counting Mad Moxxi as the bartender and GLaDOS), but that’s where the game gets interesting, watching them interact with each other. That feeling of just hanging out, shooting the shit, and playing some poker is nailed expertly here, and any time I got eliminated from a tournament, I selected to watch the rest play out instead of skipping to the next round, as I cannot get enough of Brock’s dry humor and Claptrap’s overzealous attitude.

But here’s a question: why is every product Telltale Games puts out glitchy as frak? Jurassic Park: The Game and The Walking Dead suffer from constant hitching and weird transitions from gameplay to loading screens. It doesn’t make sense to me, and you’d think a company like them, at this point down the line, would’ve figured it out. I mean, I’m no programmer, but from the outside looking in, Poker Night 2‘s engine does not look very taxing, and yet the game would constantly freeze for ten to fifteen seconds before a new conversation would start, which is long enough for me to consider powering down the PlayStation 3. This became a regular aspect of playing Telltale’s poker and now I’ve learned to live with it, but what a shame.

As you play and win, you can earn tokens, which can be spent on cosmetic items, like themed decks and table felts. I’ve unlocked all the Borderlands items so far, which not only change how things look, but also prompt some new dialogue from our gaggle of goofy guests. You can also buy drinks for everyone, which will loosen them up and help reveal their tells; I tried this, but I’m no better at telling when digital characters are lying–thanks, L.A. Noire–than I am at with real-life people. It’s definitely skill, one I will always lack.

But otherwise, Poker Night 2 is at least a more original poker game, standing heads above its competition, and I give Telltale credit for selecting zany as its main attribute and turning it up to 11. I’d certainly rather listen to these characters chit and chat than simply hear nothing at all or, perhaps worst, some generic, uninteresting music looping. I’ll probably play a few more rounds in hopes of unlocking some other themed items, but after that, there’s not much else to do here. I’ll walk away poorer than ever before, but rich with great stories.

The gloomiest night in Lakeview Cabin will wear on to a morning

In Lakeview Cabin, as a burly, orange mustached manly man, you can drink beer, get naked, and use an outhouse. You can also mow the lawn, chop some firewood, or hunt a deer for food. Docks on either side of a small, summer island let you take in the lake’s tranquility and contemplate skinny-dipping, which you ultimately can’t actually do, as hopping in the water just spits you right back out onto land. Boo to that. Birds and bugs provide a calm, predictable soundtrack one might expect to hear at such a place. Really, a faultless postcard-esque vacation spot–that is until the sun sets.

Controls are straightforward, mostly because this is a Flash game. You move around left to right with the arrow keys. Z picks up and drops items, while X uses an item or throws it if possible. From what I played and saw after about twenty or thirty minutes, there’s no story text or narration. You just do things until you can no longer do things, and sometimes you’ll die from walking into a bear trap twice, and other times a nightmarish monster–who I suspect is maybe our leading lumberjack’s dead wife or girlfriend–will hop out of the lake and finish the job. Then you press R to retry…or O to “summon her,” whatever that means. I was able to accomplish various tasks, like killing the deer after perfectly setting the bear trap down and then chasing the animal into it, but never defeating the monster. Oh well.

Lakeview Cabin begins more like a puzzle game than anything else. I spent my first day/night cycle just interacting with everything I could, seeing how I could use items I interacted worked with other items. Such as filling up a bucket with water or using the axe to cut a wire in half, exposing electric danger. I also frustratingly stared at items I couldn’t get, like a key and shotgun. Nothing is immediately clear, and only through experimentation and retrying will you progress, but that’s kind of the name of the genre. Do what you must to survive; do anything.

I find lake-based horror to be very effective. Maybe there was a moment from my childhood that I’m just not ready to deal with personally and publicly, but I find the isolation and restriction to be the most crippling aspect of the ordeal, the most traumatizing. Truth be told, I’d rather run from a monster in the woods or even a building, but on a small island you have nowhere to go but underwater. Over the years, I’ve read a good number of Stephen King books and short stories, but Bag of Bones has stuck with me the most, as it is based around an author with writer’s block sequestering himself at his vacation house on Dark Score Lake. The movie What Lies Beneath, which I saw in Las Vegas all by my lonesome as a young lad, has some very effective scenes set around a lakeside home. Also, you can see me writing about this fear of mine in “The Feet Eaters”, a short story  published back in…oh, January 2007. The page seems gone from the Aberrant Dreams website, so maybe I should get around to reprinting it on my own sooner than later. But yeah: horror and lakes. Much as I don’t want them to, they go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I think developer Roope Tamminen has made something special here and could totally see Lakeview Cabin being expanded a bit–perhaps add an inventory to allow for multiple items and maybe some text-based guidance here and there–and put on Steam in the future. That’d be cool, even if I probably never survive past the first night. It’s a funny horror for sure, and one that doesn’t say everything it’s doing, which makes it simultaneously unnerving. Laugh while you die, I guess.