Cryostasis - First Impressions

I saw that my occasional reviews gathered a bunch of interest so I figured I might make my blog about more than just my own game and art development... I want to show you, dear reader, some less known gems in the videogame world.

I recently picked up "Cryostasis" (tagline: sleep of reason) on steam and I would like to give you my first impressions and introduce this title to you:

Plot

Cryostasis takes place in 1981 on an Arktika class nuclear icebreaker called the North Wind near the North Pole. The main character, Alexander Nesterov, is a Russian meteorologist who was supposed to board the ship however he finds it's been shipwrecked since 1968 and its dead crewmen have undergone bizarre metamorphosis. Through the game the player finds fragments of Maxim Gorky's fairy tale The Flaming Heart of Danko, which parallels what happened to the ship and its crew.

The game follows a beautifully presented but confusing narration (at first)

The game can be considered a horror-shooter / adventure crossover even though it does not incorporate all the elements of these 2 genres. I did not come to any gunplay so far only late introduced melee combat which I found was surprisingly good. While playing, you really feel like you are alone in the arctic, nearly freezing to death and wrapped in heavy, uncomfortable gear and clothing. Movement is slow and it impacts the combat a lot. (you can adjust your punches and do combos with the WASD keys which is a nice touch too). In most videogames you are an overly agile "commando/ spec-ops" type character and in some horrorgames you are way too slow or not even able to defend yourself at all. This game finds the perfect middleground therefore you feel a lot more like you are a real person in an extreme situation.

I immediately fell in love with the grim athmosphere and the realistic feeling of this game. The visuals are somewhere in between really good and mediocre. This is an odd combination but not rare in indie/lower budget productions. While the shadereffects and lighting is excellent, a lot of rooms don't feel real and you often wonder what would be the actualy purpose of some locations. A few models have a really low polycount which baffels me because the developers added  so many visual effects that optimisation seemed to be their last thought...more about this in the full review though.

I need to mention right away: The ice effects look fantastic and since finding heatsources and keeping your body warm is a major gameplay element (sometimes a bit hard to take serious but innovative and well thought out) you activate a lot of generators to get lightsources and heatsources running so the frozen walls and objects around you start to defreeze resulting in a wonderful effect of water flowing from objects and dripping down. This shader effect looks stellar (which brings up the question...would being wet not dramatically decrease your possibility to stay alive in the colder areas?)

Lightbulbs don't work that way

In the above screenshot you raise your body temperature to a tremendously high level with nothing but a lightbulb... most of the time, you will find believable heatsources though.

Interactive cutscenes drive the story foreward...here we approach the "Northwind" on a dogslay

Now I'm going to talk about 2 elements I really like in this game.

PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR...

..is the genre which this game is a member of. (according to wikipedia). This game is from the ukraine and has the trademark elements of a game from eastern europe and russia : rust, paranormal themes in a realistic light and gritty athmosphere. You come across many corpses in this game blocking your past in some way (they where really creative here) and you travel in the past to control them and change their fate in order to clear a way for the protagonist in the present. You got that? Think you can handle that? It looks cool too:

 Not only do you jump back and forth in time and control different people you do also shift position and your surroundings fall apart and reassemble into something different aswell. You are in a warm room, suddenly a fucking guy comes in to kick your ass, then everything is frozen and then you are back in the warm room again. You do also have a ton of flashbacks to uncover the ships past. You dont get many explanations for this at first and trust me...its very interesting and seems really complex.

 If you are a western douchebag that has been brainwashed by mainstream science and clings to his 5 sense based, limited reality, you will not like or make much sense of this game... or anything else in life. But thats just jolly old me and my opinion. =:0]

Flashbacks are athmospheric and the voiceacting is good too

So, the game is not clichéed, feels like a videogame in this genre should feel and has an interesting story (so far).

PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR²

Something else I would like to adress are  the horror elements in this game. I already mentioned the combat and the reality-shifting...but the actual way enemies are introduced is great too. The first few creatures are your standart zombie-ish people but they do usually have a reason to be there or a cool build up moment.

This guy is going to shut the fucking door on you

The developers must have spent a lot of time in scripting all these flashbacks, moments and appearances...nothing feels as recycled as it often does in mainstream titels (yet) and enemies dont just spawn and attack you, they appear out of places where they could have dwelled before the player came along, climb up on something, rip apart a door etc. etc.
These do not feel forced and you dont get the fixed camera angles like in a lot of other titles that are having the motto "we scripted this scene so you are going to watch it, fucker!"

I'm on a boat in a boat... and this guy wants to join me!

The close combat system might feel a bit raw though...this game is in no way a perfect title.

Bring it on!

You also do your typical first person adventure routine... find keys, clues and solve valve puzzles...I hate valve puzzles.

I hate valvepuzzles...the pipe is also a good example for the strange lowpoly look....also: what is this room?

now this is a valvepuzzle I can get behind...its also how "valve" got its logo

In conclusion, Cryostasis is the kind of game I would make if I would have more skills, a team and even bigger balls. It does have its problems though...its not optimised at all. You might be wondering why its not as well known as "Amnesia" or the likes... well, you need some fucking alienware to run this thing. I have a high end, custom built machine and I cant run it on full settings without some lagspikes. I can only imagine how bad this game must suck on weaker systems (which the majority of the ... planet has)

Maybe the game will have more success in the future...when the high end of today becomes the garbage of tomorrow...until then, I enjoy this game.

'till next time!  (english is not my native language and feel free to keep every typo you find. no charge)

Outbreak : Review

Time for another Review!! This time its an indie zombie shooting game. Fucking creative, I know! :) Ever wondered why the big studios release so few zombie games while the undead are the maintheme in the indiescene whenever it comes to survival, arcade, action or fps? I really don't get it! I bet a zombiethemed call-of-duty-clone would sell like fucking I-Phones... a lot of the braindead kids already buy it only for the braindead nazizombies mode. Alright, the theme of the game isn't creative at all but the design and execution is intriguing as Data from Star-Trek would put it.

Outbreak is an FPSC based Top Down Shooter by Hockeykid and Kravenwolf. Now, for everyone who came to this webblog without knowing what any of this means...you must be lost. The Porn isn't here, sorry! But here's an explanation: FPSCreator is a tool designed to create first person shooters ergo: egoshooters for fun without coding. Creating a Top Down Shooter with this impressive visuals, an inventory system coherent spawning, ally AI and  more need scripting extras never seen before in an FPSC Game. Its so good, it received next to zero attention by its community... I don't even remotly understand this. Alpha Project, a rather generic Resident Evil inspried shooter... which is fucking impressive in the scripting and execution department but totally eats in the artistic realm gets quoted as one of the best FPSC games ever while this little gem gets completely overlooked. Probably because the gameplay is, at its core, fucking boring. (I get to that later... I'm going to be positive first)

THE GOOD

The effort

This game has been made for the "Defy the odds competition 2011" and I don't think it was intended to be a full length feature project but it turned out to be more than most other FPSC games. The sheer effort and skill put into making this happen is admirable and shows what a well organised team of coder and artist can do if they put some effort in their project. This game is a prime example of FPSC in good use and should be a monument to livingroom gamedevelopment. This game makes actual use of FPSC's scripting system aswell. No kidding! It actually uses it! (If you would play all FPSC games that get released like I do you would understand why I'm surprised... most people just put in stock entities, Jakes guns, Marcs Zombies and click build...if you are in this group. Well screw you!)

The visuals

Its a top down shooter so its a bit hard to judge the visuals but Kravenwolf did another outstanding job on them. Well, I have to point out a minor flaw here...its made by Kravenwolf so everything is held in blueish greytones. I like a coherent visual style but I'm not that crazy about the overly desaturated colorpallette. In fact, the only thing that seems to emit color are the lightsources which are creating a wonderfully believable cityambience btw. Its clearly the work of a skilled artist. I have to mention the use of shaders and effects is nearly perfect in this game. Nothing shines too much, nothing looks fake or too much like plastic. No dynamic object shines too bright and I didn't get annoyed by invisible enemies and the like. It all feels like forged out of one metal (if this metaphor exists in the english-speaking realm). This is a major problem I have with most other FPSC titles, including the more popular ones. They all have this feeling of a lot of incoherent media thrown in one map and done. This one really shines here.

THE BAD

The Gameplay

As creative and fresh the idea of a top down shooter in fpsc is...its not really a lot of fun. You just exterminate wave of zombies after wave of zombies while unlocking goodies in a pretty but confined space. (I'm really not crazy about the design of these greenish barriere planks)  Its the Nazizombies gameplay mechanic. Survive and unlock goodies to survive even more. You start off with some kind of teammate that dies somewhere down the road....and I guess you kill zombies then until you dont want to anymore. Aiming at them is a bit hard to do and I wasted quite some ammo trying to get a zombie from a distance. Some kind of lasersight would be cool. Dead Zombies also tend to block the way and can be an annoyance here and there... My major problem with this game is its simplicity despite all the effort.

More complaints

Lets sum this up in one categorie. While the game at its core is a wave based zombieslasher, its really not supposed to be that much fun. The entire approach has a serious, cold feel to it. The visual style not even included. The story (yes! it has a story) puts you in the shoes of "Kevin Arkely" to clear a city of infected targets. Your usual zombiebaloney but with this kind of game, a more lighthearted touch would be desirable. The dark approach gets underlined by a, what I think is, postgrunge theme that plays along after a while. All of this would have been much greater in a game with a larger scope. I would have liked this better if your charackter would be some homeless dude and your sidekick a hooker trying to survive the zombie apocalypse to a rocking tune. 

Yeah, I guess I got everything down I thought about this so far so now its time for a conclusion:

CONCLUSION

Outbreak is a damn fine, creative game that suffers from its monotony. I rate this thing a zombie out of ten...which is something along the lines of ... 7.5 // 10 on the fpsc scala. 5.0 // 10 on the general scala. I would love to see Hockeywolf and Kravenkid work on something with a larger scope...and maybe in first or third person. They made an awesome team on this and are far too talented for a nazizombies wave based game. Best luck to these two with their future projects!


So if you like wavebased games, zombies or just want to play a fresh indie title...

You can download the game here

You can keep all typos...no charge ;) Also: If you think any of this is offensive to you: blow me ;)

you guys have a great day and see you next time.

-Adrien

Review: // Wreckage

Welcome to another indie game review. This time its the crysis mod "Wreckage". I review stand-alone mods and total conversions aswell as I count them as Indie Games. (Just so you know)

"Wreckage offers an action-oriented presentation, professional execution, complete dubbing
and Crysis-level graphics. Developed by the four-man-team around Christopher Held, who
also already developed "The Harbour" and "Rainy Days".
It's the final chapter of the story, that began with the map "The Harbour" and was continued in the
modification "Rainy Days". It tells the story of three soldiers who try to survive a devastating war
between two worlds. The play time is somewhat longer than one hour."

Source: moddb

The game is visually impressive. Even compared to recent AAA releases

Its one of the rare times where a game description keeps its promises. The Mod is executed professional, despite its flaws which I will adress later on. It is completely dubbed and the visual effects and graphics are top-notch. However, the graphics aren't "exactly" on crysis-level as the developers of wreckage know how to map good looking indoor levels. ;)

So lets jump right in:

T H E   G O O D

The game drops you right into the action without a story narrative, a horribly paced cutscene, a text-intro or any of the other abominations mods like these often throw at you. This game puts you behind a minigun in a chopper after a short, wellmade character intro. You might notice that you will play the first part as "Nomad" (the protagonist from the original crysis). Thats actually an awesome design choice as you first experience the benefits of the nanosuit before the designers take it from you in part 2 and 3. Another noteworsy detail is that they really found a dubactor with a similar voice as the german "Nomad" (Which is an extremely similar or the same dubbing voice from the actor Nicolas Cage, one of my favorite actors.) This really shows how dedicated they where to deliver a great mod. You do however notice that this guy wasn't a professional voiceactor, but the campiness of the acting actually adds to the fun. Jacksoooon!!

 The first part is pretty good. It starts off with a wellmade "defend this position" task which has a nice warfare feel to it and then moves to "advance and shoot everyone in the face" gameplay. This is story driven, but its not my job to spoil everything :). I didn't like the first few levels that much. To this point it all feels like a solid crysis mod and not the blockbuster I was promised but after a while, in the shoes of Lambert, the game really starts to shine. Not only in terms of leveldesign, but also in terms of creativity, fun and presentation. There is a certain sence of dread in this game reflected from the ruined harbor, the lighting and the wreckage (pun intended) scattered around everywhere. The presentation feels a lot like a recent warmovie and everything appears perfectly grimy and in lowsaturated colors. You don't get realistic military behaviour but certainly a lot of combat-flair.

The game has a much stronger "army and crisis and stuff" feel to it than the actual crysis

The modders added a few custom weapons to the regular bunch which are actually well done. I adress a few problems with those later on but for now: The SMG comes with its own modkit. AWESOME! :)

Through the campaign, you see a bunch of cutscenes which are actually fantastic. I don't even want to know how many hours of scripting, remaking, practicing, testing and redoing everything went into these.
There is also a fun level where you, as Lambert, walk solo through a rainy level reciting semi-poetic lines. This level has a great campy feel to it. Especially since you show up with a sniper rifle behind that huge neonsign like in a stylish contract-killer flick. Lamberts voiceactor did a great job btw.

I noticed that the german gamesmag "Pc Games" concidered it necessary to point it out that you can use the nanosuit in this mod...I found it to be a superb design choice to drop it. :)

I can't say a lot more than already has been said everywhere else on the interwebs. Its a great mod with a damn nice presentation. So lets get into some criticism before I'm tired of this review:

T H E   B A D

While the voiceacting is cool and a lot of fun. Its occasionally horribly off. A noteworsy example would be the cutscene with Dr. Hendrikson where the sound and dubbing towards the end of the scene is totally out of touch. (Which is sad as it started pretty cool). there are also some other complaints I have with that scene which reflect problems in the entire mod. For instance, there is one moment where I think you are pulling Dr. Hendrikson by the hair (her hair is up in the air) but I don't see my arm (which I later on see when my protagonist stands up way more to the left)....so I guess that was some kind of Paranormal Activity 3 Moment? ;) This however is followed by a scene where I beat up somebody I don't really know. Seriously....who where those guys? Once again, I don't see my hands and I'm just guessing whats happening. My hands however are also disappearing from the gun a few times but thats no big deal. This is followed by another chopper sequence where I'm behind a machinegun. And boy! Am I tired of these goddamn chopper sequences in first person shooters. They are tiresome, too much effort for the development team for a mediocre result (seriously? all this time to design a level, add enemies and events for a sequence most players I know just want to get over with?)  and terribly overused. The game would have done much more for me if you would have just landed somewhere with the helicopter and left me walk and shoot in some good old fashioned shooter gameplay. Thats something that lags in this game. There could have been 2 or 3 more levels where its just a shooter. This awesome last level before I get into the jeep in this wonderfully dystopic building. More of that please!

Chopper-railshooters are annoying. Even if they look as cool as here

In that building I was using my UMP which appears out of nowhere. Lambert suddenly has it in that Dr. Hendrikson cutscene mentioned above. I was actually searching throughout the entire military base level which comes prior to the cutscene to find it without result. While the UMP is cool...I do have to say that its overpowered and handles a lot more like an assault rifle than a submachinegun. Its sound has a lot more punch as the SCAR or the korean rifle aswell. The SPR is pretty cool but its sad that you can't have ironsights.

The AI and pathfinding is alright, even though I had to redo the first level twice since cafferty always got stuck somewhere.

While the game has a ton more athmosphere than crysis (which feels really dry and lifeless in my opinion) its also as linear as a game from the call of duty franchise. If you do however take the time to explore a level, you will notice a lot of flaws and that the levels suddenly are either really empty or fall apart like you reached the end of reality in the movie "the 13th floor".

Which leads to:

T H E   U G L Y

The leveldesign in this mod is great and has a lot of concepts superior to crysis however, if you insist on examining them, you realise a lot of shading errors (I guess its the parallax mapping) where the terrain seems to melt in front of your eyes and a bunch of buildings and wooden structures (especially in level 1) sticking out or floating around in the map. Thats unfortunate for players like me that like to take an alternate approach to everything. These design flaws really take you out of the game and are a string contrast to the great visuals and artdirection.

Alright! I'm out of complaints that matter...lets get to the..

C O N C L U S I O N

Wreckage is a great mod every shooter enthusiast should have seen. I can savely recommend this game to most players as its content is not only great but also average-joe compatible. This mod certainly shows what a talented team of hobbyists can achieve with some effort and vision and despite my nitpicking. Its damn good!

Also: Sorry for the spelling mistakes you might find. -> Native german speaker ;)

Get WRECKAGE here

Für Menschen wie uns gibt es keine zweite Chance.

Review // Leviathan Crossfire : Revelation

Hey Internet!

Its time for another review. This time the Fpscreator title "Leviathan Crossfire - Revelation".

Revelation is actually a Alpha-Demo version of the game "Leviathan Crossfire" currently under development by DHK Games which you might now for the Indie title "Xarelok" which was in development for a long timespan but unfortunately got discontinued.

So lets look into this Alpha...promotional....techdemo...standalone. Whatever! Lets take a look at ...the Revelation.

Description
Revelation is a preview tech demo for Leviathan Crossfire. It can be treated as a game on its own, though.

Thats what I will do. I won't be too hard on some minor issues as I have to say I am very impressed by this title, however, lets take a look at the description:

 Story
In a distant future: The Rakan Empire is secretly constructing the most powerful space ship ever below the surface of their home planet. However, a secret too oftenly cannot be kept for too long, and the insurgent inhabitants of the planet Nuvebia are already sending their special forces to enter and investigate the Rakan underground dockyard.

In LC Revelation players will experience the battle from the perspective of a Rakan soldier, equipped with a high-tech future assault rifle, who has to stop the Nuvebian invasion. For the Empire.

There isn't much revelation in revelation. The Nuvebian rebels will discover this leviathan spaceship (which we never see) in this underground complex...thats it. However, for a techdemo: Thats more than enough. So I can't go deeper into the "Rakan Empire" and its relation to "Nuvebia"...nor do I know what planet this adventure takes place on. All I know is that I'm corporal Trask and I got some performers of the bluemangroup to shoot in the face. Thats all I need to enjoy this alpha.

The synopsis above however has a part that just...pisses me off. "Hightech future assault rifle?"
That gun is a piece of crap that no serious military force would ever hand out to their soldiers.
The rate of fire is far too low and the recoil is a joke. I feel a lot like I handle a B.A.R. from 1917. Not a spacegun.

Even though I don't like the style. I can see that the gun is well modeled and animated. I'm not talking about that: I'm speaking of gameplay and handling.

Two Rakan Soldiers ready for combat.

The game opens up with a very impressive menu screen. You must know that I review this title from the perspective of an FPSC user. I will give you a statment for the average video game player below though. The text slides in the screen after a slightly amateur'ish designed image of a planet shows up. Color and layout remind of the menu screen of "Crysis" but I call coincidence on that one.

What follows is an awesome rendered intro sequence. The sequence shows a bunch of techno stuff and a rendered underground facility with some voice over. Music and dubbing is appropriate  but can be wonderfully campy at some points. Some of the voiceactors have a german (?) accent and are hearable younger people (I guess 16 to 20 years old). Their linedelivery however is better than in ...Twilight or your average B-Movie. I'm only bringing this up because some of the voiceacting shows some genuine talent and effort while some voices are just slightly out of place. This adds a lot to the "indie" charme of the game.

The introduction is also one of the better ones I've seen in an FPSC Game. I also enjoyed how it was visually coherent with the games visual style.

The visual style didn't connect with me. I see how it was crafted to work well in FPSC while still keeping a general good look... I just don't enjoy this bland grey/orange corridor scenery. It feels a lot like a set of star trek TNG. A bit soulless.

This however isn't my mainproblem with the visuals. My major issue with this is the spacesuit. The uniform thing... it looks utterly pathetic. Where other scifi games like Halo or Warhammer 40K also have some pretty unrealistic designs...their uniforms are usually full of scratchmarks and are colored different...the ones in Leviathan just look like action figurines from the 80's. I don't know...powerrangers or something. It also doesn't help that the Nurvebian's color theirs blue. (Wouldnt they color them orange if they would infiltrate a secret undergound base...how did they get in there anyway?)
I have to add to this segment that I have been asked to design the spacesuits...and my designs where far less fitting for the setting! I'm stating a personal oppinion here...I do KNOW about the sheer amount of work to get these custom characters working like this.
If you like the design, you still have the major issue of proportions at your hands. Apparently, in the future everyone has short legs and large hands...in general: we are evolving to be midgets.


Well, maybe this will get me a role in the future remake of "the sinful dwarf".

  I think I've benn very negative on this little gem so far...so lets dive into some of the good stuff.
Leviathan Crossfire flows very well. Following your commander through these hallways feels a lot more like in a studio-title than an indie game. It also takes you 2 playthroughs to notice minor flaws as everything is set-up very well and convincing.

I, however, am just glad to finally see an FPSC title where there is a real interaction between the protagonist and his officer in command. Your seargent follows you around and even supports you in firefights. Now there is a lot of "shooting the wall" involved..but screw it!! In fact: My AI companion even killed a hostile character (even though I have to add that he didnt react in the first conflict but this didn't annoy me at all.) It is noteworthy that the AI never seems to be in the way or stuck somewhere. It follows its path flawlessly...even though faster than its walking animation. ;)

3D Models of the environment are splendid. You can detect minor unwrapping flaws but hey! Who gives a fuck? :) While I have to point out that environment feels rather sterile and I don't really know the purpose of these huge empty hallways. It seems like a waste of space for an underground complex to have these large rooms without anything in them but thats just nitpicking. Pipes, lightobjects and boxes are well put into place and while it is very empty, it allows the creators to do large levels in fpsc. And THAT is quiet an undertaking. I really liked the computers and projectors in this game. They are my favorite part in this game. Especially the interactive computer is something I haven't seen in FPSC like this.


Now, since this is an Alpha version, I would concentrate on the actual firefights most as they feel too "FPSC'ish" Everything else is so well developed and crafted to be custommade...why having these jarring combats. The "shielded" enemies where already a good and interesting start so is the allies system. But you really have to work on the sound of the guns and enemies, impact of bullets and a so on. There is already a fairly natural response of characters to situations. Yelling "incoming" etc. makes everything feel a lot more intense.

In conclusion: Leviathan Crossfire is already winning in this techdemo. I will definately get it once its released and I recommend this to every single FPSC user out there.
Feel free to download this game if you are a lover of indie games...you will have a few minutes of slightly campy but overall well executed fun. The average gamer will most likely not find a lot of joy in this game but since its free...download it anyway!

Visit the developers website

Now if the developers aren't too pissed of my criticism...maybe I can get them to do a little interview with me

"THEY ARE SHIELDED!!"

-Adrien

Review: OUTCRY

I bought outcry blindly from a bargain bin being attracted by its cover artwork. So basically, like in my Dear Esther Review, I had no idea what the game was and what I was getting myself into. I noticed however that even though the game had a very dark coverartwork with some dude having steampunk-like metal stuff on his pale, emotionless face and very grim, dimly lit, yet very pretty screenshots on the back of the boxart it had a german USK rating of 6. This just means that you can buy this game if your 6 years old. Somehow I was a bit disappointed by that as it basically means that there won't be any horrorelements or creepy stuff in this game even though coverartwork and presentation makes you think there would be. Outcry or "Sublustrum" (original title) is the first game release of the russian developer team "Phantomery". Sublustrum is russian for "twilight"... if only I could put my finger on why they renamed it for the english and german release... :P


Also notice that I'm no native english speaking person so if this review lags good grammar you know what the fuck is going on.

So lets get into Outcry, shall we?
In Outcry, you play a writer who has come at your scientist brother's bidding to check out something he discovered. This is explained to you in a filmeffect heavy intro sequence. Notice how this sequence is not only very cheap but also very artsy and explains everything you need to know without yelling exposition at you or blowing stuff up as it happens in most big-budget titles. I really like this sequence and will probably make something in its style sometime around this year.

You can take a look at it here:

You will probably notice the slightly awkward english dubbing... I have to say, believe it or not, the german dubbed version was farbetter done and way more athmospheric. Get used to the scientists voice as well...you'll hear it a lot... a whole fucking lot throughout this game.

The game starts in your brothers appartment and the first thing you'll notice (if you started as unprepared as I did) besides the"vignette filter" optics and bloomish-eeriee images is that it is not a realtime 3D game. This will be a real disappointment for the first couple of seconds as the visual style of the game is so damn awesome that if it would be a real 3D title, it would have been the best looking game ever. So yes! We are now playing a point and click adventure where you can move the camera around freely in a 360° ratio. 

The first thing I did was randomly wandering around the house clicking at things and seeing whats happening. Later in the game you will notice that thats the entire gameplay of this thing. Yes! There is no real sense of progress unless you finally found out what the hell to do. You might now probably think that I do simply suck at point and click adventures but that is not the problem. the problem is simply that there is no journal nor any on screen messages telling you what the current objective is. I like that in general...but in those story heavy adventure games where you get a complex story and a whole lot of information thrown at you (mindaltering drugs and soundcombinations, strange machinery in the living room, ancient cultures, foreshadowing, a missing brother, objects you dont really know what to do with) This might be a bit too much for the modern gamer where the usual mission is more or less to go to point A, Kill Person B and return Object C. In outcry, you don't get any main "questline" to focus on, no obvious hints or idiot proof explanations.
Another issue with this game is the lag of feedback wether you have just done something right or wrong. If you are tampering around with objects you sometimes dont even know if your action has done anything or not so you find yourself wandering around looking for changes that didnt even happen. The game does also waste a lot of your time as finding objects is more a matter of luck and clicking on everything on the screen than logic and perception. This becomes a bigger issue later on in the game where logic (which is a very important part of point and click adventures) gets completely abandoned and you are finding yourself in more surreal, dreamstate like levels. I for one found those visually fantastic and from time to time a bit frustrating to play through.

I find it a bit wierd that the great visual design of the first couple of levels get abandoned later on and a lot of the athmosphere is lost. That however is a matter of taste and you can decide for yourself.To sum it up, in the first part of the game you screw around with a lot of machinery to get your brothers personal-interdimensional portal thing rolling again and...well, go after him. I dont want to spoiler too much thats why I use this simplified form of sentences.

The journal entrys and latters and notes you picked up throughout the game so far pretty much prepared you to what happens now. You wander around in your missing brothers psyche and subconciousness (and not, that is not the same thing). This is well executed and gives you a rather unique dreamlike feeling... especially since such a concept has rarely been done without horror elements.

Adventure veterans will find themselves rather assaulted by the dreamworld puzzles as they are... completely abstract. I can tell you, I have a 140 IQ and didn't figure these things out (or what the fuck I was actually doing...and why??). I more or less went through this game by randomly clicking around until something happened. I had fun doing it though as I am a very illogical, spontaneous person. If you are more the logical, calculating type of guy you will find yourself loosing interest in this title very fast.

Be warned: the english translation seems done poorly but I found the german translation to be very well executed.

I haven't found the ending to the story to be completely statisfying...I somehow expected a bit more from it but well, it explained most things and was well done.

So what can I say about outcry? Its an alright adventure game with a lot of substance and innovative ideas but also a lot of flaws that drag it from being something great to being an okay game for fans of the genre. Everybody else will probably like the game's style but wont play on more than 2 or 3 hours as it can be frustrating.

Thanks for reading.

Review // Dear Esther

Dear Reader,

not only does my humble little blog about my humble little Indie Gamedesign Hobby now celebrate its 2000 Visitors, I also want to review other independent game's out there, air my thoughts on it and provide an overall enjoyable read. I would like to start this new part of my blog with the recently released "Dear Esther".

I downloaded Dear Esther without even knowing what kind of game it is. I was expecting some sort of scary riddlesolving adventure with a lot of physicbased puzzles. However, this is not the case... at all.

The first thing you notice as soon as you launch "Dear Esther" is the art. Oh! The Art! The wonderful vibrant, yet dark and uninviting ocean. The weathered, scared coast... the wonderfull, slightly surreal sky and all the love to the detail and the sheer realism of the map. I would concider this to be one of the most beautiful games I've seen so far. However! Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and I can imagine that a lot of players, the Xbox generation, will concider the game to look "dated."

I like to say that Dear Esther is, visually, the exact opposite of Crytek's "Crysis". While Crysis excells in technique and the mathematical part of visual design (Shaders, Meshes, PostProcessing) but (for me) really flops at artdirection and ambience, Dear Esther is fantastic when it comes to the art itself. (Feel, Athmosphere, Colors, Impression,Textures) while being a bit minimalistic in technical terms. I haven't researched it but I'm pretty sure "Dear Esther" runs on the source engine. I just got a certain feel for the gears behind a game. It comes with the trade (If I'm wrong, blow me!) A friend told me that the game was a mod prior to the stand alone game but I dont know for what game. I just guess Half Life².

If you look close, you see what simple techniques have been used to achieve these breathtaking visuals. The foliage that covers up the vivid coastline is made out of simple planes that turn towards the player as he moves through it. (this really works for the grass, but I found it out of place for the fluorescent mushrooms later in the game.) The rocks and a lot of meshes have a fairly low polygoncount which makes them look a little off sometimes and a bunch of textures in the outdoorpart of the game seem oversharpened. You should be able to enjoy it on a dual core with a geforce 8 / 7 series graphics card or similar ATI type.

So! Here I am on this coast. The game introduces with a letter written in a sad undertone which sets the mood just perfectly. I then try to swim... which makes me drown in an odd way. After an almost whispered "come back". I returned to the shore. Amused by that, I entered the worndown, nearby lighthouse and a flashlight got switched on automatically I instinctively tried to turn it off with the "f" button. ... nothing happened. The attempt to interact with anything in the lighthouse turned out to be quiet disappointing aswell so I left. My alter ego automatically ducked as a seagull flew escaped the lightouse and flew over my head. My further journey along the coastlines, amazed by the beauty of the sea's horizon and with my constant companion: The guilt stricken lines to a certain Esther. After my analytical interest in the game started to fade my mind started to venture astray from the game while playing. Me too, I was once taking long walks along the coastlines of the netherlands, thinking about lost love and how I messed it up royally, caressed by the strong winterwinds blowing from the sea. A cocktail of anger, emptiness and sadness inside... and I rage quitted the game.

At this point I was almost mad at the game for bein nothing but a sad, depressing take on solitude and despair. It took me some time to realise that it was not ment to be a game, but art. So I played it again. This time finished it. This time, I loved it.

Something on the visuals that has to be mentioned in an extra paragraph are the surreal waterloaded caves. They are, to put it in one word: Astounding. While they don't look realistic in any way and differ from the outdoor visuals (this time we see more normalmapping and other shader effects) they are just gorgeous. Beautiful leveldesign here. It was sheer fun to explore them. I took some screenshots for you guys: Enjoy.

As I exit the caves, its dark outside and the story pretty much unfolded itself for me already. I won't spoil anything but I can tell you this:Its pretty much what you expect it to be after the first few lines spoken. No twists, no surprises...but well written and surprisingly good voiceacting.

The final ascension is, as you would expect stunningly beautiful... yet very sad. So ist the ending.
I was actually surprised and strangely moved by it. I left my computer with a strange feeling in my guts...like I just watched a very moving  and dramatic  movie.

This game shows what videogames can be and that there is no genre that it can't be.
The Art, the poetry, the symbolism. Obvious yet subtle at once is just great work.
It is what indiegames stand for and what movies have lost over the years. Is it boring? yes! To most gamers it will be... especially the lag of game in this game will make most people loose interest. Is it overpriced? yes! 8,99 for an hour of game"play" is too much especially as it has zero replay value. Would I recommend it? Yes! To everyone who enjoys "different" things as much as I do and who cares about our art form is this a must play.

One final complaint: The cameramovement is really... it sucks. It feels like you are controlling a camera in a 3D editor. I would have wanted this a little bit less static.

Trivia: I noticed a silhouette walking away from me and later on standing on a rock watching me in the game. Can you find it too? =D

Thanks for reading and give it a try if I made you interested. You can get it on steam. Its developed by "the chinese room". Just don't play it if you are suicidal.

Typos can be kept. No charge.

I am Wolf and I approve this review.

-Adrien